DF2016: HARR1 and Sequence VR in Brussels

Alex May and Anna Dumitriu presented HARR1 and Sequence VR at Digital Festival 2016 in Brussels on 21 June 2016. Staged at The Egg, the one-day event brought those two works into a public setting focused on how digital technologies are debated as well as demonstrated, placing robotics, immersive media, and genomics inside a broader civic and political conversation.

The presentation was accompanied by a speaking session titled Genomics, Robotics and Health, held from 13:00 to 13:45. That session linked the ethics of social robot appearance and behaviour with the emerging cultural implications of bacterial genome sequencing. In that context, HARR1 and Sequence VR were not treated as separate technical curiosities, but as artworks that could make difficult questions about social life, scientific knowledge, and future technologies more tangible for a wider audience.

For May, the Brussels event showed how different strands of the practice could operate together. HARR1 brought questions of human-robot relation into the room through embodied encounter, while Sequence VR extended bio-digital research through immersive form. Framed by public discussion, the event made clear how exhibition and conversation can work together in May’s practice, with the artwork acting as both experience and prompt for wider reflection.