Cryptographic Beings Artwork

The vertical assemblage within Michael Sedbon's Cryptographic Beings Artwork functions as a meditation on the symbolic intersection of organic vitality and technological mediation, with the tower form itself carrying archetypal significance as an axis mundi connecting earthly foundations to elevated aspirations, suggesting humanity's perpetual reach toward transcendence through constructed means. The transparent chambers housing living plants evoke associations with protective enclosures, artificial wombs, and controlled environments where life is sustained through deliberate intervention rather than natural circumstance, potentially referencing alchemical vessels wherein transformation occurs through carefully managed conditions. Green as the chromatic signature of the cultivated specimens carries universal associations with growth, renewal, fertility, and the vital force of nature, here contained and dependent upon the technological infrastructure that surrounds it, creating a symbolic dialogue between the wild and the controlled, the spontaneous and the programmed. The concentrated white light sources function as symbolic stand-ins for solar energy, artificial suns that enable photosynthesis within interior darkness, suggesting both technological capability to replicate natural phenomena and the potential implications of environments entirely dependent upon manufactured illumination. The modular repetition along the vertical axis may evoke genetic sequencing, stacked information, or the iterative processes through which complex systems emerge from repeated simple units, resonating with the cryptographic references embedded in the work's title. Gear-like circular platforms introduce mechanical symbolism, suggesting clockwork, computation, and the measured progression of time within regulated systems. The industrial setting contributes to the overall symbolic register, positioning the cultivation apparatus within a space of production and transformation, while the interplay between darkness and concentrated illumination suggests emergence from void, the bringing forth of life and visibility through focused energy. The work invites interpretation as a contemporary reliquary wherein new forms of being are cultivated at the intersection of biological and computational logics.

Cryptographic Beings is a Bio-Hybrid machine manipulating photosynthetic organisms through rules implemented in soft and hardware. It showcases a newly developed technology for information storage that leverages the ability of algae to perceive light. This robotic installation consists of 30 vegetal bits in the shape of glass vessels containing living organisms. Using a pair of motorized arms, the machine can expose each of the algae to light, encoding binary information in their state. Can humans design tools that are not only bio-inspired but made of, with and for living organisms?