“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Arthur J. Clarke

LIQUID DREAMS is an immersive and participatory multidisciplinary project by artist and researcher Annika Kappner. It presents critical and poetic perspectives on our relationship with artificial intelligence (AI) and its connection to the mineral kingdom.

Through a combination of immersive sensory installations, participatory performances, and guided meditations, LIQUID DREAMS invites visitors and participants to embark on a holistic journey that explores the meeting points of human and mineral intelligence and speculates on their shared history.

Participants of LIQUID DREAMS are invited to become part of the mineral kingdom. Like an algorithm, people are trained with a flow of images and sensory impressions about our relationship with minerals. LIQUID DREAMS uses the body in the analogue world as a medium to search for non-binary alternatives to dominant Western ways of perception and explores related uses of AI. The work aims to decolonise and emancipate our ways of feeling and sensing, enabling connection with and care for the self and the other – machine, human, animal, plant, mineral.

By exploring multispecies ecofeminism, technopaganism, and embodied knowledge, LIQUID DREAMS aims to challenge dominant Western perceptions of AI while fostering connections between the self and the wider world.

For Uncommon Senses V Liquid Dreams is shared as Guided Audio Journey best enjoyed in a quiet space with headphones. Georgia Kareola’s article “From Supernova to Supercomputer” further contextualizes the piece in contemporary research.

LIQUID DREAMS has been developed in residency with BRAINs NanoLab UTwente (NL) and presented as immersive installation at Ars Electronica (2024), TETEM (2023), through community events at V2_Lab for Unstable Media (2023/24) and as a guided meditation online, available through newsletters and social media. Liquid Landscapes (2022/23) – a prequel researching Mycelium as a natural communication network, was commissioned by Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis (US). Co-funded by Mondriaan Funds.

Research Assistant Martina Janichkova

Scent Noa Dold

Soundworld Eric Maltz