Matthew C. Wilson’s Interspecies Interfaces (Part I) is the first chapter of a two-part film project, realized in a joint residency with Emilia Tapprest, which will unfold in two chapters presented in March and June. Focusing on newly evolving contact zones between bats, humans, and technology, the project introduces the concept of “other suns” to challenge the solar-centric hierarchy of perception. Just as the transition to solar and other energy sources requires new ways of thinking and designing, reimagining cultural and technological approaches to perceiving the more-than-human world also demands a shift. In their nocturnal world, bats’ use of echolocation—where sound, rather than light, serves as the primary signal for orientation—presents us with a different strategy for perceiving and interfacing with the environment.
Organized in conjunction with the second Solar Biennale presented by mudac, Soleil·s, the exhibition From Solar to Nocturnal unveils Staring at the Sun by Alice Bucknell and Interspecies Interfaces (Part I) by Matthew C. Wilson, two new productions realized in dialogue with the EPFL scientific community.
Matthew C. Wilson: Interspecies Interfaces (Part 1) / EPFL Pavilions, Lausanne. Vernissage, March 19, 2025.
Matthew C. Wilson is a filmmaker and artist from the United States based in the Netherlands. In his videos, sculptures, and installations, viewers meet human, non-human, and inter-subjective agents that are entangled with natural processes and shape-shifting historical forces. His projects utilize research-oriented, site-specific, and methodologically eclectic approaches to track the inertia of modernity through contemporary ecological crises and into speculative futures. Wilson holds an MFA in visual arts from Columbia University and has been a participant in the Whitney Independent Study Program, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, and the Jan van Eyck Academie. He is currently the KNAW – Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences artist-in-residence fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences. His moving image works have screened on Vdrome.org, at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam, the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin.
Emilia Tapprest (NVISIBLE.STUDIO) is a Finnish-French filmmaker and visual artist based in Amsterdam. Her collaborative work explores how emerging developments in technology and social imaginaries interact with the post-industrial subject in affective, preconscious, and sensorial ways, often within speculative scenarios. With a background studying industrial and interface design at Aalto University in Helsinki, Tapprest obtained her second degree in fine arts and film at the Sandberg Institute in 2019. Her work has been presented on international platforms such as Vdrome, Kunstverein Schattendorf, Impakt Festival, VISIO European Programme on Artists’ Moving Images, and Bologna Art City. Tapprest is a former resident of the Jan van Eyck Academie (2021), FilmForward (2021), Rupert AiR (2023), Institute for Advanced Study, and Allard Pierson, among others. She is currently tutor in cinematic moving image for the geo-design MA at Design Academy Eindhoven.
