Michael Joo’s presentation in the Biennale Arte 2026 comprises two installations. In the first, That Which Evaporates All Around Us (2025), slabs of crinoids mineralised over eons orbit each other in a colossal mobile. The fossilised slabs contain dense accumulations of sea lilies or feather stars, marine invertebrates whose bodies once swayed in prehistoric currents, their surfaces recording long arcs of sedimentation, fracture and compression. Multiple transducers mounted beneath each slab feed vibrations tuned to the stone’s resonant frequency. These inaudible signals are transmitted as a vibrational field felt in the viewer’s body.
Noospheres: Expanded (2026), Joo’s second installation, is an installation of four suspended LED screens counterbalanced by an armature of found local materials such as weathered pylons and tubing used to stabilise Venetian waterways. On the screens are 3D-printed crystal forms – generated using blockchain technology in another of Joo’s ongoing projects, Organic Growth: Crystal Reef (OG:CR) (2021-ongoing), forms that are being used in coral resilience research off the Kona coast. The floating array of video surfaces in Noospheres: Expanded displays data related to OG:CR. Together, the works invite viewers to consider how technology can be understood as an extension of nature and part of the ongoing eco-technical becoming of the world.
—Eungie Joo
