AMBIS | vice

Ambis is an installation developed in response to the architectural history of the former Brodomerkur building in Split, today home to the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. The space once contained a shallow pool with goldfish — a detail now largely forgotten. This work reactivates that memory, transforming the floor into a speculative visual field.

At first glance, Ambis appears as a vibrant ornamental surface. On closer inspection, it reveals a dense ecosystem of hybrid zoomorphic and anthropomorphic forms. These figures disrupt the perceived stability of the ground, opening questions about humanity’s relationship with nature, other forms of life, and the future of ecological coexistence.

The work was created using artificial intelligence as a tool, guided exclusively by my own previous visual material. Rather than relying on text prompts, I used my existing body of work as input, addressing ongoing ethical concerns related to authorship and appropriation in AI-generated imagery. The resulting outputs were manually curated, collaged, and digitally overpainted, maintaining a direct authorial intervention within the process.

Technically, Ambis takes the form of a large-scale floor installation composed of 24 repeating scenes. The composition unfolds through subtle variations and fractal-like relationships, suggesting a structure that extends beyond its physical limits. While the installation itself is temporary, its material remnants persist as individual physical works, marked by traces of removal and degradation.

At the same time, the project exists as a digital entity. The works are conceived as digital compositions prepared for print, with NFT technology enabling their authentication as unique digital assets. This duality — between transient material presence and persistent digital form — reflects broader questions about the nature of the artwork in a technologically mediated reality.

Ambis engages with themes of artificial life, bioethics, and the expanding role of technology in shaping future environments. The hybrid forms it presents may be read as speculative projections — not only of biological evolution, but of a world increasingly defined by synthetic processes and designed systems.

Ultimately, the work does not offer conclusions, but rather constructs a space for reflection. It invites the viewer to move between surface and depth, image and structure, the physical and the virtual — and to consider what lies ahead as these boundaries continue to dissolve.