{"id":84354,"date":"2020-04-27T12:46:12","date_gmt":"2020-04-27T12:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/?p=84354"},"modified":"2020-04-27T16:47:44","modified_gmt":"2020-04-27T16:47:44","slug":"jenna-sutela-slime-science-machine-learning-spirituality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/jenna-sutela-slime-science-machine-learning-spirituality\/","title":{"rendered":"Jenna Sutela: Soul, meat and pattern"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":84361,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11856,15151,10172,10897,139],"tags":[15274,4213,38,34,7827,15275,15120,15277,15119,15273,9429,15276,10903,11056,1426,15278],"class_list":["post-84354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sleek-art","category-essay","category-film","category-opinion","category-art","tag-algae","tag-app","tag-art","tag-berlin","tag-finland","tag-i-magma","tag-jenna-sutela","tag-machine","tag-moderna-museet","tag-mould","tag-science","tag-serpentine-galleries","tag-slime","tag-spirituality","tag-technology","tag-terminator"],"acf":{"main_category":15151,"legacy":false,"exclude_from_ads":[],"hero_title":"","subtitle":"Working across film, performance and installation, the Berlin-based Finnish artist incorporates shapeshifting slime moulds, algae blooms and machine learning algorithms into her practice to foster a new understanding of the world, where humans, cellular forms and the spiritual interconnect\u2014By Gary Zhexi Zhang","hero":{"video":false,"image":false,"header_color":"black","overlay_color":"","overlay_text_color":"black"},"teasers":{"video":false,"image":{"ID":84361,"id":84361,"title":"Jenna Sutela_Neither A Thing, Nor An Organism_2018_Bold Tendencies Commission_Photo Credit Damian 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Sutela, Neither A Thing, Nor An Organism, 2018, Courtesy of the artist, Photo: Damian Griffiths. "}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"
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The work of Berlin-based Finnish artist Jenna Sutela could best be described as a quivering blob of molten chrome, cellular matter and cyborgian detritus, its random convulsions threatening to burst at any moment. Epitomising this is her 2018 sculpture, Neither A Thing Nor An Organism.<\/em> Apparently named after a passage on metallurgy from Giles Deleuze and Fe\u0301lix Guattari\u2019s French philosophical magnum opus, A Thousand Plateaus<\/em> (1980), the 36-year-old describes the reclining lump of ectoplasmic metal as \u201cpolymimetic alloy pond brain, two chrome amorphous blobs with a head and a gut emerging from them\u201d. Her forms recall the T-1000 of James Cameron\u2019s 1991 sci-fi classic, Terminator 2: Judgement Day<\/em>, a shape-shifting android assassin which adopts the form of things it touches by replicating their molecular structure. In \u2018Biophilosophy for the 21st Century\u2019, American contemporary philosopher Eugene Thacker argues that \u201cthere have only ever been three approaches to thinking about life: soul, meat and pattern\u201d, a view Sutela\u2019s work seems to share. Combining lively matter with ghostly machines, her films, sculptures and installations examine the increasingly porous boundaries between all three.<\/p>\n

