13 Jun 2026 (Sat)
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2pm – 4pm |  |
ArtScience Cinema, Level 4 |
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Ticketed Admission S$5 per participant |
London-based experiential art collective Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) works at the limits of perception, translating complex living systems into immersive experiences where bodies and environments converge.
As ArtScience Museum’s 2026 ArtScientist-in-Residence, Ersin Han Ersin (artist and director of MLF) anchors this residency-focused symposium, centred on two major works presented in the museum’s exhibitions this year: Evolver, featured in Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy, and Seeing Echoes in the Mind of the Whale, developed for Into the Ocean: Journey Beneath.
In his presentation, Ersin will reflect on MLF’s ongoing inquiry into living systems, exploring how immersive technologies can translate non-human perception into embodied experience. Moving between the sonic world of whales and the transformative potential of the human body, these works consider how life is shaped through processes of sensing and relation across species and environments.
Presented as part of Forms of Life: Beyond the Human, the symposium opens this inquiry into a wider interdisciplinary dialogue. Contributing perspectives from oceanography and acoustic research will ground these ideas in the lived realities of marine environments, revealing how ocean life navigates and communicates through sound. Extending beyond the ocean, the programme also draws on microbial ecology and philosophical thought to consider how life operates across distributed networks of sensing and response, and how concepts of interdependence challenge human-centred understandings of the world.
Spanning oceanic, ecological and embodied domains, these perspectives trace a continuum from organism to environment, inviting us to attend more carefully to forms of life beyond our own.
Speakers include Ersin Han Ersin (artist and director of Marshmallow Laser Feast), Dr. Alastair Gornall (Associate Professor in History and Religion at SUTD), Dr. Sanjay Swarup (Director of NUS Environmental Research Institute and Associate Professor at NUS Department of Biological Sciences) and Dr. Hari Vishnu (Senior Research Fellow and Principal Investigator at Acoustics Research Laboratory – NUS).
Image credits: Marshmallow Laser Feast, Seeing Echoes in the Mind of the Whale, 2024 – 2026. Image courtesy of the artist.
PROGRAMME OVERVIEW |
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2pm – 2.10pm |
Welcome and introduction by Zhang Bao Xin (Senior Curator of Public Programmes at ArtScience Museum) |
2.10pm – 2.40pm |
Ersin Han Ersin (artist and director of Marshmallow Laser Feast) introduces the collective’s practice of creating immersive environments that translate complex biological and ecological systems into embodied experience. Through Evolver and Seeing Echoes in the Mind of the Whale, he reflects on how artistic technologies can make non-human modes of sensing perceptible, inviting audiences to inhabit perspectives beyond the limits of the human body. |
2.40pm – 3pm |
Dr. Sanjay Swarup (Director of NUS Environmental Research Institute and Associate Professor at NUS Department of Biological Sciences) examines how microbial communities and ecological systems function as distributed networks of sensing and exchange. From microscopic interactions to larger environmental systems, his talk explores how life emerges through interconnected processes, revealing intelligence and responsiveness as collective ecological phenomena. |
3pm – 3.20pm |
Dr. Hari Vishnu (Senior Research Fellow and Principal Investigator at Acoustics Research Laboratory – NUS) draws on research in underwater acoustics and bioacoustics, exploring how marine life senses, navigates and communicates through sound. His talk reveals the ocean as a dynamic acoustic environment, where species inhabit richly layered sonic ecologies that challenge conventional human understandings of space and perception. |
3.20pm – 3.40pm |
Dr. Alastair Gornall (Associate Professor in History and Religion at SUTD) brings perspectives from Buddhist thought and reflects on how perception shapes our understanding of self and world. His talk considers how concepts of interdependence and relational existence challenge human-centred frameworks, offering philosophical perspectives on the entangled forms of life explored in the programme. |
3.40pm – 4pm |
Q&A with Ersin Han Ersin, Dr. Sanjay Swarup, Dr. Hari Vishnu and Dr. Alastair Gornall, moderated by Zhang Bao Xin |
Marshmallow Laser Feast (Ersin Han Ersin, Barnaby Steel, Robin McNicholas) joins ArtScience Museum as ArtScientists‑in‑Residence, bringing their distinctive research-led practice and immersive, multisensory storytelling to the institution. The London‑based artist collective investigates the entanglements between human perception and the more‑than‑human world, creating environments in which data becomes tangible, ecological systems become intimate and the invisible processes that sustain life are made perceptible.
In 2026, ArtScience Museum presents a year-long season of exhibitions and programmes that explore the wider ecology of life beyond the human, attending to the multispecies worlds, systems, and intelligences that shape the planet alongside us. Rather than centering the human as the primary actor, Forms of Life: Beyond the Human considers how life is co-shaped by other living entities.
Be a part of the conversation. Gain insights to a line-up of intriguing topics that showcase the best in arts and science.
21 Mar – 16 Aug 2026
Flesh and Bones traces anatomy as a shared language of art and science, where the body becomes medicine, cosmos, and a vessel for contemplating life, transformation, and afterlife.
6 Jun – 1 Nov 2026
Into the Ocean: Journey Beneath is a collaboration between ArtScience Museum and OceanX, making its world premiere this June. It invites visitors on a descent through the depths of the sea, from the sunlit surface waters to the darkest reaches of the ocean.