Špela Petrič

2014 / Author: Špela Petrič / Scientific advisor: Klaas Timmermans / 3D modeling and filming: Miha Turšič / Habiton engineer: Andre Smit / Habiton constructor: Matthias Schrama / Host institution: NIOZ

Produced by: BioArt & Design Award

Presentations: BAD Award, MU, Eindhoven, 2015 / Are all lives equal?, Mediamatic, 2016 / Radical atoms, Ars electronica 2016

The project Naval Gazing establishes a novel relationship between biotic marine entities, the human, and the sea at a time when increasing productivity and climate change are pushing towards an agricultural exploration of the sea, and while the distinction between nature and culture is becoming ever-more hazy. The habiton is a kinetic kunst-machine, which simultaneously acts as a platform for the attachment of organisms, creating a travelling, uncontrollable transient biotope in the north sea. Its becoming a true example of non-human architecture unravels through time, as the colonization of the structure gradually breaks its symmetry, causing it to transform from a human-conceived kinetic architecton into an immobilised, utilized and eventually sunk micro-ecology formed around the habiton.