Nezmar – Ondřej Drahokoupil, Vítězslav Plavec a Filip Zeman

Hydra cannot be humbled. Humanity can influence the environment around it, but it cannot destroy all life on planet Earth. In fact, various natural disasters have attempted to do that throughout history, such as asteroid hits or supervolcano eruptions. But life has always adapted and recreated entire ecosystems. Hydra is the image of an organism that can survive anything. It could grow on the remains of our fragile civilization. It reminds artists of the plants and animals that populate the garbage patches in the oceans known as plastic islands, where they create entirely new ecosystems and probably already adapt to new conditions. Evolution never sleeps.

Hydra is an organism that arouses curiosity and enthusiasm for finding interesting new life forms around us. At the same time, it points to the current direction of civilisation and its relationship with nature and asks how life could cope with our way of inhabiting the Earth and its by-products. The installation consists of transparent tubes filled with chlorophyll dissolved in an ethanol solution. It uses programmed UV lights and motion actuators. It is reminiscent of the stingrays that use luminescence to communicate with their surroundings, just like the hydra or the siphonophore.

The work was created as part of the open call Signal Calling, organised by Signal Festival for the fourth year in collaboration with the creative workshop PrusaLab. The latter provides the facilities, technology and, above all, the experienced craftsmen needed to realise the installation. In previous years, the workshop was attended by Kateřina Blahutová (interactive installation Living Forest) or Adam Cigler and Petr Vacek (kinetic sculpture Reflection).