This proximity between head and gut, a recurring motif in the artist\u2019s projects, also recalls the writings of Georges Bataille, the Gallic post-war philosopher of l\u2019informe<\/em> (formlessness), whose surrealist cult, the Ace\u0301phale (from Greek, akephalos<\/em>, headless) was symbolised by a decapitated man with his guts on display. Another example is Sutela\u2019s video Nam-Gut<\/em> (the microbial breakdown of language<\/em>) (2017), which alludes to the origins of life on Earth (and therefore culture) in mulch and germs. The piece uses the fermentation of a kombucha \u2018scoby\u2019 (a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast) as a random number generator. In turn, this process creates Sutela\u2019s nam-shub<\/em>, a poetic text inspired by an ancient Sumerian incantation (which prominently featured in Neal Stephenson\u2019s 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash<\/em>, a possible source of inspiration). The result is a sputtering of alien vocals accompanying diaphanous letters floating around a bacterial soup. Like Bataille, who argued that humanity\u2019s essence is defined by its big toe, not its brain, Sutela\u2019s generative poetry suggests that consciousness is formed deep in the humus.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":[{"ID":84359,"id":84359,"title":"Jenna Sutela_Nam-Gut (the microbial breakdown of language)_video still_2017","filename":"Jenna-Sutela_Nam-Gut-the-microbial-breakdown-of-language_video-still_2017.jpg","filesize":595017,"url":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_Nam-Gut-the-microbial-breakdown-of-language_video-still_2017.jpg","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/jenna-sutela-slime-science-machine-learning-spirituality\/jenna-sutela_nam-gut-the-microbial-breakdown-of-language_video-still_2017\/","alt":"","author":"1","description":"","caption":"","name":"jenna-sutela_nam-gut-the-microbial-breakdown-of-language_video-still_2017","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":84354,"date":"2020-04-27 12:24:06","modified":"2020-04-27 12:24:06","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1500,"height":839,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_Nam-Gut-the-microbial-breakdown-of-language_video-still_2017.jpg","thumbnail-width":128,"thumbnail-height":72,"medium":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_Nam-Gut-the-microbial-breakdown-of-language_video-still_2017.jpg","medium-width":1500,"medium-height":839,"medium_large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_Nam-Gut-the-microbial-breakdown-of-language_video-still_2017.jpg","medium_large-width":1500,"medium_large-height":839,"large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_Nam-Gut-the-microbial-breakdown-of-language_video-still_2017.jpg","large-width":1500,"large-height":839,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_Nam-Gut-the-microbial-breakdown-of-language_video-still_2017.jpg","1536x1536-width":1500,"1536x1536-height":839,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_Nam-Gut-the-microbial-breakdown-of-language_video-still_2017.jpg","2048x2048-width":1500,"2048x2048-height":839,"trp-custom-language-flag":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_Nam-Gut-the-microbial-breakdown-of-language_video-still_2017.jpg","trp-custom-language-flag-width":18,"trp-custom-language-flag-height":10,"wpvr_mobile":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_Nam-Gut-the-microbial-breakdown-of-language_video-still_2017.jpg","wpvr_mobile-width":1500,"wpvr_mobile-height":839}}],"settings":{"fit_width":"10","caption":"Nam-Gut (the microbial breakdown of language), video still, 2017. Courtesy the artist. "}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"

This mix of the spiritual and the biological is typical of Sutela\u2019s work. An ongoing exhibition opening in April at Tank Shanghai, More More More<\/em> (\u6478\u6478\u6478<\/em>), uses living moss and edible algae to \u2018write\u2019 on the gallery\u2019s walls using a \u2018Martian\u2019 language invented in the 19th century. Originally, this supposedly alien script was \u2018channelled\u2019 by the French medium He\u0301le\u0300ne Smith, but here it is generated by a machine learning algorithm. In a related video, nimiia ce\u0301tii\u0308<\/em>, installed at Somerset House in 2018, Sutela interprets Smith\u2019s Martian tongue using her own voice, as well as the movements of Bacilus subtilis<\/em>, a bacteria that scientists believe has the potential to survive on Mars. The artist speaks of \u201cmaking art that surpasses the human realm, and thinking about the bacterial realm as an audience\u201d. Indeed, her subjects and interlocutors are more often single-celled than mammalian, and have so far included slime moulds, algae blooms and water bears. Inspired by science fiction and often working with laboratory researchers (she is currently working with microbiologists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), her artworks feature a diverse cast of microfauna that emerged aeons before us, and will continue to inhabit the planet long after human beings are gone.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":[{"ID":84356,"id":84356,"title":"Jenna Sutela_From Hierarchy to Holarchy_2015_photo Mikko Gaestel","filename":"Jenna-Sutela_From-Hierarchy-to-Holarchy_2015_photo-Mikko-Gaestel.jpg","filesize":440611,"url":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_From-Hierarchy-to-Holarchy_2015_photo-Mikko-Gaestel.jpg","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/jenna-sutela-slime-science-machine-learning-spirituality\/jenna-sutela_from-hierarchy-to-holarchy_2015_photo-mikko-gaestel\/","alt":"","author":"1","description":"","caption":"","name":"jenna-sutela_from-hierarchy-to-holarchy_2015_photo-mikko-gaestel","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":84354,"date":"2020-04-27 12:23:55","modified":"2020-04-27 12:23:55","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1500,"height":1000,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_From-Hierarchy-to-Holarchy_2015_photo-Mikko-Gaestel.jpg","thumbnail-width":128,"thumbnail-height":85,"medium":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_From-Hierarchy-to-Holarchy_2015_photo-Mikko-Gaestel.jpg","medium-width":1500,"medium-height":1000,"medium_large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_From-Hierarchy-to-Holarchy_2015_photo-Mikko-Gaestel.jpg","medium_large-width":1500,"medium_large-height":1000,"large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_From-Hierarchy-to-Holarchy_2015_photo-Mikko-Gaestel.jpg","large-width":1500,"large-height":1000,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_From-Hierarchy-to-Holarchy_2015_photo-Mikko-Gaestel.jpg","1536x1536-width":1500,"1536x1536-height":1000,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_From-Hierarchy-to-Holarchy_2015_photo-Mikko-Gaestel.jpg","2048x2048-width":1500,"2048x2048-height":1000,"trp-custom-language-flag":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_From-Hierarchy-to-Holarchy_2015_photo-Mikko-Gaestel.jpg","trp-custom-language-flag-width":18,"trp-custom-language-flag-height":12,"wpvr_mobile":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_From-Hierarchy-to-Holarchy_2015_photo-Mikko-Gaestel.jpg","wpvr_mobile-width":1500,"wpvr_mobile-height":1000}}],"settings":{"fit_width":"10","caption":"From Hierarchy to Holarchy, 2015, Photo: Mikko Gaestel."}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"

