Troika

The London-based artist group Troika explores how new technologies affect our relationship with the world around us through ambitious works that cross disciplinary boundaries. Technology is a driving force in contemporary life. Today, digital change does not only happen onscreen, but impacts everything from social encounters to ecology. At a time of accelerating change, new tools do not only influence how we think about our environment, but also how we shape it.

The contemporary artist group Troika—founded in 2003 by Eva Rucki (*1976, Germany), Conny Freyer (*1976, Germany), and Sebastien Noel (*1977, France)—has established itself in the art world through its critical perspective on how new technologies are integrated into our understanding of landscape, humankind, and society. Troika works across media, including sculpture, film, installation, and painting, to explore shifting boundaries between nature and artificiality, the real and the romantic, the living and the non-living, ourselves and others.

For the extensive exhibition Pink Noise, the rising trio debuted ambitious new installations and works that explored relationships between perception, environment, and technology. At a time of climate crisis and political instability associated with digital tools, Troika emphasises how the fusion of machine and human imagination births new worlds.

The human senses (touch, sight, hearing, etc.) are now converging with digital sensors, machine vision, and more. Pink Noise explores how our perception of "nature" is calibrated to the frequencies and spectrums of digital media. How does our environment change when new technologies explode the previous limits of what can be perceived? And what blind spots are created?

The exhibition Pink Noise, curated by philosopher Dehlia Hannah and art historian/curator Nadim Samman, presents Troika’s artistic reflections on mediated nature and our disorientation within it. The exhibition title, Pink Noise, refers to an acoustic condition containing all frequencies of the audible spectrum—a phenomenon recognizable in the gentle rush of waterfalls, heartbeats, and wind in trees. This same noise signature is used to tune concert sound systems and to lull babies to sleep.