bat cloud
A conversation between bats and humans in the forest of Sfer Ik Museum.
Website: https://batcloud.art/
In situ experience for interspecies AI model, 3D printed sand sculptures, water and acoustic waves, seeds and garden.
Curated by Marcello Dantas.
Sfer Ik Art in Nature Award.
Science collaborators: Mirjam Knörnschild Bat biolinguist (Museum für Naturkunde Berlin). Computer scientist: Marianne De Heer Kloots.
Permanently exhibited at: Sfer IK - Azulik, Tulum. Mexico
Creative Direction: Cristina Tarquini
Technical Production: A&E
3D design: Julien Bauzin
Year: 2025
if you could speak to Bats,
what would you ask ?
Bat Cloud is a proposition for interspecies encounter, installed in the wooded area surrounding the SFER IK museum in Tulum, Mexico. The work is an artistic offering to bats in the form of water, fruits, and insects, and an opportunity for humans to ask bats a question, with the help of an artificial intelligence oracle trained to listen to bat conversations.
The artwork was conceived by attuning to the echoes of the Mayan forest, following intuitions that led toward the resonances of cenotes. These ecosystems, home to many bat species, are known locally as paths to the infra-world, where mineral, vegetal, and animal have listened to one another across the deepest horizons of time. In these places, bats are regarded as messengers.
What if we could understand the languages of other-than-human species? What might we learn from forms of knowledge that reach further into the past than human memory? If you could speak to bats, what would you ask? And if they chose to speak back, what might they reveal about themselves, the forest, the universe, and about you?
Part human, part bat, part machine, the Bat Cloud is above all a listening experience. If you follow the trail through the forest toward the artwork, you will first be invited to settle into the rhythm of the sounds around you. The path leads to a body of water where, as the forest grows accustomed to your presence, you will have the opportunity, if you wish, to ask the bats a question.
