All that we consider living around us is partly the result of expressing the organic encoding of information in DNA form. self-contained 009.4 represents an important milestone for the artist-duo, as it is the very first iteration with the sculpture of what is to be expanded into a deeper line of artistic research in the coming years. This work takes inspiration from the phenomena of encoding & decoding, a process rife with mutations. Coupled with the evolutionary nature of the crossbreeding and random changes, this mirrors some of the memetic aspects of our digital spaces wherein images are often combined, edited, degraded or re-contextualized.

In this piece, a target image becomes the subject of an iterative crossbreeding of random samples of strings from other compressed images, leading to a mutative evolution. Akin to grafting two plants together here images from a dataset are randomly spliced into the image “genome”. Decoding regenerates the image to a more recognisable form which is then aided by neural networks trained on the same dataset to further return colour and detail.

It is this iterative, simultaneous process of compression-decompression that the work depicts. Which, as around us, occurs in shared simultaneity. Just as our cells divide, mutate and grow, so do the contents of our shared digital spaces as we remix, are remixed, hyped, and made obsolete.

Entangled Others (formed 2020) is the collaborative studio practice of artists Feileacan McCormick and Sofia Crespo. Their work focuses on ecology, artificial lifeforms and generative processes. Pursuing detailed research and biologically-inspired technologies they delve into the intricate web of relationships between the more-than-human world and its interaction with human technologies. Central to all their projects is the concept of entanglement—a complex state where no single entity exists in isolation, and every action, interaction, and expression resonates through a multitude of interconnected beings. Entangled Others have exhibited at numerous international venues, including Serralves Museum, Porto (2024–2025); Beijing Times Art Museum, Beijing (2024); Mies Van der Rohe pavilion, Barcelona for Sònar Festival 2024; The Photographer’s Gallery, London (2023); Nxt Museum, Amsterdam (2023) and UNESCO HQ, Paris (2022). In Autumn 2024 their work Sediment Nodes (2022–2023) featured as a Special Display during the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Digital Art Season, London. Their work is in the permanent collection of the Buffalo AKG Museum, New York; the Onassis Foundation, Vaduz; and the Colección SOLO, Madrid.