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As the boundaries between \u2018things and organisms\u2019 blur\u2014particularly in the age of synthetic biology, with programmable cells and advanced forms of artificial intelligence\u2014it increasingly seems as though we exist \u2018outside\u2019 of ourselves, peering in. Recent novels and films preoccupied with the \u2018xeno\u2019\u2014the foreigner, the stranger, the outsider\u2014have begun to address this. These include: the alien visitors of Jonathan Glazer\u2019s Under the Skin<\/em> (2013) starring Scarlett Johansson; Denis Villeneuve\u2019s Arrival<\/em> (2016)\u2014based on Ted Chiang\u2019s sci-fi novella \u2018Story of Your Life\u2019 (1998)\u2014and Jeff VanderMeer\u2019s 2014 Southern Reach trilogy of novels, the first of which, Annihilation<\/em>, was adapted as a film directed by Alex Garland in 2018. These disturbing narratives tend to displace the centrality of their human protagonists, undermining our belief in rational order and natural selection\u2014stories from our hard-earned Enlightenment that have long consoled us.<\/p>\n

Sutela, too, is interested in channelling the language of the idea of the Other in her work. Until 10 May, she will be participating in Genders: Shaping and Breaking the Binary<\/em><\/a>, a group exhibition at Science Gallery London. Following this, she will be showing at the Liverpool Biennial (11 July to 25 October), this year dedicated to the body and its relationship with the world. Moreover, her art arguably enacts a critical function, questioning the fragile foundations of human rationality, observing that we have neither a monopoly over intelligence nor consciousness. Her practice is poetic and often playful, foregrounding ethical questions of how to live, not only with other human beings but with other ecosystems. Referencing what the American art historian Caroline A Jones calls \u2018symbiontics\u2019\u2014the need for a more interconnected understanding of being\u2014Sutela says she is interested in \u201cdeveloping a culture that\u2019s based on interspecies symbiosis rather than the \u2018survival of the fittest\u2019 narrative\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":[{"ID":84357,"id":84357,"title":"Jenna Sutela_I Magma_2019","filename":"Jenna-Sutela_I-Magma_2019.jpeg","filesize":102547,"url":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_I-Magma_2019.jpeg","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/jenna-sutela-slime-science-machine-learning-spirituality\/jenna-sutela_i-magma_2019\/","alt":"","author":"1","description":"","caption":"","name":"jenna-sutela_i-magma_2019","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":84354,"date":"2020-04-27 12:23:57","modified":"2020-04-27 12:23:57","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1500,"height":996,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_I-Magma_2019.jpeg","thumbnail-width":128,"thumbnail-height":85,"medium":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_I-Magma_2019.jpeg","medium-width":1500,"medium-height":996,"medium_large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_I-Magma_2019.jpeg","medium_large-width":1500,"medium_large-height":996,"large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_I-Magma_2019.jpeg","large-width":1500,"large-height":996,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_I-Magma_2019.jpeg","1536x1536-width":1500,"1536x1536-height":996,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_I-Magma_2019.jpeg","2048x2048-width":1500,"2048x2048-height":996,"trp-custom-language-flag":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_I-Magma_2019.jpeg","trp-custom-language-flag-width":18,"trp-custom-language-flag-height":12,"wpvr_mobile":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Jenna-Sutela_I-Magma_2019.jpeg","wpvr_mobile-width":1500,"wpvr_mobile-height":996}}],"settings":{"fit_width":"10","caption":"I Magma, 2009, Courtesy the artist. "}},{"acf_fc_layout":"blockquote","text":"\"With a little less hubris, Sutela seems to suggest, there is much that we could learn from slime.\"","source":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"

