CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS
Artist Scientist Dialogue
With Helena Nikonole and Alvaro Rodriguez
Welcome to our next ARTIST SCIENTIST DIALOGUE with artist and researcher Helena Nikonole and soil ecologist Dr Alvaro Rodriguez in the context of Art Laboratory Berlin’s current research project CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS. The event will take place hybrid, feel free to join on-site or online (please register).
In her talk, Helena Nikonole will introduce aspects of her artistic practice, including her projects Acoustic Agriculture and Speculative Species Evolution, and share some ideas behind her collaboration with Alvaro Rodriguez on microbial communities and sound. In his presentation, Dr Alvaro Rodriguez will introduce metagenomics, the technique he has been applying for studying microbial communities, and discuss its possible applications to understand the behaviour of the microbial communities exposed to sound stimuli.
About CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS
During 2025 and 2026, Art Laboratory Berlin is unfolding the new innovative project CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS with an interdisciplinary exchange between art and science in Berlin science laboratories, kindly supported by Lottostiftung Berlin. Building on Berlin’s unique status as a global centre for arts and sciences, we aim to create new synergies based on topics of current research. In collaboration with a consortium of scientists from the Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, and other instutions, Art Laboratory Berlin is initiating artist-in-lab residencies for several internationally recognized, Berlin-based artists – including Helena Nikonole. We are currently receiving strong outcomes in transdisciplinary knowledge transfer, artistic research, art science communication, and some new artworks critically highlighting 21st-century innovations.
About the speakers
Helena Nikonole is a new media artist, independent curator, researcher, and educator based between Berlin and Istanbul. Her fields of interest include AI, hacktivism, hybrid art, and biosemiotics. She is the co-founder of 868labs – a Berlin-based collective developing tactical tools for decentralized, off-grid communication. One part of her practice is dedicated to utopian scenarios of a post-human future and art as innovation, while another focuses on the dystopian present and a critical approach to technology. As a researcher, she is currently working on a PhD on LLMs and political ideologies at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
Dr Alvaro Rodriguez is a postdoctoral scientist in soil microbial ecology at the Rillig Lab, Institute of Biology, at Freie Universität Berlin. During his postdoc, Alvaro explores different aspects of the effect of global change on soil microbial communities, investigates the contribution of uncultivated taxa to soil functioning worldwide, and highlights the relevance of novel proteins for understanding the microbial world. With a background in Biotechnology, Ecology and Evolution, Alvaro obtained his PhD explored the distribution and potential functions of previously uncharacterized microbial genes using bioinformatics approaches, was awarded the prize for the best PhD thesis in bioinformatics in Spain. In 2023, Alvaro became an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellow at the Rillig laboratory in the FU Berlin.
Venue
HYBRID | On-site and online:
Art Laboratory Berlin
Prinzenallee 34, 13359 Berlin
and online via Zoom
Date and time
Thu, 2 July 2026, 7:30 pm CET (hybrid)
REGISTRATION
Registration is required for both formats.
Please register HERE
No fee.
MENTORS & MEDIATORS
Regine Rapp & Christian de Lutz
ALB Team
Regine Rapp, Christian de Lutz, Alice Cannavà,
Amandine Hong-Minh, Giulia Marsigli
Cooperation partner
Rillig Lab | Ecology of Plants
Institute of Biology, Freie Universität Berlin
More collaboration partners for the whole project see HERE.
Media partner
Supported by
Part of the research project:
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