Marshmallow Laser Feast
Evolver: Journey of Breath, 2022
Stitched projection (2 projectors), spatial audio
15 Min
Evolver: Deep Listening Meditation, 2022
Triggered headphone piece (binaural composition)
Language: English
10 Min
Evolver: VR, 2022
Virtual reality, headphones
Language: English
24 Min
Courtesy Marshmallow Laser Feast
Please note: Participation in the interactive part of the installation requires prior registration. Sessions are offered every Thursday from 5 to 9 p.m., every Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., as well as on public holidays. Each virtual journey lasts 45 minutes. Time slots can be reserved on site at the ticket desk or online here: calendly.com/frankfurterkunstverein. Only a limited number of places are available per day.
Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) is a London-based artists’ collective whose multimedia works are created in close collaboration with scientific institutions. In their installations, they interweave immersive technologies, elaborate visualisations and complex soundscapes into poetic experiences that expand human perception of the world. Following the public success of Treehugger: Wawona, an immersive journey into the metabolism of a sequoia tree presented during the exhibition The Intelligence of Plants (2021), and Distortions in Spacetime, a glimpse into the birth of a black hole shown in the exhibition The Presence of Absence (2024), the Frankfurter Kunstverein has invited MLF to present their expedition into the human body in Frankfurt.
Evolver consists of multiple parts: a 10-minute deep meditation, a 24-minute audiovisual 360° virtual reality experience and a video projection. The overall installation takes viewers on an intense journey through the human body.
The listening experience begins with breathing. This is then followed by a specially composed soundscape and Cate Blanchett’s voice guiding participants into a meditative awareness of the breath as it flows into our lungs—the organ where oxygen and blood meet. Breath is the life-giving bridge between our bodies and the world. And air connects us with everything around us: with the plants that produce oxygen and with the gases and particles contained within the thin, 2-kilometre layer of breathable air (the troposphere). This part of the installation is intended to encourage visitors to withdraw from outside distractions, to turn attention inwards and to foster a conscious, calm awareness of body and breath.
In the second part of the installation, visitors are invited to journey inside the human body using a VR headset. Like a molecule of air, we flood into the lungs, carried by oxygen through the flowing bloodstream to the beating heart. At the end of this voyage, viewers arrive at a breathing cell—the smallest visible stage of life, where oxygen and sugar release the sun’s energy that sustains all life on Earth. The VR environment presents these interwoven physiological processes as flowing, organic landscapes of the body’s interior: vascular systems branch like river networks, capillaries form dense meshes and the body’s inner world unfolds before the viewer like a forest.
The unique insights into the inner workings of the human organism were made possible through MLF’s collaboration with its scientific partner, the Fraunhofer-Institut für Digitale Medizin MEVIS (Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Medicine MEVIS) in Bremen. The institute provided the collective with data sets and body scanning techniques: whole-body MRI scans and MRA examinations of a volunteer, as well as blood flow data and guidance on CT imaging. The Fraunhofer-Institut für Digitale Medizin MEVIS thus shaped every aspect of the project and was of vital importance for the development of Evolver.
State-of-the-art data sets from MR imaging techniques were central for flow visualisation. These allow the speed and direction of blood flow through the four chambers of the heart and the aorta to be reconstructed in detail. The techniques can be used to calculate how blood pressure and shear force on the vessel walls change in patients with heart valve defects. These new possibilities are incorporated into software assistants for physicians. They make it possible to assess how blood flow changes in possible heart diseases without the need for invasive diagnostic examinations using catheters. Additional patient-specific simulations make it possible to weigh up the benefits of a new heart valve before surgery.
Marshmallow Laser Feast created a complete digital model of the cardiovascular system and carried out particle simulations on it. These were then extended to the entire human body. In addition to collaborating with MEVIS, the Allen Institute for Cell Science and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging were also partners in the creation of this art project.
The MLF collective is known for its close collaboration with scientists and has always aimed to make complex scientific information sensually tangible through modern immersive technologies. Both science and art are, after all, fundamental methods of the same human need: to understand and to describe the world.
With Evolver, the artists explore the idea of shifting perspective in order to evoke a sense of awe and wonder at the miracle of our bodies. They ask whether our perception and awareness of the body might change when we shift our gaze on the fragile ecosystem of our own organism from the outside to the inside. What happens when we transform abstract knowledge into something that can be seen and experienced?
What characterises the work of the MLF collective is the widening of perspective. They never remain at the level of scientific visualisation or the mere transfer of information; instead, they use the freedom of art to pose overarching questions and to expand our gaze. In Evolver, breath forms the central narrative thread, along which MLF transforms human anatomy—its fragility and its beauty—into a sensuous experience. Like the breath that, in spiritual traditions and in the history of painting (Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel), represents the beginning of human life: the divinely inspired soul that breathes matter into life.
EVOLVER: An Immersive Journey Of Life And Breath
Directed by: Marshmallow Laser Feast
Narrated by: Cate Blanchett
Featuring music by: Jonny Greenwood, Meredith Monk, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Howard Skempton and Jon Hopkins.
Executive producers: Edward R. Pressman and Terrence Malick, supported by Nicole Shanahan & Bia-Echo Foundation.
An Atlas V, Pressman Film, Dirty Films, Marshmallow Laser Feast and Orange production. In association with Artizen.
Producers: Antoine Cayrol and Sam Pressman.
Executive producers: Nicole Shanahan, Cate Blanchett, Coco Francini, Andrew Upton, Nell Whitley, Mike Jones, Paula Paizes, René Pinnell, Arnaud Colinart, Pierre Zandrowicz und Fred Volhuer.
Co-producers: Guillaume Brunet and Morgan Bouchet.
Line producers: Martin Jowers and Emma Hamilton.
Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) is an artist collective based in London (UK) that creates immersive experiences by combining art, film, and Extended Reality, expanding human perception and exploring our connection to the natural world. MLF has exhibited internationally at institutions such as the Barbican Centre, London (UK), ACMI, Melbourne (AU), Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media – YCAM (JP), Phi Centre, Montreal (CA), and the Istanbul Design Biennial (TR). The collective is known for award-winning works such as We Live in an Ocean of Air (2018) and In the Eyes of the Animal (2016), with the latter receiving the Wired Audi Innovation Award for Innovation in Experience Design. TreeHugger: Wawona was shown at the Frankfurter Kunstverein in 2021 and won the Tribeca Storyscapes Award for Innovation in Storytelling and the Best VR Film Prize at the VR Arles Festival (FR). MLF’s work has also been featured in leading publications such as The Guardian, New Scientist, Wired, The Times, and Creative Review.
