We’re familiar with composting food, but composting photographs? For a new photo series, Ajay Malghan set out to see what dirt, water, and other forces of nature would do to his pictures. It turns out the process can leave behind ghostly patterns and texture (when it doesn’t completely destroy the photograph). “Any wrong move (hand bumping the tray, syringe slips etc.) ruins the image…Most of images don’t work out.” Sometimes “not working out” means the photo disintegrates, but other times the result is a psychedelic mass of color. Malghan collected his successful photos into a series called Collaborations with Nature, some of which can look charming and vintage, or turn the freeze-framed woodlands and waterfalls into something terrifying. (source).

Berlin-based speculative artist Mathias Vef wants viewers to get lost in his collaged “digital ecosystems.”  “The process of the creation of an image is then again opposing the process of evolution, which is an emergence out of coincidence,” says Vef. This opposition, he adds, is why he decided to name the show Syncretics. In this series, images that are named Scion are made out of a single original motif that is repeated and images called Amphigony, a biological term for sexual reproduction, combines different Scion pieces. Combining all of these, and seeing which new visuals emerge is like a “survival of the aesthetics,” Vef describes. Attendees are reminded of the “visual infection” our reality is facing, from the onslaught of wearable technologies such as Google Glass, Oculus Rift, and more on the horizon. The future, he predicts, will split creation in two paths: one that emerges from a genuine, conscious source, and another that’s a wild, untameable growth—much like the visuals he brings to life. (source).