PlaSphere (Ongoing Project)

PlaSphere is an audiovisual installation that examines the Anthropocene through environmental change and the fusion of natural and human-made materials. Drawing from field recordings on remote islands and coastal regions of South Korea (Neural Tides, 2024), the project integrates AI-generated imagery and video of speculative marine environments shaped by plastiglomerates—the geological formations where plastic fuses with rock and organic matter.

We present the visual components of the project: AI-generated hybrid creatures whose forms combine plastiglomerate textures with the anatomy of species indigenous to these islands. These images were created using a custom LoRA trained on photographs of actual plastiglomerates collected from these sites. The generative AI then uses the LoRA to imagine hybrid creatures that merge geological textures with biological forms. The full installation also incorporates granular re-synthesis of field recordings, in which autoencoders transform fragments of environmental sound into new acoustic textures.

By dissolving the boundaries between species, systems, and materials, PlaSphere shows how environmental degradation reshapes both ecosystems and perception. It asks viewers to consider how new sonic and visual methods might help us register and interpret our place within rapidly changing planetary conditions

This iteration of the project is an ongoing collaboration under collective_nshp (Sabina Hyoju Ahn, Seyeon Park, and Ryan Millett).
This project is supported by Art Lab Korea, and Peter Brill Foundation

AI-generated creatures inspired by plastiglomerates (trained on real images)