From Solar to Nocturnal: Staring at the Sun | Interspecies Interfaces

Staring at the Sun is a "sci-fi documentary" that delves into the dark side of solar geoengineering — the deliberate, large-scale modification of Earth's climate systems through manipulation of solar influence. Set globally, from the Louisiana Bayou to the Arctic Circle, Wyoming to Gstaad, the Great Barrier Reef, and Indonesia’s palm oil plantations, it features protagonists based on real interviews. The work examines geoengineering proposals under research in the U.S. and Europe, alongside advancements in climate modeling and digital twin technology.

Wilson & Tapprest’s two-chapter project Interspecies Interfaces focuses on newly evolving contact zones between bats, humans, and technology. It introduces the concept of "other suns" to challenge the solar-centric hierarchy of perception. Just as the transition to solar and other energy sources requires new ways of thinking and designing, reimagining cultural and technological approaches to perceiving the more-than-human world also demands a shift. The nocturnal world of bats reflects this alternative perspective: their use of echolocation — where sound, rather than light, serves as the primary signal for orientation — presents a different strategy for perceiving and interfacing with the environment.

From world-building technology to AI and interspecies sensory translation, the exhibition traces a narrative itinerary from Solar to Nocturnal, shifting from real world scenarios to the exploration of alternative visions for how we act, perceive and interact with our surroundings.

• The Solar Biennale 2

From the spring equinox to the autumn equinox of 2025, mudac will host the second Solar Biennale with the exhibition Soleil·s which will take place in the Plateforme 10 arts district and on the EPFL campus. Launched in 2022 in the Neth­er­lands by design­ers Pauline van Dongen and Marjan van Aubel, the Solar Bien­nale provides a plat­form for reflec­tion on the chal­lenges of solar energy. For this ssecond edition, mudac will broaden the theme by bring­ing together design­ers, curat­ors, activ­ists, and research­ers to explore expan­ded perspect­ives on how to approach ecolo­gical trans­ition.

-> www.mudac.ch

• Alice Bucknell

Alice Bucknell is an artist and writer based in Los Angeles. Their recent work has focused on creating cinematic universes within game worlds, exploring the affective dimensions of video games as interfaces for understanding complex systems, relations and forms of knowledge. Their work has appeared internationally at Ars Electronica with transmediale, Arcade Seoul, the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale, Gray Area in San Francisco, Singapore Art Museum, and Serpentine in London, among others. Their writing appears in publications including ArtReview, e-flux architecture, frieze, Flash Art, the Harvard Design Magazine, and Mousse. In 2025, they are a Creative Capital awardee and Y11 member of NEW INC. Bucknell received a MA in Contemporary Art Practice from the Royal College of Art and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. They are currently faculty at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles where they teach courses on worlding, gaming, and philosophies of technology.

• Matthew C. Wilson

Matthew C. Wilson is a filmmaker and artist from the United States based in the Netherlands. In his videos, sculptures, and installations, viewers meet human, non-human, and inter-subjective agents that are entangled with natural processes and shape-shifting historical forces. His projects utilize research-oriented, site-specific, and methodologically eclectic approaches to track the inertia of modernity through contemporary ecological crises and into speculative futures. Wilson holds an MFA in visual arts from Columbia University and has been a participant in the Whitney Independent Study Program, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, and the Jan van Eyck Academie. He is currently the KNAW – Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences artist-in-residence fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences. His moving image works have screened on Vdrome.org, at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam, the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin.

• Emilia Tapprest

Emilia Tapprest (NVISIBLE.STUDIO) is a Finnish-French filmmaker and visual artist based in Amsterdam. Her collaborative work explores how emerging developments in technology and social imaginaries interact with the post-industrial subject in affective, preconscious, and sensorial ways, often within speculative scenarios. With a background studying industrial and interface design at Aalto University in Helsinki, Tapprest obtained her second degree in fine arts and film at the Sandberg Institute in 2019. Her work has been presented on international platforms such as Vdrome, Kunstverein Schattendorf, Impakt Festival, VISIO European Programme on Artists’ Moving Images, and Bologna Art City. Tapprest is a former resident of the Jan van Eyck Academie (2021), FilmForward (2021), Rupert AiR (2023), Institute for Advanced Study, and Allard Pierson, among others. She is currently tutor in cinematic moving image for the geo-design MA at Design Academy Eindhoven.

• Enter the Hyper-Scientific

Initiated by the EPFL College of Humanities (CDH), amplified by EPFL Pavilions, and in partnership with the City of Lausanne, the EPFL-CDH Artist-in-Residence (AiR) Program “Enter the Hyper-Scientific” fosters transdisciplinary encounters and collaborations between artists and EPFL’s scientific community. The program invites international artists, for three-month residencies to realize innovative and visionary projects at the intersection of art, science, advanced technologies, and the humanities.

• Dates

19.4.2025
Opening Alice Bucknell and Matthew C. Wilson
Joint opening with Archizoom
EPFL Pavilions, Pavilion A, 6:30 pm
Dates of the exhibition: 20.3–27.4.2025

5.6.2025
Opening Emilia Tapprest
EPFL Pavilions, Pavilion A, 6 pm
Dates of the exhibition: 6.6–6.7.2025