Pierre Huyghe's AI-driven installation Variants transforms Kistefos sculpture park with virtual simulation

Pierre Huyghe's new installation Variants (2022) at Kistefos sculpture park in Jevnaker, Norway creates a constantly evolving ecosystem where virtual and physical realities merge. The work uses LiDAR technology to scan the landscape into a simulation that updates based on real-time environmental data from sensors. This digital model influences material interventions on the site, including a reindeer skeleton, an upturned boat, a decaying fox with fungal growth, and planned additions like a neon pink beehive. Curator Anne Stenne describes the generative soundscape as an "echo relay mutation of sound" that transforms natural noises. Huyghe's decades-long exploration of porous realities includes earlier works like The Third Memory (2000) featuring bank robber John Wojtowicz and unrealized collaborations to breed Nabokov's imagined butterflies. The Kistefos site, founded in 1996 by collector Christen Sveaas on a former wood-pulp mill, features other sculptures by artists including Tony Cragg, Yayoi Kusama, and Marc Quinn. Variants represents the growing field of AI-generated art alongside works by Ian Cheng, robot Ai-Da, and DALL-E, with media scholar Alexander Galloway's concept of "allegorithm" describing how algorithms function allegorically. Huyghe emphasizes creating environments rather than objects, allowing the work to exist independently of viewer attention while embracing the site's frequent flooding as part of its narrative tempo.