Media release June 2025 INTERNATIONAL INTERACTIVE NEW MEDIA AND PERFORMANCE EXHIBITION – BUTTERFLY

 What: Butterfly Exhibition Combining Art and Science

Observing butterfly effects in global interactions between humans, technology and the environment

Where: Catacombs, Wasa Innovation Center, Pukinkulma, Gerbyntie 16, Vaasa

When: The opening ceremony: 11.8.2025 klo 17.30-19.30

The exhibition is open to the general public August 12-31, 2025

Proudly presented as a part of the Wasa Future Festival

Website: https://sites.uwasa.fi/butterfly/en/

 

Butterfly is a joint international exhibition by the University of Vaasa, Deakin University, Umeå University, and the Games Research Lab at Tampere University. It is part of the Wasa Future Festival (August 11–16, 2025) and is a interactive new media and performance art program that includes related side events such as a symposium and educational for schools.

The international interactive new media and performance exhibition, Butterfly: Glo-cal effects of data, energy and industry, addresses the ‘real butterfly effect’ of environmental and social impact of digitalisation, energy and industry. The exhibition critically engages in human-nature developments across areas and nations.  The more digital we become in one area, the greater the impact we see in other areas.

Industry is becoming not only digital, but also supposedly ‘intelligent’. The challenge is to find sustainable energy solutions to maintain the technology that runs this intelligence. Every small click and search of Google or ChatGPT consumes natural resources that remain invisible to us as we sit behind our laptop screens. This is not to mention the by-products that are left in their aftermath. The exhibition carries a philosophical underpinning of ‘ecosophy,’ a philosophy of interconnectedness between ecological systems and human values. Ecosophy refers to ‘eco’ (ecology) and ‘sophy’ (wisdom).

The exhibition uses the very technology that it problematizes – artificial intelligence, virtual reality, sound data and more – to show how our lives are determined by these technologies, and how art, through its power to enact, uses the technology to critique itself.

Butterfly is produced by Elina Melgin, and co-curated by an international team of Associate Professor Rebekah Rousi (VME Interaction Design Environment, University of Vaasa, Finland), Associate Professor Toija Cinque (Critical Digital Infrastructures and Interfaces (CDII) research group, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia), Dr. Anne Scott Wilson (Deakin Motion Lab, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia), Aska Mayer (University of Tampere, Finland), Associate Professor Esteban Guerrero Rosero (University of Umeå, Sweden), and exhibition architect Lyndsey Morley (UK and Finland).

The artists are a select group of internationally renowned practitioners: Moa Cederberg (Finland), Jurgis Peters (Latvia and Finland), Samuel Kujala (Finland),  Anne Scott Wilson (Australia), Cameron Bishop (Australia), Spencer Rose (Australia), Benjamin Knock (Australia), Frederick Rodrigues (Australia), Katey O’Sullivan (Australia), Domenico de Clario (Italy and Australia), Daniel Shanken (Sweden), and Nikiforos Staveris (Greece and Sweden), as well as notable multi-award winner Jack Manning Bancroft and Tyson Yunkaporta who team up to bring new vocabulary to the rapidly evolving digital landscape through Indigenous Australian knowledge systems.

The artists intersect with all the ecosystemic dimensions of AI, sustainability and ecosophy as they deal with technology, energy and industry in light of their effects on culture, language, society, environment, human agency and relationships.

The exhibition has been made possible through grants and partnerships, with Wasa Innovation Center being the most significant. A list of funding partners can be found on the website.

The art exhibition catalogue will be released in July

A catalogue of 80 pages (Butterfly: Glo-cal effects of data, energy and industry) filled with essays, artist statements, images and testimonies will be released in July explaining the inner workings and background of the Butterfly exhibition. This report includes 16 artist statements, introducing the artists of the exhibition, and 5 academic articles surrounding the topic.

Press can request the catalogue pre-release (print or pdf): Rebekah.rousi(at)uwasa.fi (co-curator)

 

For more information contact:

Elina Melgin, elina.melgin@uwasa.fi; +358 40 821 1688 [Producer]

Rebekah Rousi, rebekah.rousi@uwasa.fi; +358 50 431 7883 [Co-Curator]