Specimens of Time, Rebirth

This is a short film imagining a future where rainforests have vanished. A cryogenically preserved human awakens to a world without nature. Set inside the data-driven sculpture Specimens of Time: Burn, the film combines generative projections with a performance by dancer Genna Carey. The piece reflects on the ache of lost biophilia and the fragile potential for reconnection through memory.

SPECIMENS OF TIME, REBIRTH

Specimens of Time, Rebirth is a live performance by Genna Carey set within Specimens of Time: Burn, a data-driven light sculpture. The piece envisions a lone human figure reawakening in a future where nature has vanished, yet its memory lingers in light. The sculpture is made of holographic film, diffusers, and embedded organic matter, and is animated by real-time atmospheric data from the Hoh Rain Forest. Custom AI software, developed with Mihai Jalobeanu, generates continuously shifting projections that simulate the rainforest’s lost rhythms.
Captured on film, the dancer moves from stillness to emergence within the shifting field of light. Her choreography responds in real time to the sculpture’s evolving projections, each gesture shaped by the environment as it unfolds. This short film about the live performance opens and closes with imagined glimpses of a barren future. In this post-natural world, the sculpture remains as a relic, a sanctuary, and a portal to what was once alive.
This work is part of the Specimens of Time series, which won in 2025 the Digital Art Award for Innovation by Phillips Auction and House of Fine Arts in London.

Short Film Credits:
ART Maja Petric
DANCE Genna Carey
TECHNOLOGY Mihai Jalobeanu
VIDEO Genna Carey & Maja Petric
SOUND Marcin Paczkowski
CINEMATOGRAPHY Jake Magraw