CROSSLUCID in an interview: meet the artistic duo from Berlin

CROSSLUCID is a collective of artists founded by Sylwana Zybura and Tomas C. Toth in 2018. In this interview, they discuss their cross-cultural creative process, which encompasses moving image & film, photography, digital 3D techniques, poetic AI and experience-led interventions utilising world-building and experience design strategies.

CROSSLUCID’s work is based on the premise that reality is not what it seems. They explore the spiritual side of science and how technology affects our relationships. By using collage and assemblage, they create art that allows us to explore these concepts in a new way. Their goal is to help us prototype the future and embrace metamodern values. Their extensive research is digging into the nature of reality; spiritual practices understood through science; the network self or sexuality and intimacy in the digital age, CROSSLUCID develop evolving projects often utilising multi-layered techniques and networked processes.

"And then of course, from the moment we met till now, our practice changed a lot. It started with photography and video and then we went through a kind of development and exploration of new technologies, especially AI. Our work evolved into a kind of more digital realm, although we still really enjoy physical pieces, but it's an ongoing process. In our practice in general, there was a shift between virtuality and physicality because what we have been doing before has been always tied to fully physical. But for people, the perception of it was that this is digital and we sort of like really like this contrast..." — CROSSLUCID

"But I mean, we always believe that those divisions don't necessarily exist. So we do enjoy playing with that. Yeah, because nowadays everything like it's mixed between digital and physical. So there is this digital new way of like, start working and it's all about experimenting in the hand, you know, all the base of your work. Like you just try to experiment with new media and new technology. It's like you cannot settle necessarily on the tool because we see it really all as tools, but mainly on specific topics that's always been connected to identity, to sexuality, and to spirituality. All those three topics are very intertwined with each other and we keep having projects connected to them." — CROSSLUCID

"Talking about AI, we have this very specific idea of the future which means we will see the future we've seen before. Yes, because eventually we are looking at a mirror and a sort of early impersonator of us, where we always get in this feedback loop, back and back more similar stuff of what we actually kind of like or know. So there are some questions that doesn't really make sense to even ask, because if we are only relying on a data pool that has images of the future that we created as humanity, then we will only get back that. And it's also quite interesting, I don't know what your experiences are but we also have lots of experiences with the networks, when we see images that we actually absolutely don't like, that make us feel uncomfortable, that are also very violent, because removing certain context from the datasets doesn't mean that context doesn't exist, because the semantic connections are still there. But there are some images when we come out and we really sit down and ponder on them and see, okay, where does it come from? What does it actually even mean?And even this discomfort comes probably from the idea that maybe we're not used to this sort of images and we don't know what they actually mean, because we are so always going and grasping for this meaning and for the understanding and very often with those it's such a powerful tool but also a tool where maybe the understanding completely diffuses because we don't know what the outcome actually is." — CROSSLUCID

@crosslucid

interview by DONALD GJOKA

RED•EYE WORLD