Bridging nature and technology with Andrey Shibanov and Khristina Ots from SPLACES.STUDIO
In this interview, Andrey Shibanov and Khristina Ots from SPLACES.STUDIO talk about the creative and technical process behind the interactive sculpture "Megalith," which transforms a stone into an immersive, responsive soundscape.
SPLACES.STUDIO brings together artists, engineers, and scientists to collaborate on projects that combine light, sound, and natural elements, aiming to create sustainable, nature-inspired solutions. With a focus on innovation and environmental responsibility, their interdisciplinary approach leads to artworks that challenge traditional boundaries and encourage viewers to rethink their relationship with the natural world.
Megalith invites participants to engage with a large stone through tactile interaction, using a network of sensors and neural networks that trigger sounds recorded in a forest. The sculpture blurs the line between the organic and the technological, evoking a deeper connection to nature by allowing viewers to "hear" the stone's environment.
Listen to this podcast to learn about:
- The intricate artistic and technical development of Megalith, from harnessing piezoelectric microphones to using neural networks
- How SPLACES.STUDIO merges the digital and physical realms, using tactile interaction to create a deeper sensory connection with nature
- SPLACES.STUDIO's interdisciplinary approach, where artists, engineers, and scientists collaborate to create nature-inspired installations
Subscribe using your favourite podcast player or RSS
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | Instagram | RSS
Highlights
-
(02:23) Bridging nature and technology
- (14:37) Transforming stones into interactive sound art with neural networks
- (21:59) SPLACES.STUDIO: Integrating science and technology for real change
- (28:50) Advice on interactivity
About Khristina Ots
Khristina Ots is an art and science curator, researcher, and educator at SPLACES.STUDIO. She leads the curatorial department at the Art & Science Center of ITMO University, focusing on nature-driven technologies and interdisciplinary collaborations. A co-founder of the ASTA Award, Khristina has curated over 15 exhibitions and produced more than 20 projects. Her work has been featured at events like Ars Electronica and the Wrong Biennale. Khristina's curatorial approach emphasises the intersection of art, technology, and environmental philosophy, fostering a deeper connection to the natural world.
About Andrey Shibanov
Andrey Shibanov is the co-founder and creative producer of SPLACES.STUDIO and the founder and executive producer of COOLDOWN.PRO. He is an expert in modern editing and colour correction for cinema and advertising. Andrey has worked on commercials and music videos that have collectively garnered 560 million organic views. His work has earned recognition at international festivals, including Cannes Short Film Festival, Cannes Lions, and Manchester Film Festival. He has won numerous awards across both advertising and film industries.
Key Takeaways from this interview with Andrey Shibanov and Khristina Ots
The creation and experience of Megalith
Megalith is an interactive sculpture that transforms a large stone into a living soundscape through tactile interaction. By touching the stone, participants trigger soundscapes recorded in the Karelian forest, merging the digital and physical worlds to create a profound sensory experience.
Bridging the gap between nature and technology
Megalith challenges the traditional divide between the organic and synthetic. Through advanced neural networks and piezoelectric sensors, SPLACES.STUDIO creates a seamless interaction between the stone and participants, bringing new life to inanimate objects and encouraging empathy toward the natural world
Collaboration as the key to interdisciplinary success
SPLACES.STUDIO's approach to creating Megalith involved an interdisciplinary team of artists, engineers, and scientists. The collaboration allowed them to merge expertise from various fields, creating a project that pushes the boundaries of both art and technology.
The challenge of seamless technology integration
Ensuring that Megalith responded only to human touch while filtering out background noise required the development of a neural network
Advice
"I think the very important thing is to ask yourself, why are you doing an interactive piece? I think it’s very important to ask yourself what additional value the interactive part can bring to your project. Why do you need it? What message can it help to bring to the public?" - Khristina Ots
Links from the podcast
Edited transcripts from this interview with Andrey Shibanov and Khristina Ots
Touch, sound and tactile interaction
Robin: What’s it like for a participant to experience the Megalith piece?
Khristina: Basically, the Megalith sculpture is a big stone, and it interacts with viewers through sound. When you touch the surface of the sculpture, it starts to emit soundscapes recorded in the Karelian forest. Different types of touch provoke different reactions from the stone. For example, when you touch it lightly, you can hear the rustling of leaves, and when you tickle it, you can hear the sounds of insects and some animals.
