In their practice, the artist duo Entangled Others, composed of Feileacan Kirkbride McCormick and Sofia Crespo, questions notions of bias in technology and the representation of natural species, proposing a return to a biological model of computation and exploring concepts of entanglement between different species and ecosystems.
For ORBIT_E Entangled Others created a work, that articulates a new contextual framework with their well-established methods. (di)atomic garden is an artwork in the form of a real-time, performative system, that explores radioactivity as a force of mutation.
Through a virtual simulation of an atomic garden, two distinct image datasets—historical agricultural crops and Antarctic marine plankton—are brought together and transformed. Each specimen planted in this virtual space is a careful translation of images into pseudo-genetic code and algorithmic encapsulation. The planted specimens can be explored through the browser interface, that acts as a safe window into this continuously growing, mutating and decaying virtual garden.
Radioactivity has a powerful, altering effect on genomic material. The work explores how two disparate datasets of images (historical agricultural crops and Antarctic marine plankton) as colliding gene pools mutate through the virtual simulation of an atomic garden. Here the atomic garden is tasked as a bridge between terrestrial and the oceanic as their borders are uneasily dissolved.
The emission of charged particles by decaying uranium ore are sampled, and then used to drive a virtual re-enactment of the atomic garden, where each image of planted specimen is translated into simulated genetic code and algorithmic structure. This new, virtual form renders them vulnerable to mutation when irradiated by charged particle beams, causing them to mutate and interact with one another.
The project draws on the little-known history of atomic gardens – experimental fields developed after the Second World War to research “peaceful” applications of nuclear energy. By exposing crops to radioactive materials, researchers induced mutations that sometimes resulted in higher yields, new colours, or novel forms.
Remarkably, some of these varieties still appear in contemporary seed catalogues. At the same time nuclear weapons testing, reactor accidents, and industrial activities introduced radioactive residues into the world’s oceans. As a result, many marine organisms—from plankton to fish—now live with chronic, low-level exposure. While the effects of high radiation doses are well studied, the long-term ecological consequences of low doses remain uncertain, particularly when combined with ocean warming and acidification. These unresolved questions form the conceptual backbone of (di)atomic garden.
About the artists
Entangled Others is an experimental artist duo composed of Feileacan Kirkbride McCormick and Sofia Crespo. In their practice, McCormick and Crespo explore the strange and unsettling spaces that lie between human technologies and non-human worlds, advocating for the dissolution of the distance we impose between ourselves and the richness of our interdependent existence. Their work questions notions of technological bias and the representation of natural species, proposing new ways of understanding the relationships between humans, technology, and more-than-human life. Their work has been presented internationally at institutions and events including the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, NeueHouse LA in Los Angeles, Oxford University, and the UNESCO headquarters in Paris
About the curator
Marlene Wenger is an art historian and curator specialising in digital and post-digital artistic practices. She studied at the University of Bern and the Freie Universität Berlin, earning her doctorate in 2021 with a thesis on post-digital exhibition strategies. After completing her studies, she worked for Art Basel Unlimited, the Migros Museum of Contemporary Art in Zurich, and as an assistant at Stadtgalerie Bern, as well as curating a private video art collection in Bern. From 2020 to 2023 she served as a curatorial assistant in the Contemporary Art department at the Kunstmuseum Bern. Since 2023, she has been Head of Programme and curator at the House of Electronic Arts (HEK) in Basel, where she co-curated projects including Virtual Beauty (2024) and Other Intelligences (2025). In her curatorial work, she develops long-term projects and programme strands focused on digital culture, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, gaming, and contemporary forms of online subjectivity.