Chrysalis

2024

Chrysalis is a participatory installation combining artificial intelligence and inflatable sculpture, designed to create a collective dream on a city-wide scale. The project symbolizes the transitional phase society must undergo to envision the year 2074 with optimism. Represented by a giant white caterpillar, soft and dreamlike, the sculpture invites people to dream together. The installation is based on dreams gathered from the residents of Moutier through a one-month survey conducted both online and on-site. These dreams were then transformed using a Stable Diffusion AI model into visual patterns applied to the caterpillar’s body—similar to Rorschach inkblots—expressing the community’s collective aspirations and imagination. These evolving patterns form a shared visual language that reflects the people’s dreams. A soundscape accompanies the video projection, combining “caterpillar cries” with AI-generated voices that recite the collected dreams, providing a sensory and narrative dimension to the experience. Chrysalis thus becomes an immersive, poetic space where technology serves as a bridge between individuals, their dreams, and a shared vision of the future.

AI Context

The work is a participatory installation that uses artificial intelligence, staging the dreams of participants from caterpillar patterns to create a common dream on a city scale.

Arnaud Laffond

France

Bio

Arnaud Laffond is a multidisciplinary artist, plastic digitization workshop based in Lyon. His work is characterized by the creation of virtual environments and computer-generated materials, questioning the relationship between man and new technologies. He explores and crosses the digital on different contemporary subjects, creating bridges with science to digest and transmit his artistic vision.