Stelarc is a creator and visionary, a pioneer of artistic activities combining the body, biotechnology, robotics, prosthetics, and communication systems.

His work in the Apocalypse Hall (aka Black Hall) of the Jerzy Grotowski Institute — the legendary location of rehearsals and performances of perhaps the most controversial and progressive creator in Polish and European theater — in 1997 announced an approaching wave of changes affecting art, the functioning of cultural institutions and communication infrastructure that would later sweep through at the beginning of the 21st century.

This extraordinary audiovisual concert by a Korean artist combines the highest technological advancement with deep aesthetic and emotional sensitivity, musical craftsmanship, and a nod to manual artistic skills transferred to the digital environment. 

In her performance, Ge-Suk Yeo proves that new media in art is not limited to mechanical actions and states, as it requires emotional involvement as much as the intellectual and an understanding of music and visual arts as much as technology.

A telematic installation transmitting data describing waves in the Pacific Ocean to the gallery space where the work is presented. 

It combines contemporary thought about nature and ecology with an almost sculptural vision of the world — it refers to the analog world of mobile objects as well as digital representations of a world reduced to grids and data.

An incite/ concert is always an experience going beyond polite gallery presentations of music and electronic images. The duo uses elements of club culture, powerful beats, bass, glitches, extreme volume, and imagery that attack the visual perception apparatus.

A unique musical experience that introduces an additional element impacting the performance’s execution and the audience’s perception. A robotic system that transports the choristers and places them at different angles relative to the axis of gravity, which affects the functioning of the performers’ bodies and the emission of their voices. 

The reaction of voices to physical movement in space is entirely different from audio production trickery related to sound panning — thanks to this, we are reminded that new technologies in art also concern bodies, not only intellects.

The workshops of Harbisson, one of the pioneers of cyborgization — connecting the body to robotic computer systems, are also free-form games utilizing artificial senses and their capabilities – like translation of visual input into auditory stimuli.

Harbisson asks serious questions about human limitations and the possibilities of overcoming them. He does not answer them on his own, though. He shares a space with the participants that allows them to experiment freely, and independently search for answers and solutions.

Hong Kong artist Eric Siu has been associated with WRO from almost the beginning of his career (his first trip to Europe was also a visit to the WRO Biennale). 

He approaches media technologies with a certain distance — he is ironic towards them, but also sees their potential to unite and bring people closer together. The effect is perverse, but not malicious, and it reminds us that the media is a channel of interpersonal communication, not human-technological.

A wild happening from a creator who decisively chose not to use modern electronic gadgets in the way described in their user manuals. Nogami demonstrates the actual potential of new technologies when unleashed in the context of social participation, fun, absurdity, and rejection of utilitarian fixations. 

This is also an example of the WRO Biennale reaching out to its recipients – passers-by, city residents, and visitors.

An emotional performance using an original mechanism designed by the artist. Elastic ropes create movements, force the performer’s body and mind to tense, and do not allow for a consumerist reception of the work by the audience. 

Ya-Wen Fu’s stage machine refers to completely different physical components than those typically used in media art: first of all — it is a mechanism that integrates with the body, devoid of electronic and computer elements.

An installation-garden concert and, at the same time, a very real tomato plantation. Markowski uses the language of bio art and ecological art so fluently that he allows himself to be slightly tongue in cheek: he contrasts esoteric tenderness with a seemingly mundane utilitarian approach (cultivation), commenting in his own way on the complicated relationships that exist between nature, culture, and civilization.

FTT is a community connecting experts from many areas of science and art, conducting activities and research around cultural, technical, ecological, and medical aspects of food and food issues. 

These are chefs, baristas, ceramicists, designers, craftspeople, musicians, architects, photographers, filmmakers, scientists, breeders, and engineers who cross the rigid barriers of their fields, creating culinary and artistic projects that refer to history and modern science in equal measure.

An acoustic installation that amplifies the sounds of the landscape, originally consisting of three, currently — for conservation reasons — two huge wooden megaphones, built by interior design students of the Estonian Academy of Arts. 

Megaphones provide a great opportunity to encounter contemporary architecture and wildlife. They are used primarily to listen to the sounds of nature, focus the audience’s attention on the smallest sound details, and also serve as a place of rest. It is part shelter, part furniture, part instrument…

A manifestation of the power of combining contemporary dance, theater, and new technologies. 

ADT captures data describing the condition of the city and uses it to modulate and form visualizations displayed on the dancer’s body. The new definition of the ADT body complements biological parameters and features with information transmission networks and urban and transport structures, blurring the boundaries between the private, the intimate, and the collective.

