seismamag

24/10/2025

Our new book review looks at the thought-provoking and timely ‘Exiled from Our Bodies: How to Come Back to Our Senses’ by Dr Tereza Stehlíková (Routledge, 2025).

Reviewer Dr Angelica Kaufmann says this book ‘arrives at a moment when many of us feel the lingering aftershocks of enforced digital life that continue to mediate our sense of reality. Here, the Czech–British artist and researcher asks what it might mean to resist such mediation, and to reclaim our existence in all its multi-sensory depth.

At once memoir, philosophical reflection, and artistic inquiry, the book is both intimate and wide-ranging.’

Full review now available on our website, link in bio 🔗





📸 1) Melusine (2008) by Tereza Stehlíková, film still. 2) Book Cover: ‘Exiled From Our Bodies’ by Tereza Stehlikova. Photos ©️Tereza Stehlikova.
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19/10/2025

The Suzanne Treister retrospective, ‘Prophetic Dreaming’, is showing at Modern Art Oxford from 04 October 2025 - 12 April 2026. Following on from our previous post, we look at another work from Treister’s project ‘KABBALISTIC FUTURISM’ – her notion of imaginary future museums.

The ‘Museum of Quantum Gravity’ is inspired by the five years during which the artist worked on and off at CERN in Switzerland. It imagines a future when the problem of quantum gravity has been solved, and a museum can set out the history of the problem and how scientists finally reached a solution. Three of the four fundamental forces of nature are described within the framework of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory: the electromagnetic interaction, and the strong and weak nuclear forces; this leaves gravity as the only interaction that has not been fully accommodated. When Einstein presented general theory of relativity in 1915, he recognised that it would have to be reconciled with the emerging quantum theory of the atom. Just as planets are held by gravity around the sun, even electrons should experience gravitational forces as well as the electromagnetic ones that hold them in their shells. Einstein worked for much of his life to develop a full quantum theory of gravity, but it eluded him and remains unsolved. ‘The people at CERN’, say Treister, ‘were depressed by how the calculations don’t work when you put gravity in’.




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16/10/2025

There’s a broad body of research – into spirituality, mysticism and belief systems, science, and technology - behind Suzanne Treister’s projects, as set out in ‘Prophetic Dreaming’, her retrospective at Modern Art Oxford. The multi-part works benefit from deep dives into the complexities involved. One of the easier ideas to grasp is her notion of imaginary future museums from the project ‘KABBALISTIC FUTURISM’.

Treister says the ‘Museum of Augmented Telepathy’ ‘comes out of ideas of the possibility of telepathy, perhaps through a future technology, through the quantum, or through natural telepathic abilities which may turn out to result from quantum phenomena. If you think of augmented reality (AR), it’s looking at the real world through a lens which augments what you are seeing for various reasons or purposes, adding another layer of information/reality. So the idea of a Museum of Augmented Telepathy presumes a future where this phenomenon, AT, has been around long enough for there to already be a museum about its history. And it presupposes a moment in the future where telepathy is so generally accepted and utilised that we have found reasons to augment it, through technology or otherwise. So when we stand in front of that painting we are standing in a hypothetical future where AT is normal and where humanity may have generated or accepted even more alternative models of reality or existence. It asks us to imagine this future and all possible ethical outcomes in advance.’

Prophetic Dreaming: 04 October 2025 - 12 April 2026


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📸 1) ‘KABBALISTIC FUTURISM’ 2) ‘Museum of Augmented Telepathy’©️Suzanne Treister.
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16/10/2025

There’s a mass of research – into spirituality, mysticism and belief systems, science, and technology - behind Suzanne Treister’s projects, as set out in ‘Prophetic Dreaming’, her retrospective at Modern Art Oxford. The multi-part works benefit from deep dives into the complexities involved. One of the easier ideas to grasp is her notion of imaginary future museums from the project ‘KABBALISTIC FUTURISM’.

