October, 29, 2026, Mountain View, CA -- What does it mean to be alive? How could life adapt to places beyond Earth? Could intelligence and consciousness exist in ways we have not yet imagined?
The SETI Institute welcomes three international artists to its Artist-in-Residence (AIR) program: Amy Karle (USA), Dorotea Dolinšek (Slovenia), and Johannes Heldén (Sweden). These artists work in bioart, biotechnology, experimental poetry, and interactive media. Through collaborations with SETI Institute scientists, they will bring fresh creative perspectives to fundamental questions about life, intelligence and consciousness.
Each artist brings a unique approach to their work. Karle joins the Speculative Life: BioArt Residency . Dolinšek receives the new Catalyst Award for Transdisciplinary Research. Heldén joins the Cosmic Consciousness Literary Residency .
“Scientists and artists often ask the same fundamental questions, but approach them in very different ways,” said Dr. Bettina Forget , Director of the SETI Institute’s Artist-in-Residence program . “These three artists challenge us to think differently about what life might look like, how we might adapt to other worlds, and what intelligence and consciousness could mean beyond our own human experience. That’s what makes these collaborations so exciting.”
Amy Karle | Speculative Life: BioArt Residency
American artist Amy Karle works at the intersection of art, biology, and emerging technologies, exploring how scientific advances might transform our understanding of life and its possibilities. Her work includes bioart, sculpture, digital technologies, and immersive installations.
How would we recognize life that is completely different from anything we know on Earth? During her residency, Karle will explore this question through The First Cell and the Last , an artistic investigation into how life emerges, survives, and leaves traces across biological and planetary scales. Drawing on astrobiology and biosignature research, the project considers how we might identify living systems fundamentally different from those on Earth.
Working with SETI Institute scientists, Karle plans to create an immersive installation with sculpture, sensory, and interactive features. The installation will invite audiences to reconsider the boundaries between living and nonliving matter.
With advice from Danielle Siembieda and Rolando Perez, the Speculative Life: BioArt Residency links artistic research with astrobiology, biotechnology, and questions about what the future of life could be.
Dorotea Dolinšek | Catalyst Award for Transdisciplinary Research
Slovenian artist Dorotea Dolinšek combines contemporary art, biology, technology, and space exploration in her work. Her installations explore the relationship between the human body and its environment, challenging conventional distinctions between human and nonhuman life. She has shown her work at events like Ars Electronica and the European Patent Office.
What if living beyond Earth meant we had to change ourselves instead of changing other planets? Dolinšek’s project, Endoforming , explores this idea by looking at the relationship between humans, microorganisms, and environments beyond Earth.
Drawing on research into microorganisms that survive in extreme conditions, the human microbiome, and planetary geology, she proposes developing an experimental Exo-Gut Bioreactor to investigate how microbes interact with simulated lunar material. The project imagines a future where humans and their microbes adapt together to new environments, challenging usual ideas about space exploration and living on other worlds.
Her research will lead to an interactive installation that brings lab processes to the public. It will invite people to think about symbiosis, how living things adapt, and the ethics of humans moving into space.
Dolinšek has received the new Catalyst Award for Transdisciplinary Research. This award supports creative projects that cross different fields and encourage conversations between art and science.
Johannes Heldén | Cosmic Consciousness Literary Residency
Johannes Heldén is a Swedish writer, visual artist, and musician who creates work that explores ecology, sentience, language, and possible futures. He works in poetry, digital literature, sound, video, and installation. He has published 18 books, including the well-known Astroecology , and has shown his work at major exhibitions including the Gwangju Biennale, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, and Desert X.
Can the way we read and experience language change how we see consciousness? During his residency, Heldén will look into this question with Prisoners Cinema , an experimental poetry project about the links between vision, language, and awareness.
Drawing on patterns found in nature, technology, and potentially SETI research data, he plans to develop an interactive system that generates and transforms poetic texts. By experimenting with the visual arrangement of language and how our eyes move across text, the project explores how reading itself might produce unfamiliar experiences of perception and self-awareness.
With guidance from Gregory Betts, the Cosmic Consciousness Literary Residency encourages writers and poets to explore ideas about consciousness, intelligence, and new ways of communicating beyond what we know, using experimental literary forms.
Art and Science in Dialogue
The SETI Institute’s Artist-in-Residence program brings artists and scientists together to explore questions that neither group can answer alone. By encouraging creative experiments and teamwork, the program helps people think in new ways about life, intelligence, and our place in the universe.
From imagining unfamiliar forms of life to reconsidering how humans might survive beyond Earth and exploring the nature of consciousness, these three artists reflect the curiosity and willingness to challenge assumptions that drive the SETI Institute’s scientific mission.
About the SETI Institute
Founded in 1984, the SETI Institute is a nonprofit, multidisciplinary research and education organization whose mission is to lead humanity’s quest to understand the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence in the universe and to share that knowledge with the world. Its research encompasses the physical and biological sciences and leverages expertise in data analytics, machine learning and advanced signal detection technologies. The SETI Institute is a distinguished research partner for industry, academia and government agencies, including NASA and the National Science Foundation.
Contact Information
Rebecca McDonald
Director of Communications
SETI Institute
rmcdonald@seti.org