About

Concept sketch of Kodame by Mikhail Mansion 2017

Since 2015, the artist collective Natura Machina has been constructing nature-driven kinetic sculptures to playfully reimagine our connection to the natural world. 

As artists, technologists, researchers, and educators, we hold a special position in this investigation of nature and culture. Specifically, we view the cross-disciplines of technology, research, and art as culturally viable means for exploring new ideas that intersect with nature and design. We believe this can lead to enhanced thinking about environmental sustainability and novel solutions. With this frame of mind, we have been working on a series of kinetic installations that aim to represent nature, thereby connecting cultural and natural systems as a single medium of experience. Through an artistic medium, we attempt to interrelate concepts of form, material, poetry, and motion with the physical forces of nature. As artists, we make choices on how to enact those properties within a selected context, where we transduce signals from a natural environment into the built environment. In this way, we explore how everyday materials and objects can engage people with natural phenomena to create new experiences that blur the boundary between physical, digital, and environmental systems. Through these experiments, we pose the question: How can ecologically engaged art enhance cultural sensibilities regarding nature?

In building ecological works that aim to foster enhanced sensibilities for natural systems, we consider the role of cognition in this process. Cognition means that humans acquire knowledge not only through mental faculties but also through their many physical senses. Human senses play a significant role in cultivating new perceptions. To this end, we attempt to create artwork that can connect human senses to outdoor living systems. Most of the world’s population lives in built environments and interacts with manufactured materials daily. We wondered if it were possible to enhance ecological sensing ability within these artificial settings or in places that seek to control aspects such as lighting, temperature, sound, energy, and data flow. The built environment presents certain challenges in this regard because such spaces often attempt to direct the ebbs and flows of their occupants through prescribed cultural interactions—e.g., living rooms, cubicles, classrooms, jail cells, and checkout counters. 

We think that for sustainable design to take root, humans have to first cultivate an ecological mindset. Additionally, we believe that artwork is a unique framework, capable of crossing cultures and disciplines to help bridge embedded concepts of ecology, sustainability, and nature while proposing novel solutions for blending physical, digital, and environmental systems into a single experience.

Natura Machina framework diagram by Kuan-Ju Wu, 2016