Treister says the ‘Museum of Augmented Telepathy’ ‘comes out of ideas of the possibility of telepathy, perhaps through a future technology, through the quantum, or through natural telepathic abilities which may turn out to result from quantum phenomena. If you think of augmented reality (AR), it’s looking at the real world through a lens which augments what you are seeing for various reasons or purposes, adding another layer of information/reality. So the idea of a Museum of Augmented Telepathy presumes a future where this phenomenon, AT, has been around long enough for there to already be a museum about its history. And it presupposes a moment in the future where telepathy is so generally accepted and utilised that we have found reasons to augment it, through technology or otherwise. So when we stand in front of that painting we are standing in a hypothetical future where AT is normal and where humanity may have generated or accepted even more alternative models of reality or existence. It asks us to imagine this future and all possible ethical outcomes in advance.’

Prophetic Dreaming: 04 October 2025 - 12 April 2026


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📸 1) ‘KABBALISTIC FUTURISM’ 2) ‘Museum of Augmented Telepathy’©️Suzanne Treister.
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30/08/2025

Beauty meets menace in the three-sculpture group ‘Familiars’, 1992, the key work in ‘Apprehensions’, the Whitechapel Gallery’s survey of Hamad Butt’s sadly brief career. Butt was born in Lahore, Pakistan in 1962 and moved to live in East London with his family in 1964. He studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths, 1987-90, and so coincided with the Young British Artists (YBA) generation, many of whom studied alongside him there.

In ‘Familiars’, glass forms contains three halogens that have both helpful and harmful potential: when first shown, the risk of leaks generated some press controversy. Butt himself explained, in a 1991 text he wrote to set out the theoretical thinking behind his planned works: ‘I am interested in the relationship between art and science, particularly the shift in modes of thought from alchemy to science (medicine and chemistry) and, more tentatively, the prospect of a metachemics, which might have an equivalent kinship to metaphysics as chemistry does to physics. What is being considered in the apprehensions that constitutes the extent of our acknowledgement of substance?’

Full article now available on our website, link in bio 🔗

‘Hamad Butt: Apprehensions’ is currently showing at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, 4 June – 7 Sept 2025.




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📸 1) ‘Familiars 1: Substance Sublimation Unit’, 1992, by Hamad Butt. 2) ‘Hamad Butt: Apprehensions’, 4 June - 7 September 2025, Whitechapel Gallery, London. Photo: Damian Griffiths. 3) Hamad Butt at home
c.1980–87. Image © Jamal Butt. All three shown courtesy the artist, Whitechapel Gallery, TATE Collection, and the photographer.
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15/08/2025

In our newest article, we explore four science and art shows from the annual Gallery Weekend in Berlin.

Kathrin Linkersdorff at Haus Am Kleistpark, including her latest series ‘Microverse’ (2023 onwards). As artist in residence at the Institute for Biology/Microbiology, Humboldt University, she collaborated with microbiologist Prof Regine Hengge to examine the behaviour of streptomycetes in biochemical processes of decay.

Numero Cromatico at AOA;87. The art and research collective merges visual arts, design, architecture, and literature with scientific knowledge. Their AOA;87 exhibition included neon works highlighting phrases, and tapestries with poems, both emerge from custom-built AIs.

Jimmie Durham at Barbara Wien. Durham’s ‘The Aharonov-Bohm Effect’ (1989) presents a less widely-known quantum phenomenon whereby charged particles are influenced by an electromagnetic field, even though they move exclusively through a region free of magnetic fields.

Alfredo Jaar: ‘The End Of The World’ for the Kesselhaus at KINDL. Following research supported by geologist Adam Bobbette, Jaar focuses our attention on a diminutive cube of layered raw materials. Extraction of these materials is fraught with human rights violations and environmental destruction: the exhibition booklet sets out details metal by metal in ten essays by Bobbette.









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📸 1) Kathrin Linkersdorff: ‘Microverse III / 2’ (detail) 2025. 2) Numero Cromatico: ‘I am not here, as you see’, 2025 Photo Numero Cromatico, AOA87, Berlin. 3) Jimmie Durham: ‘The Aharonov-Bohm Effect’, 1989. Courtesy the artist, kurimanzutto, Mexico City/New York and Barbara Wien, Berlin. Photo Enza Monetti © Jimmie Durham Estate. 4) Alfredo Jaar: ‘The End of the World’ – installation view at KINDL. Photo Jens Ziehe, 2024 © Alfredo Jaar/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2025.
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10/08/2025

When Music Meets Attention: How Background Tunes Shape Focus

A new study explored how young adults with and without ADHD use background music during daily activities of varying cognitive demand.