In green is the title-call of the city picnic in front of the WRO Art Center, prepared by the Food Think Tank collective. Only vegetarian and vegan dishes were served, and the picnic allowed WRO Biennale guests to get to know the true aura of the city, and for its residents and the local audience to meet people taking part in the Biennale, talk, or simply spend time together in the urban space. 

In accordance with the FTT motto “the more you give, the more you receive”, the picnic was an opportunity to deepen mutual relationships, giving meaning to both work and eating meals.

A fully functional clock made entirely out of paper. It is based on a traditional clockwork mechanism without an additional drive but adapted to the project. The artist combines experiments with paper as an impermanent and obsolescent material in search of alternative solutions in his engineering work on the machine.

The monumental wind-up clock is meant to be a device for precisely measuring reality, but is useless: it tells the time incorrectly, and its face is not visible to the viewer. Furthermore, contrary to tradition, the clock is not a long-lasting object due to the impermanence of paper. So its life expectancy is only for the duration of the exhibition. Its raison d’etre, characterized by negation, exemplifies resistance towards the homogeneous development of European culture and forces humankind into rationalist paradigms. 

This ironic game of “resisting the system” by making deliberate errors fosters the search for new solutions. Such resistance is important for the arts and sciences because of the need for alternative ways of development. 

In an age of efficiency and commodification, this useless clock becomes part of the everyday world utilized for artistic reflection. However, its purpose is not to counteract technologies but to apply critical thinking to reach a positive conclusion, encouraging conscious functioning in our technological culture.

A large-scale installation representing a miniature city built entirely from electronic components and communication networks – motherboards and electronic circuits. 

The project employs environmental monitoring technologies and security technologies to visualize life in a metropolis in real time, using data from London’s network of sensors that monitor sounds, noise, light, vibrations, humidity, and GPS location signals. 

In its reliance on monitoring, the installation somewhat resembles Big Brother, yet interpreted in terms of the Internet of Things, giving a bird’s eye view of a cybernetic cityscape. Additionally, small cameras show images of visitors to the installation, making them part of the city’s organism. 

The Nemesis Machine explores the complexities involved in the operations of a city as a shifting, morphing, and intricate system and new ways of thinking about life embedded in public spaces.

Senster was created at the end of the 1960s, by Edward Ihnatowicz — a sculptor of Polish origin, working in London. The sculpture was made with support of the Philips company, and exhibited in their Evoluon Pavilion. 

In April 2017, the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow purchased it from its previous owner, the Netherlands-based Delmeco Group.

Senster comprises a 5-meter-long steel kinetic sculpture. It was constructed to react to sound and motion in its surroundings via a set of microphones and Doppler sensors. The interaction sequence was regulated by a program written in Assembler and encoded into a P9201 prototype computer.

It became the third media artwork supported by the Dutch company, after Nicolas Schöffer’s kinetic art sculpture CYSP 1 (1956) and Le Corbusier, Iannis Xenakis, and Edgard Varèse’s Poème électronique (1958).

In the years following its Eindhoven presentation, the piece shared the fate of most fragile media artworks. Despite its significance, it remained inactive after the mid-1970s, and in the early 21st century, it was put on the list of lost media art pioneering projects. It has been reactivated by a transdisciplinary team of collaborating people from the fields of humanities, engineering, and the arts.

Horte! A call to battle or an appeal to remembrance? How much of the sorrow of exile and the adversity of a refugee is there inside of us? How deeply rooted is the imperative of gardening? Is this a compulsion or a ”human” need?

Tomasz Domański creates sculptures, installations, photographs, multimedia works, performances, and gardens. Connected with nature, he raises issues of transitoriness, cyclicality, and the relationship between man and nature.

He describes “Horte!” in the words of a Polish poet and songwriter Jonasz Kofta: “Remember the gardens, after all, you came from there.”

An unusual banquet table arranged using tableware obtained from the Kristoff Porcelain Factory. The key to the items’ selection is that they do not meet industrial standards due to various defects and flaws.

Karina Marusińska is interested in the transitional stage between the production line and the scrapyard, tracking and recording moments of mistakes. By bringing these imperfect products to the table, she allows the users to experience a material world that has escaped human control.

During the event, Alicja Kielan created a video that refers to the painted compositions of banquet still lifes appearing, among others, on the canvases of Clara Peeters, Pieter Claesz, and Willem Claesz Heda.

It is also a staging of an intergenerational feast at the table, focusing attention on the gestures of human hands around the imperfect vessels filled by the Food Think Tank collective.

