CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS

During 2025 and 2026 Art Laboratory Berlin has carried out a new innovative project CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS with interdisciplinary exchange between art and science in Berlin science laboratories, kindly supported by Lottostiftung Berlin. In collaboration with a consortium of scientists from the Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, University of the Arts Berlin, the Charité and the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Art Laboratory Berlin invited selected artists for lab residencies in Berlin science laboratories. The group exhibition premieres brand new works and shares research material of artistic and scientific research (CHRYSALIS conference on Sat, 28 November 2026).


Helena Nikonole’s project SonoMetagenomics (2026) brings research in bioacoustics and speculative evolution into dialogue with metagenomic soil ecology to investigate how sound and vibration may act as environmental pressures shaping soil microbial communities. The installation is an artistic representation of a scientific experiment being developed by the artist in collaboration with scientist Álvaro Rodríguez del Río from the Rillig Lab | Ecology of Plants, FU Berlin. It translates the experimental setup into two soil-filled bioreactors activated by transducers. One reproduces construction noise, while the other expands the experiment into a speculative range of acoustic environments, from military and industrial machinery to natural sounds. By bringing anthropogenic, technological, and nonhuman soundscapes into contact with soil, the work explores their potential to alter microbial systems. The project is particularly interested in antibiotic resistance genes and potential antimicrobial functions. It asks whether acoustic stress can reveal otherwise hidden biological processes and contribute to understanding how evolutionary trajectories emerge within complex microbial ecosystems.

In the new generative audiovisual installation COMMON GROUND (2026), Julius Holtz operates at the intersection of neuro art, perception psychology, and sound art. A brain-computer interface (BCI) captures a visitor’s neural activity in real time and translates it into generative sound and video projections – elements that are in a constant state of flux. For his artistic research, Holtz spent time in various laboratories, most notably the sleep laboratory at Charité Berlin. This new work explores synchronization as a fundamental principle of tuning in and aligning. A high-resolution quadraphonic speaker system creates a spatial sound environment that can be experienced not only aurally but also physically. Simultaneously, the projection visualizes the EEG data and the continuous fluctuations in neural activity. The generative work establishes a perceptual feedback loop between the artwork and the person wearing the BCI. At the same time, everyone present both influences and perceives the shared sensory environment. COMMON GROUND defines the exhibition space as a speculative model of human-machine interaction.

Ode (2026) by Margherita Pevere imagines urban ponds as spaceships undertaking a mission that, concealed by their apparent stillness, remains enigmatic to humans. Interconnected elements, inspired by the anatomy of pond organisms, shape a contemplative microcosmos. By combining bioinformatics with living samples from Berlin urban ponds, music, sculptural glass, garments, and sound objects, the artwork summons the liveliness of the spaceships. Pevere envisioned the spaceship concept during fieldwork with POUNDER researchers (Jeschke Lab | Ecological Novelty, FU Berlin, IGB, ARL Hannover), who sample pond waters to extract genetic data of bacteria inhabiting them, also known as environmental DNA metabarcoding. Ode manifests actual genetic material and datasets from Berlin ponds as a multidimensional repository of ecological relationships and (im)possible adaptations to contaminants. A suspended sound sculpture gives voice to bacterial networks through recordings created by singer Dorian Wood for specific bacteria. The voices overlap, dance, and eclipse in a choral piece thanks to a custom AI system that links bacterial genetic data to known pollutants. Activated by an opening performance, Ode invites audiences aboard the spaceship. The new artwork belongs to Pevere’s series untaming death that explores more-than-human perspectives on death and ecological change.

Marcus Maeder‘s sound installation Change Factors (2026) sonifies soil microclimate data from a scientific experiment on multiple global change factors that has been carried out at the Rillig Lab | Ecology of Plants, Institute of Biology, Freie Universität Berlin since 2019. For the installation Maeder has turned belowground temperature and humidity dynamics into audible, spatial sound. Drawing on findings that combining stressors like microplastic, pesticides, drought, and heavy metals produces emergent effects unpredictable from single factors alone, the piece treats these interactions as sonic phenomena. Seven treated soil plots each contribute a low-frequency moisture sound and a high-frequency temperature sound, distributed across a spatial audio system, while air temperature circles the speaker array every twenty-four hours, accelerated tenfold for perceptibility. Recordings of soil animals – crawling, feeding, vibrational communication – grow muffled as rising temperatures drive them into deeper, cooler layers. Through slow, evolving pulsations and pitch shifts, the installation reveals soil as a dynamic, reactive medium rather than inert substrate, inviting deep listening to ecosystems shaped by human land use and differing rhythms of ecological time.

More information about the research project CHRYSALIS. ARTISTS IN LABS with the biographies of all artists: HERE.