Results revealed that those with ADHD tended to listen more during both stimulating and low-effort tasks, favoring upbeat, energizing tracks.

Neurotypical participants more often chose relaxing and familiar music for complex activities.

Despite differences in preferences, both groups perceived music as equally beneficial for focus and emotional well-being.

These patterns suggest that music choice may reflect underlying differences in attentional needs and arousal regulation.

The research points toward the possibility of tailoring “cognitive playlists” to support individual focus and mood.

08/08/2025

Alicja Kwade has inaugurated a new location for Iceland’s i8 Gallery with the major sculpture ‘Archibiont’, 2025 (shown above). Within the work, a static, black powder-coated steel frame evolves into organic imagery, as the smooth steel transforms into highly textured, verdigris tree bark and animal antlers made of bronze. That fits with the title, a combination of the architectural with the natural, as a ‘biont’ is the biological term for any discrete unit of living matter, from a single-celled bacterium to a complex multicellular organisms like us. It also fits with her practise as a whole, as set out in Seisma’s full article of March 2023. In her words: ‘What I do is question the world, through a philosophical approach which uses moments from science to somehow understand the world.’

As i8 Gallery puts it, Kwade ‘has developed a visual language around celestial and earthly principles and the interwoven relationships of art and nature. The continual relevance of society’s quest to apply meaning and measurement to life forces underscores the inherent mysteries of the universe, many of which remain unsolved and perpetually in a state of artistic and scientific exploration.’
‘Archibiont’ is specifically inspired by Aristotle’s doctrine of hylomorphism, which holds that everything is inseparably composed of matter (the underlying substance) and form (the structural organisation that makes it what it is). Thus, Kwade’s sculpture is not just metal, but metal shaped into aparticular form suggesting metamorphosis. Less straightforwardly, life (or the soul) was, in Aristotle’s account, the animating form of the human, leading to considerable philosophical discussion and dispute over the centuries. An updated version might hold that energy is the underlying matter within which all form occurs, reinforcing the unity of art and science, humanity and nature.




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30/05/2025

It isn’t often that gaming and its associated technologies feature in the programmes of art galleries. Janne Schimmel believes it is important to use the medium of art in this area, and a recent example is his exhibition ‘But Can It Run Doom’, described by Super Dakota, Brussels, as ‘an in-depth exploration of the intersections between digital culture, the material conditions of gaming hardware, and the evolving role of technology in our lives.’ Visitors were able to play on various consoles with games designed, tweaked or deconstructed by the Dutch artist, allowing them to appreciate the evolution of the relevant technologies and some of the cultural issues associated with the industry.

In this article, we discuss the development of gaming technology and two questionable aspects of that recent highly successful history, as explored in the show: the limitations in practice on what one might expect to be the complete freedom to act in virtual worlds; and the parallel restrictions and pressures on how the technology can be used.

Full article now available on our website, link in bio 🔗


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📸 1) Janne Schimmel: ‘Strange Loop (Disgust, Fear, Happy, Sad, Snarl)’, 2024 - 3D printed resin, acrylic paint, 14 x 7 x 22 cm’ Photo © Adriaan Hauwaert. Courtesy of the artist and Super Dakota, Brussels. 2&3) Janne Schimmel: ‘Phantasmic Gateways and their Housings’, 2021. Photo © Adriaan Hauwaert. Courtesy of the artist and Super Dakota, Brussels. 4) Portrait of the artist in his studio. Photo © Adriaan Hauwaert. Courtesy of the artist and Super Dakota, Brussels.
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11/04/2025

Milan’s modern and contemporary art fair, Miart (3-6 April, 2025), included a presentation by the San Sebastián gallery CIBRIÁN of Siyi Li’s riveted aluminium works suggesting a snowflake blown up hugely under a microscope to over 2 m high, and a tear that has fallen from it. The Frankfurt-based Chinese artist’s pair of sculptures ‘Teardrop’ and ‘Teardrop (fearless on my breath)’, 2022, might suggest mourning for the loss of the poles’ compacted snow, but there is also a scientific connection.

