What Happens After We Leave

I was interested in what happens after we leave.

As an artist in residence at the Umwelt Academy — a summer program bringing together artists, scientists, and students to create transdisciplinary works in an open-air environment — I worked in a forest with 3D printed objects made from PLA.

My intention was not to stage a confrontation between technology and nature. I was not interested in proving that they clash, nor in romanticising their harmony. Instead, I wanted to observe what happens when two systems with fundamentally different logics — industrial digital fabrication and ecological processes — share the same space.

Human involvement ended at the moment of design and production. Once the objects were placed in the forest, the interaction unfolded without further intervention. The focus shifted away from the objects themselves and toward what occurred between them and their surroundings: differences in timing, in material response, in adaptation.

The work became less about form and more about coexistence.

In the summer of 2022 — after the most acute phases of the Covid pandemic, yet still marked by its social and psychological aftermath — the Umwelt exhibition took place in a national park in the Balaton region. The international program presented multimedial installations and performances that engaged biology, genetics, physics, and the social sciences as ways of reflecting on the course of humanity.

The exhibition brought together scientific research articulated through artistic practice, artistic inquiries that opened new scientific perspectives, and projects addressing urgent societal questions through interdisciplinary collaboration. In that moment of collective recalibration, Umwelt offered a space to reconsider how human activity, technology, and ecological systems intersect.

I increasingly feel that we, as humans, stand between two operational logics.

On one side, digital technology accelerates the artificial in unprecedented ways. Digital systems iterate rapidly — often too rapidly for us to fully comprehend their simultaneous developments. A file can be modified in seconds. A form can be printed within hours. New digital geometries and variations multiply continuously. We build machines that operate at speeds our biological systems cannot metabolize, yet we remain organisms shaped by evolutionary time.

On the other side, we live slowly. Our bodies follow circadian rhythms. Our nervous systems regulate through cycles of rest and recovery. Ecological processes unfold over seasons, sometimes over decades. There is something even slower than us. When I walk in the forest, I am aware that the trees sensing my presence have been rooted there for years — sometimes longer than a human lifespan. They are not static or silent. They move, they respond, they communicate through processes that are subtle and difficult for us to perceive. Nature works in cycles, and these enormous organisms stand within temporalities far beyond our daily experience. As a reflective practitioner, I am not outside this tension. I generate abstract, interconnected geometries that adapt to the contours of a tree. I extrude polymer through a heated nozzle and introduce industrially processed material into an ecological environment. The material is marketed as biodegradable — but under what conditions, and within what timeframe? In the forest, degradation follows a different logic than in industrial composting facilities.

At the same time, I wait. I observe. I allow the site to respond before making the next intervention. This position is neither technological optimism nor ecological nostalgia. The role of the human, as I see it, is not to resolve a conflict between nature and technology. It is to remain attentive between temporalities — to notice how different systems operate, and to stay present long enough to perceive what unfolds beyond initial intention.