Coding Drops
Points of Confluence between Art and Science
As a continuation of the artistic research project AfterLand, carried out throughout 2024 in the Danube Delta, Qolony Association returns this year with a deeper exploration of the intersections between different aspects of water: the project Coding Drops. From a multifaceted cultural symbol to a computational model, from a source of anthropological narrative lines to inspiration for technological processes, water is itself a unique confluence of various forms of knowledge. Artists Mark IJzerman (Netherlands), Floriama Candea (Romania), and Ioana Vreme Moser (Romania/Germany) present a series of works that explore these intersections in an exhibition opening on August 26 at /SAC Berthelot.
The Coding Drops project is the result of a collaboration with the Danube Delta National Institute for Research and Development (INCDDD) and the National Institute for Research and Development in Laser, Plasma, and Radiation Physics (INFLPR), institutions with which the artists began their exchange of ideas and approaches last year. The resulting works thus carry a strong aesthetic inspired by the scientific field, offering original representations of how art can be nourished by research, both conceptually and in concrete implementation.
Mark IJzerman recently began researching the pollution discharged into the sea by industries located upstream of rivers, during a residency at Pier-2 in Taiwan, and continued this line of inquiry in his work Watershed (Final Call). Using reactive textiles, underwater sounds, and microscopic projections, he visually traces the path and impact of polluted waters through the filtering layers of the Danube Delta.
Ioana Vreme Moser’s project, entitled Nautophone Telecom, focuses on raw materials for electronic components, fluidics, and telecommunications, reactivating the acoustic signals once used for navigation through the Danube Delta in a work that is both visual and sonic.
For Floriama Candea, the focal point was the identification of photosynthetic organisms and the understanding of the respiratory processes of underwater life forms (at the cellular, animal, or plant level). Her work, Neural Bloom, uses a series of luminous, reactive sculptural nodes inspired by aquatic plants and activated by the carbon dioxide exhaled by viewers, offering a visceral perspective on the exchanges between living beings, united by the atmosphere they breathe.
The exhibition will be open to the public in Bucharest between August 26 and September 18. In the meantime, the team will travel on September 4 to Linz, Austria, where they will record a podcast responding to questions about the project. Then, between October 2 and 12, the works will travel to Timișoara, where they will be exhibited at the Simultan Festival.
The Coding Drops works translate a remarkable conceptual complexity into visual installations with immediate emotional impact, telling otherwise invisible stories and challenging the boundaries between artistic activity and scientific research.
Dates: August 26 – September 18, 2025
Visiting hours: Thursday–Saturday, 4–8 PM
Location: /SAC – 5 Berthelot St., Intercom 10