“Travelling through mediatized reality on the internet is a way to get to know and understand the world,” says Estonian artist Katja Novitskova, one of the key figures of so-called post-internet art, who has been working with found images for more than fifteen years.

We live in an era dominated by image culture. Digital images, fuelled by marketing, penetrate our lives ever more deeply, creating an overwhelming abundance of visuals. In the Middle Ages, there was said to be a man who managed to read every existing book. Today, a person can grasp only a tiny fraction of what humanity itself produces. Artificial intelligence alone generates tens of millions of images each day. Yet, as Estonian artist Katja Novitskova (1984) points out, despite its rapid development, a frog remains a far more complex creation of nature. Novitskova reflects on how nature and technology will interact in the future, while her interests span virtuality, digital anthropology, image reuse, and visual ecology.

At the PAiR Gallery in Pāvilosta, Katja Novitskova’s exhibition Gardens of the Galaxy will be on view until September 15. On the north façade of the PAiR building, a four-metre-long poster by Novitskova, forever (2020), has been installed. Created in collaboration with musician Kareem Lotfy, the work was originally conceived as an album cover. The poster features a black-and-white image, captured with a night-vision camera, of hyenas searching for water in the African savannah, combined with the flowing word forever rendered in a heat-map-like colour spectrum.

The exhibition Gardens of the Galaxy also includes a one-minute-thirteen-second video Pattern of Activation. In it, Katja reveals a subtle yet urgent dimension of contemporary art, addressing social and ecological issues brought about by technology. The video assembles thousands of images — from wildlife camera shots to asteroids, retinal close-ups, snail embryos, monkey blood cells, bacteria, and Martian clouds — in a sequence faster than the human eye can fully perceive. The images are drawn from a citizen-science platform where volunteers help categorise data to train AI algorithms and support research projects. Katja collects the most striking of these as screenshots on her computer. The work is accompanied by a soundtrack composed by Kareem Lotfy.

In 2017, Katja Novitskova represented Estonia at the 57th Venice Art Biennale with the exhibition If Only You Could See What I’ve Seen with Your Eyes. She collaborates with Temnikova & Kasela Gallery in Tallinn, the only Baltic gallery participating in top-tier art fairs in Basel, London, and New York. This summer, Novitskova’s works were also featured in Temnikova & Kasela’s booth at the first Riga Contemporary art fair. For more than a decade, she has additionally been represented by the Berlin-based gallery Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, which works with emerging artists who challenge the traditions of modern rationality. The Berlin gallery regularly presents her work at major international art fairs several times a year. This consistent presence on the global stage has earned her wide recognition and opened doors to exhibitions across many countries. Novitskova currently lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin.

How did you come to use found materials in your art?

I studied graphic design at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. In design, you’re not expected to create something entirely new. In 2008, I began making small zines from found images, at a time when blogs, images, and zines were booming. I worked with Photoshop collages and realised I could create new artworks by combining things that already existed. We didn’t have big studio spaces — just computers and desks. My teachers included the founders of Metahaven (the internationally renowned interdisciplinary design studio established by Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden) and other artists who applied design principles to the making of art. I graduated from the Institute in Amsterdam with the book Post Internet Survival Guide, which brought together found images, collages, and curated works by other artists.

Sākumā nebiju pārliecināta, kuru ceļu iet – vai būt dizainerei, māksliniecei vai kuratorei. Man patika pētīt, ko dara citi cilvēki. Pamazām sāku fokusēties uz māksliniecisko jaunradi, turpinot izmantot esošos materiālus. Google meklētājs tad bija īpaši pateicīgs – ar mazāk autortiesību ierobežojumiem. Tiešsaistes arhīvi arī bija pieejamāki.

What is the video Pattern of Activation, on view in the exhibition in Pāvilosta, about?

It isn’t filmed — it consists of individual dataset images captured by automatic cameras in forests around the world, as well as by sensor systems scientists use to observe changes in specific environments, such as on Mars. These images are intended for scientific research and to train artificial intelligence algorithms to recognise such patterns. That’s how I came across archives usually inaccessible to the public. Typically, only a few people ever see these files, as the datasets contain hundreds of thousands of images. In them, I look for the connection between nature and technology.

What separates an artistic image from a technical one? In the poster forever, a fascinating image is used that lets us see animals the way contemporary technology perceives them.