In a series of work beginning with From Hierarchy to Holarchy<\/em> in 2015, Sutela staged exhibitions and performances using the \u2018many-headed\u2019 slime mould Physarum polycephalum<\/em> as her agent and guide. Physarum<\/em> is a yellow slime that has long beguiled biological researchers with its ability to make complex decisions and solve spatial problems. As Sutela says, \u201cI am fascinated by Physarum polycephalum<\/em> because of its amorphous body and collective mind\u2014it has been called a natural computer.\u201d Resolutely single-celled and brainless, it is nonetheless able to self-organise through the decentralised interactions of its many nuclei. While it lacks neural matter, its slimy trace acts as an externalised memory, a figurative kind of \u2018autobiography\u2019.<\/p>\n

In From Hierarchy to Holarchy<\/em>, Sutela placed Physarum<\/em> inside a plexiglass labyrinth in the shape of an organisational diagram which the mould navigated in order to find food. Sutela\u2019s interest in the organism has led her to researchers from Turku to Tokyo, spored across exhibition\u00a0spaces in London and Berlin, and, at times, performed \u2018through\u2019 her in \u2018many-headed readings\u2019 prior to which she ingested a little Physarum. \u201cI imagine that its hive-like behaviour is programming my own,\u201d she says. For Sutela, Physarum<\/em> offers a stark contrast to the problems of organisation, both technical and sociological, which have plagued human history. With a little less hubris, Sutela seems to suggest, there is much that we could learn from slime.<\/p>\n

