Isabella Hong – Looking Outwards – 02

Karl Sims is an artist that specializes in fusing elements of life sciences, his primary area of study as an undergraduate at MIT, and machinery to produce interactive media designs.

In 1997, Sims created an interactive exhibit called “Galapagos”, inspired by the studies that Darwin had completed on evolution at the Galapagos Islands. The exhibit was displayed for three years (1997 – 2000) at the ICC in Tokyo and for one year in 1999 at the DeCordova Museum in London.

Images of abstract organisms were displayed on twelve different screens that were arranged in an arc form. The viewers chose the organisms that they liked by standing on particular sensors and watched as the other organisms disappeared from the screens. The genetic code and intricacy of the newly mutated and evolved organisms are completely controlled by the computer, demonstrating the lack of human power over nature. Newly mutated and evolved organisms, the offspring of the selected organisms, appeared on the screens and there was no predicting what they would look like.

I particularly admired Sims’ ability to create direct interaction between a human and a machine, to show that art extends beyond the wall of a museum or the screen of a computer. He gaps the bridge between hardware and humanism, something that is rarely done very well.