Exactly! These frames are accidental, yet they hold a strange kind of beauty absent from the carefully authorised images of National Geographic. The animal’s eye reflects the flash of the camera. Such light does not exist in nature, and any picture of an animal with glowing eyes is artificially produced. Animals have a reflective layer at the back of the retina that bounces light back, enhancing night vision. It is structured like a crystalline lattice — something humans do not have.

How many images have you collected?

An insane amount. I have a folder on my computer for these images, and it just keeps growing. The video Pattern of Activation is finished, but I also use the images for sculptures. My curiosity isn’t yet exhausted. The very idea that people want to capture every single place on this planet feels like a kind of pathology.

You, too, seem to have a certain obsession with images.

My intuitive hemisphere is stronger than my rational one. I never create works out of thin air. My works are responses to the current reality, made with the means, the materials, it provides. It is the crisis we are living through.

Are you calling for that to change?

No, but to draw attention to it. These can also be very small things that I discover and become obsessed with. It’s important to create a form in which they gain a stronger message — for example, like the video Pattern of Activation, which is overloaded with images. It becomes a new form, and then I put it back into life.

Your sculptures, in contrast to the issues you address, are not ecological.

That’s true. Over the years, I’ve used many synthetic materials. Now I’m considering whether to replace them with more environmentally friendly ones. I’m drawn to the toxicity of this kind of digital content and our material reality, because we are surrounded by so many synthetic things. In a way, it feels logical.

At the start of my practice, I wondered whether there was an alternative to the wooden crates used in international transport. There isn’t! So you end up in a situation where you’re completely subject to a pre-existing system that cares not about ecology but about profit — whatever the means to achieve it. That is inevitable, unless you are a radical activist. I keep asking myself how far we will go. We are already in the jungle.

One of these jungle-like signs is the way people use artificial intelligence today — how often, and how pointlessly.

People don’t realise how much energy it consumes. In recent years, ChatGPT usage in the United States has risen sharply, mainly driven by the construction of new server centres built specifically for artificial intelligence. This is a huge problem for the future. Private nuclear power plants are being constructed to supply AI servers. Every time you ask a question to an AI, it consumes a certain amount of energy. So it’s not free (on average, ChatGPT uses about ten times more energy than the Google search engine). Using ChatGPT as a therapist, in terms of energy, is like going to a therapist who drives a tractor.

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There is no public explanation of the infrastructure behind AI tools. Using Google today primarily means receiving a Gemini (Google’s AI assistant) summary of your query. We no longer browse websites, search, or investigate.

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What interests me is how it can be used. Perhaps it will help improve energy efficiency and other things that are truly useful for society, as well as support the search for new medical approaches.

The Institute of Clinical and Preventive Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences, University of Latvia, is currently researching the development and implementation of AI for cancer cell diagnostics and screening.

Exactly!

Yet technology is used mostly for entertainment.

Since the early days of the internet, the way news is produced and how we perceive truth has changed. This is increasingly threatened by the spread of social networks, where everyone has their own “truth.” There is a truth in Russia, whose bubble is difficult to pierce; truth can be fabricated, false, or distorted to serve particular interests. There is no institution that can clearly determine who owns the truth. And that is a cause for concern.

People trust too much in what they are told. For many, the critical function has been switched off.

Sometimes it is impossible to separate truth or to investigate it. There are also many biases, and it remains unclear what kind of information people absorb, which they trust, and why they believe it. Only a few agencies are capable of conducting in-depth investigations. This does not fit the business model of news, since such articles are the most expensive to produce and receive the fewest views.

With the rise of social media, how things and processes look became more important than the experience they provide. The documentation of artworks and their circulation online grew in significance — a process that continues to expand.

How did you arrive at making sculptures on aluminium panels?

The best and fastest way to create a spatial sculpture is through a printing service. In my first exhibition, I experimented by printing images and cutting them out into free forms.

It’s interesting that in your works depicting animals captured with night-vision cameras, one can sense aggression. Likewise, no matter how far humanity has developed, the cave-dweller still lives within us. A human with technology in their hands holds the power to destroy.