Khristina: I think we live in a very optically oriented culture — a spectacular culture. With Megalith, we try to involve the person on a tactile, physical level. The body becomes part of the piece, because only when you put your hand on it — when you start to move your hand and feel the rough surface of the stone — it responds. I think this closes the gap between the digital and the material. We know technologies are based on parts of the natural world, on natural legacies, but we don’t think about it very often.
Khristina: This situation we create — when a person starts to interact with the stone — brings that divide closer.
Andy: I want to say something about it too, because I spent a lot of time working on Megalith. For me there are two levels of work and experience. In my first studio work, we spent a lot of hours recording datasets: claps, taps, tickling, touching the stone. I literally had bruises on my hand from all the data we collected for the neural network, because you need to touch it a lot.
Andy: The more touches you have with Megalith, with the stone, the more precisely the neural network works at the same time. So yeah, that’s quite a process. The second level is the exhibition experience. People came by thinking, “Oh, it’s just a rock. That’s just a stone.” Even after reading Khristina’s curatorial text, they didn’t fully get it at first. They didn’t understand what it was.
Andy: Because you’re not usually allowed to touch sculptures in museums, people don’t expect it. But when I — or someone else at the exhibition — starts interacting with Megalith, something clicks for them. They understand: “Oh, it’s an interactive sculpture.” The stone comes to life and becomes a new entity for them. It’s not like a laptop or synthesiser with obvious input points like a keyboard or mouse. It’s like an organic musical instrument, and this seemingly dead rock starts sounding and reacting differently to different gestures.
Andy: It’s amazing to watch people realise and embrace a new way to interact and experience things.
Inviting touch in gallery spaces
Robin: We’re also conditioned not to touch things in galleries and not to interact with them. I find it really interesting when we try to break that barrier down, and how people go about doing it. When you see someone else doing it — sometimes the artist sitting there — it changes the dynamic. It was obviously in the curatorial statement that the piece was interactive.
Robin: How would you possibly change that invitation to touch now? Would you do it differently?
Khristina: Yeah. I think we believe it’s always nice to have a mediator present next to the piece, next to the artwork — because the piece is very complex. If we tried to put everything in the text, it would be a huge catalogue. We try to have a person present if possible. That person not only invites people to touch the stone and interact with it, but also breaks down some of the complex technology behind the artwork — and the theoretical part that aims at environmental problems.
Khristina: When that’s not possible, of course we write instructions next to the piece — general things art collectives or individual artists do with interactive works: break it down into steps and make it as clear as possible to the viewer.
Andy: Yeah, but usually it’s really fun when people understand an interactive piece by themselves.
From megalith myths to public art meaning
Robin: Where did the idea for Megalith come from?
Andy: We wanted to create a next-level public art sculpture — something made from natural elements, like a stone or wood. Something that’s anti-vandal, but also packed with deep meanings from philosophers like Bruno Latour. And of course it had to be interactive — something mind-blowing for us. It’s going to be next to a residential building themed around the northern forest and Karelia.
Andy: There are these giant rocks sitting on smaller rocks, and no one really knows how they got there. I think scientists are still scratching their heads about how it’s even possible. We thought it would be awesome to bring that mysterious vibe into the city — something that makes people stop and think, “What is this?” At first glance it’s just a giant rock, but it’s also this incredible, almost impossible thing that people can theorise about but never fully understand. We wanted that emotion from people.
Andy: Plus, we’re huge fans of northern forests, and we wanted to bring that feeling into the urban jungle. Imagine hearing birds singing, wind rustling — bringing nature’s magic into the city. We wanted to build an ecosystem around the sculpture where nature is the star and people are just visitors, always discovering something new.
Khristina: And megaliths are present all over the world. They’re mysterious structures not only because you don’t know how people could make them, but also because there are debates about whether they were made by nature or by people. That opposition — cultural and natural — that we aim to break is already present in this idea of megalith structures in the world’s heritage.
Nature-driven technologies and environmental empathy
Robin: So you’ve got a continuation of a series of works around fostering different relationships with the environment. How is this particular piece contributing to that?
Khristina: If we talk about what we do at SPLACES.STUDIO in general, we aim to create nature-inspired sculptures or pieces that integrate what we call nature-driven technologies — technologies powered by nature, that interpret nature in different ways. We’re romantics who believe art can change our perception of the world, our relationships with the world. And it’s very important for us to break the division between cultural and natural.
