The Eternal Garden in a Bottle

“The Eternal Garden in a Bottle” unfolds across five chapters—Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, and finally Utopia.
Each chapter’s light rhythm, ecological behavior, and sonic expression are generated in real time. The system continuously computes and reshapes the environment: light, color palettes, species populations, and environmental tempo all shift according to the sonic interactions of both performers and visitors. The audience enters a world that breathes, grows, and flows.

The musicians’ improvisational performances are transformed into signals that influence the ecosystem—plants sprout, flocks of birds rise, and life forms shift in response. At the same time, the ecosystem’s feedback generates abstract scores that become new material for the musicians’ improvisation. These abstract scores are presented through LG’s transparent display technology, extending the boundary where the virtual and physical intertwine.

Through this cyclical exchange between humans and the system, the digital ecosystem sustains itself, making each performance a unique ecological rhythm shaped by musicians and audience alike.

Visitors can also interact directly with the installation. Ten specially curated instruments allow simple gestures to influence the growth and decline within the ecological bottle. An interactive webpage further invites visitors to create a personalized spirit creature and release it into the ecosystem, contributing sound and movement as part of the ongoing digital cycle.

The exhibition space enhances this immersive experience through a curved wooden wall that extends an organic contour, evoking the feeling of standing inside a bottle. White silica sand reflects projected imagery with greater clarity and fluidity, responding to the idea of an ever-shifting ecosystem. Together, light, sound, texture, and form create a multisensory environment—one that can be seen, heard, and felt.
 

The Eternal Garden in a Bottle extends artist Che-Yu Wu’s 2024 work, transformed by MONOLAB into an immersive interactive performance.

The piece draws inspiration from David Latimer’s 19th-century Wardian case—a sealed glass ecosystem capable of sustaining itself.
The artist reimagines this concept as an algorithmic experiment for the digital age. Each life cycle is composed of generative plants, flowers, trees, and organisms, driven by 45 controllable parameters and 14 seasonal rhythms, presenting the natural flow of light, sound, and time.
Stepping into the exhibition is akin to entering a digital terrarium, breathing alongside the musicians.
Sound, light, and audience interaction become nutrients for the ecosystem, propelling digital life to grow and fade in continuous cycles.
Each performance becomes a rebirth—revealing the shifting boundary and evolving symbiosis between humans and systems.