​Reframe: Cryptic Lineages

​Friday, Jun 13, 2025 at 7:00 p.m.

​As part of Reframe: Experimental Technology and the Moving Image, Museum of the Moving Image presents a live performance by Laura Splan.

​Cryptic Lineages explores how the future of digital computation is being reimagined through physical reservoir computing, a framework that leverages the inherent properties of materials like water, microbes, and living tissue to perform machine learning tasks. Rather than relying solely on conventional silicon-based hardware like processors and circuit boards, this approach uses the dynamics of natural systems. These shifting properties, such as the metabolic activity of bacteria or changes in the behavior of water under pressure, are treated as computational inputs. Their natural responses to external stimuli are used as data streams for modeling, prediction, or classification.

​Laura Splan’s performance combines video, 3D animation, and sound with live vocalizations to examine the role of biological systems and fluids that work in tandem with advances in artificial intelligence. Referencing experiments in which water, bacterial colonies, strawberry plants, and tissue cultures are used to model and forecast behavior, Cryptic Lineages sheds light on the increasingly porous boundary between the computational and the natural world. Themes of energy, waste, labor, and the instrumentalization of bodies offer poetic reflections on how our conceptions of “nature” and the “individual” inform, and are in turn informed by, the future of computing.

​About The Artist:
Laura Splan is a New York City–based artist working at the intersections of Science, Technology, and Culture. Her research-based studio practice and interdisciplinary collaborations culminate in multimedia artworks, exhibitions, and events. Her work has been presented at The Museum of Modern Art (NYC), Brooklyn Museum (NYC), Musea Brugge (Bruges), Museum of Arts & Design (NYC), Centre d’Art Santa Mònica (Barcelona), Pioneer Works (NYC), and other museums and centers around the world. Learn more at www.laurasplan.com.