Created by Nathalie Gebert, Anthofluid is an installation that uses electric currents to stimulate fluid anthocyanin solution to draw pigmental paths across the gridded surface. For Nathalie, this process reflects the flexibility of matter and the fluid dynamics of material life, as explored in, among others, hydrofeminist discourse.
Anthofluid shows a liquid painting where the matter itself is alive. It is not just a passive substrate but an active participant in the creation of volatile images. It’s a rejection of solid, autonomous forms — embracing becoming over being.
Nathalie Gebert
Anthocyanins are plant pigments that can be found in blue, dark-blue, purple, and red vegetables and fruits. In Anthofluid, water acts as an unstable archive, continuously reabsorbing and transforming each trace of anthocyanin. Through the heat of the reaction, these traces are provoked into movement where they stretch, bleed or dissolve. They do not settle into stable forms but keep shifting, fading, and re-emerging.
Hinting at Astrida Neimanis, who frames water as a force that connects all bodies – metaphorically and materially – through space and time. Hydrofeminism aims to dissolve the ideas of boundaries between the self and the environment, human and non-human, seeing bodies (both biological and non-biological) as porous and always in exchange with the world around them.
The installation uses water-red cabbage solution, aluminum profile, plexiglass, Arduino, silicone tube, motors, valves, microcontroller, glass container, 2x 12V power supply, 1x 5V power supply, cables, and 3D printed parts.
Project Page | Nathalie Gebert
Project was developed at the Digital Media Bremen program, Conceptual support by Prof. Dr. Andrea Sick, Prof. Dennis Paul and Prof. Ralf Baecker. Exhibited at the graduates of the Digital Media and Integrated Design exhibition at Bremen University of the Arts (HfK), 15.10 to 24.10, 2024 and Fließender Übergang, bbk Jahresausstellung 2025, curated by Clara Kramer, Künstler:innenhaus Bremen 04.04. – 25.05.2025.
