Atmospheric Memory

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is a media artist working with ideas from architecture and performance. He was the first artist to officially represent Mexico at the Venice Biennale with a monographic exhibition in 2007.

He has also shown at Biennials such as Havana, Istanbul, Kochi, Liverpool, Mercosul, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney.

Lozano-Hemmer was the subject of 75 solo exhibitions worldwide, including a major show at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC, the inaugural show at the AmorePacific Museum in Seoul and a mid-career retrospective co-produced by the MAC in Montréal and SFMOMA.

In 2019, his interactive installation Border Tuner connected people across the US-Mexico border using bridges of light controlled by the voices of participants.

José Luis de Vicente is a cultural researcher and curator. In 2023 he was appointed director of DHUB, Barcelona's Design Museum.

His work investigates the impacts of technological and cultural innovation through artifacts, systems, and narratives. His projects create contexts for collaboration and dialogue between artists, designers, architects, technologists, scientists, activists, and communities.

He was the founder and Artistic Director of Sónar+D, the arts and ideas program of the acclaimed Sónar Festival in Barcelona. He was also the co-founder of Model, the Barcelona Architectures Festival, and curator of public art and light festival LlumBCN.

He has curated multiple exhibitions such as Mirador Torre Glóries, Big Bang Data and After the End of the World (both at CCCB), and Curiosidad Radical : in the Buckminster Fuller Orbit (Espacio Fundación Telefónica / ArtScience Museum Singapore).

This exhilarating show features historical artifacts mixed with cutting-edge technologies from AI, robotics, endoscopy and fluid-dynamics to nanotechnology, mapping and 3D-printing.

In Atmospheric Memory you can touch the world's first 3D-printed speech bubble, see your voice travel in a ripple tank, walk through clouds of text written in mid-air, hear 3,000 speakers each with its own field recording, and interact with virtual environments in a colossal 360-degree projection chamber.

What is the atmosphere trying to tell us?

'The Atmospheric Memory project calls for action against the catastrophic collapse of the atmospheric conditions for planetary survival; against the concentration of all the power of the digital atmosphere into very few hands; and against the weaponisation of the sky'
– Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

In a world where nothing is forgotten and everything is recorded, it is possible to dream and plan for a better future. Take action and connect to people and organisations making positive change. Here are some sites for more information and atmospheric activism.

Commissioned by Manchester International Festival, Science and Industry Museum (UK), FutureEverything, ELEKTRA / Arsenal Contemporary Art, Montreal and Carolina Performing Arts - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Originally produced by Manchester International Festival with FutureEverything and Science and Industry Museum (UK).