Campos Eliseos

The installation “Campos Elíseos” deals with the relationship between human beings and nature. Its title refers to the place described in Greek Mythology as Paradise, where everyone there lives harmoniously. In this case, a utopia where all beings have equal power and voice, regardless of their origin, form or species. The work deals with human behavior in relation to nature as something predatory, destroying its sources and imposing the conquering dynamics that are particular to it. Here, the beautiful fields idealized by the Greeks are transformed into an arid land, where the only beings that managed to survive human action were artificial, autonomous ones, which depend only on light as a source of energy. It is a warning about the way we are treating the planet and what will happen in the coming years if we do not change our stance.

The beings proposed here are somewhere between the limits of nature, in a gap between the animal and plant kingdoms. The title of the installation refers to one of the rare animals that make up this bridge; a hybrid between fauna and flora - the Elysia Chrolotica - which has both animal and plant characteristics. He is a being that can carry out photosynthesis and thus feed on light, while maintaining animal attributes, such as the emission of sounds.

The project began with the concepts of autonomy and artificial life. Autonomous beings are those that can control their inputs and outputs in dynamic and stable exchanges. This concept is part of studies in the area of Cybernetics carried out since the middle of the 20th century, by authors such as Norbert Wiener and Gilbert Simondon. Unlike automatons, which are closed to exchanges and according to these authors tend to disappear, autonomous beings dialogue with the outside and carry out constant exchanges with it, in order to adapt to the environment in which they are inserted.