First, we destroy one another. It’s fascinating that every image is made of pixels. Our brains interpret those pixels as something alive, wild, aggressive. How can that be captured in an image that is nothing more than a combination of colours? Is it the same way that an arrangement of atoms gives rise to life? And how does that differ from abstract images? Glowing eyes in the dark make us tremble — ancient instincts living within us.

Our main driving force is our biological nature. It doesn’t fully define us, since we are intellectual beings, yet we are still shaped by feeding, attraction, desire — just like animals. I believe we will destroy ourselves simply by ignoring the fact that the planet is small and does not hold enough resources for everyone. Of course, we are only a very strange version of nature, but there is still a direct connection between us and, say, worms living in the sea. We are all part of the same tree of existence. In that sense, I emphasise that humans are animals.

Which future scenarios fascinate you the most?

Scenarios where we use technology to improve our existence on this planet, to understand, explore, and uncover the origins of life, to attempt journeys to other planets — this kind of positive modernism — how we might develop technological understanding to help reduce suffering and live in balance with the Earth. I would love to see that. In some places, it is already happening. Yet there are also countries and companies that claim such goals while acting hypocritically, often outsourcing the dirty work to poorer regions of the planet. It has to be holistic: a clean environment should exist in all countries, not just in a few. Even within the European Union, addressing ecological problems is slow and ineffective. That worries me.

Do you think human DNA should be improved?

No. Many studies have been carried out on how to activate, alter, or block genes, and on which genes are responsible for specific processes in human development. Yet there are still no concrete calculations that would allow such modifications to be applied reliably. If it ever became widely available, most people would want genetic modifications — but that could lead to irreversible disruption of natural processes. And it is already happening: Elon Musk has eleven sons and three daughters, all conceived through artificial insemination, where sex can be selected before conception. Musk simply chose to have fewer daughters because they were not wanted. Isn’t that absurd? I believe such modifications should only be made when ethically justified — for example, to treat genetic disorders. Transhumanism is fun only in theory.

Do you think machines will replace DNA-based life, just as DNA may have replaced earlier forms of life?

I think it will rather be the other way around — at some point, there will be more biotechnologies that base technology on biological structures. A DNA molecule can store more information than a microchip and is far more efficient in terms of energy use and information density. The future is more likely to bring integration, with biological structures used in digital technological processes. This development also fascinates me in the context of art. If I could live another hundred years, I’d want to see it.

But we may have more microchips than DNA parts.

Theoretically, a small container of DNA molecules could be used as a data server instead of a massive building consuming vast amounts of energy. This won’t happen very soon, but attempts are already being made. Strange anomalies may arise, yet if DNA functions only as a biological substrate, for example, as non-living molecules, it would be ethically acceptable.

Kas tev ir vislielākā mīkla šajā pasaulē?

I’ve just read Sara Imari Walker’s book about the origins of life on Earth. I’m fascinated by these kinds of topics. Isn’t the emergence of life still a mystery? The more I read about it, the more it seems clear to me that it could not not have happened.

Why?

Because life is so complex. For it to emerge, many processes had to align in just the right sequence. If such development were normal, why hasn’t it happened on other planets? Is it only because they are far away? No. On Mars, scientists are actively searching for any trace of life — nothing has been found. Theoretically, if it arose on Earth, it could have arisen there too. And if life is such a rare process, possible only under very specific conditions, then it is truly strange that we are simply sitting here, talking. This is the outcome of four billion years of evolution, and I find that astonishing. Life could have unfolded in so many different directions. That’s why I believe it remains the greatest mystery. No one yet knows how it actually happened.

It began with the Big Bang, which brought time and matter into existence — later cooling and combining into new forms.

Yes, but when exactly did organic molecules become alive? It must have been a kind of spark. It’s still unclear when and how it happened. You can have plenty of organic chemistry, but arranging it all into a living form… there’s still no answer. You could combine the elements endlessly, for millions of years, and never produce a bacterium. It has to happen in a very specific way, which is why I understand people who believe in religion — because it feels so extraordinary.

At some point, the universe will collapse back in on itself.

According to recent research, scientists no longer think this way. The prevailing view today is that the universe will keep expanding and cooling until it goes completely cold. All stars will one day burn out, and all images will vanish — just like miracles, like us.

KATJA NOVITSKOVA

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Exhibition Gardens of the Galaxy

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PAiR Gallery, Pāvilosta

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Until 15.09.2025

Original article: diena.lv

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