Pierre Huyghe Liminal, 2024

Liminal is a real-time simulation. A body is represented as a faceless image in a limitless realm. The body acts as an envelope, animated by a sophisticated AI that also determines the editing and framing of its depiction. The human form makes subtle gestures, a language which is read by the inhuman entity. In reaction to these gestures, the inhuman entity responds by imparting different behaviors to the human form. Thus, a human shape, without face, without brain, without subjectivity and without world, receives real-time information through various sensors that continuously generate its movements.

Determining the real-life generation of Liminal is a combination of data taken from the environmental conditions at the exhibition space and input from a synthetic organic brain. The latter consists of an organoid located in a lab made of few synthetic neural circuits, that gives the human form a residual sensory function. As a gate keeper, subject to pain, the human form rejects unwanted information, thus influencing the learning process of the inhuman entity. The entity evolves as it searches for stimuli, as it learns. The learning process and the inhuman memory are amplified over time, beyond the exhibition.