A living archive of the sensuous, artificial gaze at diffracted sensibilities within a virtual reality spacetime manifold of preserved digital-physical dreams. 

The performance operates via spoken word poetry that the artist co-writes with artificial intelligence, sound and imagery that are computer-generated live (CGI) from her brainwave data (EEG), and a drone performance. 

The project was carried out in cooperation between the WRO Art Center and the London art gallery Watermans Arts Centre as part of the REVERSO REDUX series — two-way transmissions in real time between Wrocław and London.

A playful, museum-like collection of rarities and memorabilia gathered by WRO over the first thirty years and exhibited at the Atelier, historical materials about the WRO Festival/Biennale.

It showcases the importance of the event during the socio-political transition of the 1980s and 90s and in the realities of a new Poland with its growing openness, access to new technologies and communication tools, and developing theoretical and cultural reflections.

An immersive installation — rave simulator. The name of the rave simulator refers to a term with a political meaning but also refers to the state a person enters during a long rhythmic dance. The installation was created during the pandemic — a different kind of state of emergency. The imposed restrictions led to more and more isolation. Is this state of emergency achievable in sterile conditions that could become the only way to meet our needs in a dystopian post-pandemic scenario? 

The simulator was designed to let each viewer experience this event individually — entering the simulator located in the gallery space one at a time to experience a 45-minute session.

A special music set dedicated to this event was created by VTSS — one of the most important artists on the European underground club scene. The architecture and visual setting of the installation are a result of a collaboration between Łukasz Twarkowski and Jakub Lech.

A performance based on a choreography of gestures performed by the participants with the help of smartphones generating a collective sound and movement situation.

Temporary Nation is dedicated to selfless, collective performance, encouraging people to re-enact the idea of connectivity. Mastering seven gestural body alignments turns a phone into an instrument of Temporary Nation.

Discovering your choreographic approach will enable you to create a collective soundscape or even an adventurous musical performance!

Mikro Orchestra is a musical ensemble that plays intelligent electronic music using pocket-sized game consoles (such as the GameBoy). The band stylistically incorporates the aesthetics of 1980s computers, IDM, and rave culture. 

Apart from playing music, the band creates and develops their own software for VJ-ing intended for game consoles. Each concert is different due to the fact that the artists often experiment and improvise in a jazz session-like format. This kind of music is perfect for underground clubs and big artistic events. 

This time, the Mikro Orchestra Project played in a participatory transmission version. Apart from Mikro Orchestra’s typical solid dose of musical rave-noise-chiptune-psychodelia and radical lo-tech visuals, the audience was able to join in the performance thanks to a music app specially prepared by the band and available online – and on both sides of the redux wormhole. 

The project was carried out in collaboration between the WRO Art Center and the London art gallery Watermans Arts Centre as part of the DIGITAL REDUX series, two-way transmissions in real time between Wroclaw and London.

Performed by Ensemble Kompopolex: Aleksandra Gołaj, Rafał Łuc, Jacek Sotomski.

A composition that includes hearing, hard of hearing, and D/deaf people in musical activities. The composition used, among other elements, audio resonators, which allow the recipient to feel vibrations after placing their hands on the lids of wooden crates, subwoofers, and the Playtronica system, thanks to which touching specific objects triggers sound samples. 

It is an encouragement to discover the world of sounds together. Those sounds that we traditionally recognize as music, and those that seem not to be music but can become it, as long as we direct and feel them properly. 

The project was carried out in collaboration between the WRO Art Center and the London art gallery Watermans Arts Centre as part of the DIGITAL REDUX series, two-way transmissions in real time between Wroclaw and London.

Performed by Lilianna Krych.

The composition is a collective sound meditation, a ritual for organs, electronics, and audience voices, led by a digital avatar. This piece, intended for sacred spaces, was performed in a chamber version for voice, synthesizers, and electronics. In an era defined by the threat of a nuclear holocaust and political and ecological catastrophe, humans as a species are faced with an endless void. With no purpose and with the prospect of annihilation. The countdown to zero has already begun. 

The sum of people’s experiences meditating on emptiness in a group constitutes more than emptiness in a general sense. Within this experience lies the ethical proposition of a new awareness and responsibility for interrelations. Therefore, there is no need to fear the moment of collapse. As Zak Hal writes, in the place of every being and every species, another will appear.

The project was carried out in collaboration between the WRO Art Center and the London art gallery Watermans Arts Centre as part of the DIGITAL REDUX series, two-way transmissions in real time between Wroclaw and London.