Khristina: Usually when we think about technology, we think it’s artificial — something that belongs to culture. And when we think about nature, we think it lacks technology. We think: if we go into nature, we’ll be tech-free humans for a while. But that’s a basic level of understanding. With new materialism and environmental philosophy, we understand culture and nature are intertwined — co-emergent — evolving together.
Khristina: That’s how we started thinking about merging cultural heritage — the megalith — with high-tech technology. With Megalith, I think it helps bridge nature, the stone, with the sensory apparatus of a person. And when you do that, you break another opposition that influences our perception of nature: the opposition of living and dead matter.
Khristina: Usually we think stones are dead. That’s why we don’t feel empathy toward them. That idea — that nature is not as significant as human life — has brought us to the ecological crisis we’re experiencing. We believe that with art, with the power of surprising a person, we can shift their understanding of what nature is, and shape their understanding of what is alive and what is not alive.
Khristina: Because when the stone has agency to respond to you — agency to tell the stories of where it was brought from — it changes things. All the sounds you hear are recorded next to the stone. So it’s the language of nature — a language we don’t necessarily understand, but we can try to feel it, and feel empathy towards these natural objects beyond how we perceive them visually.
Khristina: And in that idea — that we can feel empathy toward something non-living — there’s power for environmental change. Because once you start to think even rocks are something we can feel empathy toward, you start to think more responsibly about how we treat nature and what we’re doing to it.
Khristina: Yeah, basically, I think that’s how it connects.
Robin: I’m not quite sure where to start with that one. If humans stop thinking about nature as separate from us, that changes how we work with nature. We stop thinking about it as a resource and think about it as part of us. And you’re right — turning a stone, something people think of as inert and dead, into something that has aliveness, is a lovely way of triggering that wholeness and connected thinking.
How Megalith was made: sensors, Max and neural networks
Robin: I’m always really interested in process. What was your process for making this piece? Sometimes the way to answer is to think about the first thing you did.
Andy: The process of creating Megalith is still ongoing. We had a plan, but it evolved. First we came up with the idea and interaction mechanic. The early idea was to put 12 sensors inside the stone — piezoelectric elements — to turn the stone into a synthesiser or piano that you could play by touching it.
Andy: But we didn’t like the idea of drilling the stone. We wanted to keep it intact — no holes. Then we explored using data visualisation: placing cameras around the stone and using neural networks to track people’s touch in real time. But it didn’t work out — we couldn’t set up cameras in a way that would work reliably.
Andy: Next we found a developer of microphones — a great guy who created his own very precise microphones. He told us we needed to use several piezoelectric microphones inside the stone. The stone provides a lot of sound inside it when you touch it — vibrations travel around the stone — you just need special microphones: piezoelectric and geophone microphones for vibration.
Andy: We ended up using five piezoelectric microphones and one geophone. The piezo microphones pick up high frequencies — up to 20,000 Hz — and the geophone is for low frequencies, from 0 to 500 Hz. After testing on a small stone, we started developing the software and patches. We chose Max (from Cycling ’74) because it allows powerful real-time audio patches from incoming data — in our case from the microphones — and we integrated a neural network for generating sound from a large dataset of forest sounds.
Andy: We recorded around 200 to 300 hours in Karelia: birds singing, trees howling, water, the sounds of stones, and so on. After building a big patch with lots of nodes and connections, we tested it and it worked as expected.
Andy: But we faced new challenges. The microphones captured touches and converted vibration into sound, but they also picked up other vibrations around the stone — people walking, cars driving by. That’s a problem, because you can’t just cut those sounds out with an equaliser. On a spectrogram they can look very similar.
Andy: We realised we needed another neural network — maybe two — to filter out unwanted sounds and only capture what comes from touch. That way the stone doesn’t constantly produce a cacophony, and people know it’s reacting specifically to them.
Andy: We built a neural network to do this in real time. Now the stone ignores everything else around it and responds instantly to touch. It took about two or three months. Currently we’re developing another neural network to map the stone surface into coordinate planes using the five microphones. Theoretically, we can pinpoint where a person touches the stone and divide the surface into zones — so touching one side or another produces different sounds.
Robin: For the prototype you’re working with, do you have the stone somewhere in a room with Max hooked up to it? How are you dealing with that prototyping?
Andy: Initially we aimed to create a huge stone, around two metres tall. But it’s impossible to work with that in our studio — it’s hard to transport. So we found and transported a smaller stone as a prototype. But as we worked on it, it became an independent art piece.