In I Magma<\/em> (2019), a multimedia project co-commissioned by Stockholm\u2019s Moderna Museet and London\u2019s Serpentine Galleries, Sutela created a series of glass lava lamps in the form of her own head (her ongoing exhibition, No No Nse Nse<\/em><\/a>\u00a0at Kunsthall Trondheim, presents photograms based on this series). Glowing globules of molten wax drift through them, creating totemic energies. The lava\u2019s movement is used to generate fragments of premonitions in a corresponding mobile app of the same name. Reminiscent of the popular personalised horoscope app Co-Star, Sutela describes the I Magma<\/em> app, created in collaboration with the American poet and programmer Allison Parrish and the Turkish artist Memo Akten, as a \u201cmachine oracle\u201d which generates daily divinations using AI trained on literature from the Internet Sacred Texts Archive. While the app by itself can feel a little ephemeral, the cryptic daily premonitions it delivers are surprisingly affecting, casting their own ambient spells on the day. Examples include: \u201cYou are not a one\u201d; \u201cOur veins have been the different channels\u201d; \u201cIt is written from the mooned net\u201d; and \u201cEarly reign, the lunar goddess\u201d.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":[{"ID":84363,"id":84363,"title":"Mudmuses_29_Theresa Hahr MM","filename":"Mudmuses_29_Theresa-Hahr-MM.jpg","filesize":320882,"url":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Mudmuses_29_Theresa-Hahr-MM.jpg","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/jenna-sutela-slime-science-machine-learning-spirituality\/mudmuses_29_theresa-hahr-mm\/","alt":"","author":"1","description":"","caption":"","name":"mudmuses_29_theresa-hahr-mm","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":84354,"date":"2020-04-27 12:24:17","modified":"2020-04-27 12:35:36","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1500,"height":960,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Mudmuses_29_Theresa-Hahr-MM.jpg","thumbnail-width":128,"thumbnail-height":82,"medium":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Mudmuses_29_Theresa-Hahr-MM.jpg","medium-width":1500,"medium-height":960,"medium_large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Mudmuses_29_Theresa-Hahr-MM.jpg","medium_large-width":1500,"medium_large-height":960,"large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Mudmuses_29_Theresa-Hahr-MM.jpg","large-width":1500,"large-height":960,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Mudmuses_29_Theresa-Hahr-MM.jpg","1536x1536-width":1500,"1536x1536-height":960,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Mudmuses_29_Theresa-Hahr-MM.jpg","2048x2048-width":1500,"2048x2048-height":960,"trp-custom-language-flag":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Mudmuses_29_Theresa-Hahr-MM.jpg","trp-custom-language-flag-width":18,"trp-custom-language-flag-height":12,"wpvr_mobile":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Mudmuses_29_Theresa-Hahr-MM.jpg","wpvr_mobile-width":1500,"wpvr_mobile-height":960}}],"settings":{"fit_width":"10","caption":"From Mud Muses, A Rant About Technology. Courtesy of Moderna Museet Stockholm."}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"

\u2018Lava\u2019 was famously first used as a random number generator in Silicon Valley in the Nineties, and later developed by the San Franciscan online security firm Cloudflare in 2017, who designed the Wall of Entropy, an assembly of 100 lava lamps whose unique molten forms are employed to model unbreakable internet encryption codes. While Cloudflare used its lamps as a source of mathematical unpredictability, Sutela says she is \u201clook- ing for signs of pattern and meaning in the randomness\u201d. It is poignant to note, in an era of ubiquitous computation, that true randomness,a \u2018language beyond language\u2019, so to speak, here embodied in the movement of one liquid inside another, remains one of nature\u2019s most potent resources.<\/p>\n

Chaos theory emerged via the image of pollen grains dancing on a droplet of water. That molecular \u2018noise\u2019\u2014the random movement of particles in liquids or gases\u2014was first observed by the botanist Robert Brown in 1827. Deemed unfathomable until later developments in thermodynamics, it seems a useful way to consider Sutela\u2019s work, too. As a system of order and disorder, her art is comparable to Brown\u2019s chaotic idea of noise. By channelling patterns of fluid single-cell forms and the spiritual presence of artificial intelligence, she opens up the possibility of an encounter with other beings who have been \u2018in the room\u2019 all along: our cohabitants, symbiotes and other ghosts in the machine. In conversation, she says that the urgent concerns of climate change and her new baby have bolstered a desire to address her work to non-human forms of community: \u201cI\u2019m feeling very human animal right now … I want to represent a certain era and a certain species in the best possible manner.\u201d<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"

This article originally appeared in SLEEK 65,\u00a0out now<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

No No Nse Nse<\/a>\u00a0is running online at Kunsthall Trondheim through to 29 August.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Genders<\/a> runs through online at London Science Gallery to 28 June<\/em>.<\/p>\n"}]},"yoast_head":"\nJenna Sutela: Soul, meat and pattern Jenna Sutela: Soul, meat and pattern<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/jenna-sutela-slime-science-machine-learning-spirituality\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jenna Sutela: Soul, meat and pattern Jenna Sutela: Soul, meat and pattern\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/jenna-sutela-slime-science-machine-learning-spirituality\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sleek Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sleekmag\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-04-27T12:46:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-04-27T16:47:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@sleekmag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@sleekmag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Verfasst von\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"sleek\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/\",\"name\":\"Sleek Magazine\",\"description\":\"Sleek is Germany\u2019s leading independent media house\/brand for creativity and innovation located in Berlin the creative capital of the world. 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