Parallels, from Plásmata II: Ioannina to the Lumen Prize and at New York’s Lincoln Center

In 2023, “Parallels” by Matthew Niederhauser and Marc Da Costa captivated visitors at “Plásmata II: Ioannina” with its interactivity and playful atmosphere, allowing viewers to see a transformed version of themselves at a scenic spot beside the lake. Recently, the installation, commissioned by the Onassis Foundation for the “Plásmata II: Ioannina” exhibition and developed through Onassis ONX, the Onassis Foundation’s New York-based accelerator, was honored with the prestigious Lumen Prize in the Interactive Immersive category. The Lumen Prize, one of the world’s foremost awards in digital art, annually recognizes innovative digital creations that bridge art and technology.

The journey of “Parallels” continues. On October 26 and 27, the work will be presented at the renowned Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, in the Josie Robertson Plaza, home to the iconic Revson Fountain, famous from films like “Moonstruck,” “Ghostbusters,” and “Black Swan.” Here, at the entrance of Lincoln Center on Columbus Avenue and 64th West Street, across from the Metropolitan Opera House, New Yorkers will experience “Parallels,” a site-specific, interactive machine-learning installation that transforms a large LED wall into a portal. This portal allows visitors to encounter the world – and themselves, through the lens of a neural network. The work provides an instinctive, unmediated experience of how machine vision perceives its environment, using live digital decoding of a shifting landscape, while simultaneously reimagining and reconstructing it in continuous conversation with each viewer.

The installation aims to reframe emerging machine-vision technologies within the natural landscape of Ioannina, inhabited for over 20,000 years, raising the question of how new forms of artificial knowledge might coexist with centuries-old human practices of sensory perception. By bringing machine vision into dialogue with the natural world and the viewer’s historical embeddedness, “Parallels” offers a moment for reflection on how our ways of seeing are being redefined.