Andy: We can call it a prototype, but we think of that small stone as its own artwork — maybe in the future in galleries or museums.
Khristina: And the “small” stone weighs 200 kg — so it’s not that small — but it’s smaller than what we envision for the larger stone.
Robin: I really like that idea: the prototype becomes the actual more flexible, long-term, easier-to-manage piece. It has two lives.
Khristina: Yeah. And with technological art — new media art — it can be hard to distinguish what the art piece itself is. Is it the exact stone, or the technology behind it? For us, we see Megalith not as an individual piece, but more as a series — because the technology takes a lot of time to develop.
Khristina: We think about working with different locations, recording sounds from different places, and creating a series that tells not only the story of one rock, but stories of different rocks. We’re even thinking about collaborating with other sound artists who represent different regions.
Khristina: We’re excited to hear how different surroundings sound. Karelia has lots of biodiversity — different birds and insects — it’s humid, with lots of water and swamps. That’s one soundscape. But in Australia it would be very different — different species near the rock, or maybe it would be in the desert. That’s part of our future vision for the project.
Robin: I’m really interested in collaborative processes. You’re a studio — a team. What’s your collaboration model?
Khristina: I think the idea behind opening the studio was that bringing together different experts with diverse expertise helps create these complex projects. Art, science and technology is interdisciplinary — so every complex project needs several experts present.
Khristina: Our core team represents both artistic and technological domains: we have a curator (me), artists, AI and software developers, light artists, engineers. And we have an operations team that helps hold the studio together. On one hand a studio is powerful because you have more intellectual resources. On the other hand, it needs more operational resources and management.
Khristina: Our operations team helps keep the team together even though we’re in different parts of the world. We have a horizontal structure — each team member can bring an idea and discuss it. We have key elements we focus on: nature-driven technologies, environmental impact, and a post-anthropocentric perspective.
Khristina: When someone brings an idea, we discuss it. We don’t have one artist who takes a concept from A to B alone. We brainstorm, research the scientific background, and invite scientists or external experts to help validate our artistic intuition. Sometimes we think, “We can help trees in this way,” but then we talk with scientists to get perspective — not to create something purely speculative, but something that can bring real change.
Khristina: We don’t have anything against speculation — envisioning can be important — but in the studio we’re focused on real change with artistic solutions. When the idea is fully packaged — scientific expertise in place and the artistic part together — we work with the technical team to develop solutions. It’s important for us to work with seamless technology.
Khristina: For example, with Megalith, it’s important not to just put sensors on the surface. We aim for something self-sustainable and seamless. It’s a lot of work from our technical team — engineering and computer science. Sometimes the form depends on technological solutions; sometimes the form depends on scientific ideas.
Khristina: Usually we have a lot of Zoom meetings. Andy has an everyday Zoom meeting with the technical team. For me it’s a little less — I’m on the curatorial level. But we discuss and prototype until we’re satisfied.
Robin: Other people have talked about liking being in the same room in early stages, being able to throw things around. But regular discussions at a distance can work too, because it becomes part of the rhythm — not an extra thing.
Khristina: It’s important because our team is very motivated about what we’re doing — we truly believe in the projects. We don’t do projects we don’t believe in. That helps us work beyond the studio. Each of us is doing research. Sometimes software engineers bring an article from a scientific journal and say, “Look — trees emit these electrical signals. Maybe we can do something with it.” That helps us work consistently and broadens the topics we can work with.
Khristina: For me, at the curatorial level, I’m inspired by having a motivated team who are interested in what art can do when it merges with science and technology. Discussions are very important.
Robin: What’s your greatest advice to other artists trying to create these sorts of installations?
Khristina: From the curatorial point of view, the important thing is to ask yourself: why are you doing an interactive piece? With the advance of digital technologies and acceleration of time, we often think interactivity will help get attention. But if viewers are digitally educated and live in interactive environments, they can easily swipe past interactivity as something trivial.
Khristina: So it’s important to ask: what additional value can the interactive part bring? Why do you need it? What message can it help bring to the public? Sometimes the opposite can work — sometimes you need something not interactive in order to make a person stop, talk, and listen. We always ask: do we need it to be interactive, or do we need it to be performative? A piece can be performative without interaction. It’s about balance and understanding what you need.
Andy: Yeah. My advice is: don’t be afraid. Find people who know more than you in certain ways, and make them excited about creating something new. It’s really important, because you can’t do things alone. You need people around you to help create something big and interesting.