Snowflakes are famous for their unique crystalline structures, and the same can be said of teardrops. That was the subject of an investigation a decade ago by the Dutch artist Maurice Mikkers, who found that when tears dry, they leave behind crystallized minerals and salts, forming delicate, unique patterns. Moreover, the patterns are affected by what has triggered the tear. And that’s complicated by there being three main types: basal tears, that keep our eyes lubricated; reflex tears in response to irritation; and emotional tears linked to a loss of control, whether through happiness or sadness. Those emotional tears have three extra ingredients: the stress hormones prolactin and adrenocorticotropic hormone, and the painkiller leucine-enkephalin, and Mikkers found that sad and happy tears look different.

Mikkers, who worked as a lab technician before switching to art, collects tears in micropipettes for transfer of drops to a microscopic slide, after which crystallisation takes 5-30 minutes, depending on the environment. Images 2-4 are examples of his results from his project ‘Imaginarium of Tears’, ongoing since 2015, showing the effects on the particular individuals of onions, a fan blowing air into the eye, and sorrow. Back in Milan, the phenomenon fits nicely with Siyi Li’s stated interest in ‘preserving ephemeral emotions as antidotes to shattered contemporary life’.


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09/04/2025

Thank you so much Daisy Bassen for sharing your work with us 🙏💚

Daisy Bassen is a poet and community child psychiatrist who graduated from Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program and completed her medical training at The University of Rochester and Brown. Her work has been published in Salamander, McSweeney’s, Smartish Pace, Crab Creek Review, New Yo...

06/04/2025

How will current internet-inspired art look in fifty years’ time? Tate Modern currently provides a potentially equivalent opportunity to explore 20th century artists’ use of technologies that were novel to them. ‘Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet’ brings together 70 artists who engage with science and technology. Our newest article by looks at work by six of these artists.

‘Electric Dreams’ runs to 1 June 2025 at Tate Modern, London. Artists: Rebecca Allen, Marina Apollonio, Manuel Barbadillo, Alberto Biasi, Vladimir Bonačić, Davide Boriani, Martha Boto, Pol Bury, Harold Cohen, Analivia Cordeiro, Waldemar Cordeiro, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Charles Csuri, Computer Technique Group, Dadamaino, Atul Desai, Lucia Di Luciano, Ivan Dryer and Elsa Garmire, E.A.T., Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss, Herbert W. Franke, Brion Gysin, Samia Halaby, Desmond Paul Henry, Hervé Huitric and Monique Nahas, Edward Ihnatowicz, Eduardo Kac, Hiroshi Kawano, Ben Laposky, Julio Le Parc, Ruth Leavitt, Liliane Lijn, Heinz Mack, Robert Mallary, Mary Martin, Almir Mavignier, Gustav Metzger, David Medalla, Tatsuo Miyajima, Manfred Mohr, Vera Molnar, François Morellet, Tomislav Mikulić, Fujiko Nakaya, FriederNake, Georg Nees, Akbar Padamsee, Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut, Ivan Picelj, Otto Piene, Günther Uecker, Paolo Scheggi, Lillian F. Schwartz, Sonia Landy Sheridan, Aleksandar Srnec, Jesús Rafael Soto, Vera Spencer, Takis, Atsuko Tanaka, Jean Tinguely, Franciszka Themerson, Suzanne Treister, Wen-Ying Tsai, Grazia Varisco, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam, Miguel Ángel Vidal, Nanda Vigo, Stephen Willats, Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, Edward Zajec.

📸 1) Fold 2 1988 by Samia Halaby . Still from kinetic painting coded on an Amiga computer. Tate © Courtesy the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut / Hamburg.
2) STEPS (1982) by Rebecca Allen Still from video. Courtesy the artist © Rebecca Allen. 3)Tatsuo Miyajima, Lattice B, 1990 and Opposite Circle, 1991 installation view in Electric Dreams, Tate Modern, 2024 © Tatsuo Miyajima . Photo © Tate (Lucy Green)