Alg@rithmus: Hybrid Ecologies, Living Materialities, and Algorithmic Epistemologies in the Work of Rafael Timoner

Alg@rithmus by Rafael Timoner is an artistic series that investigates the intersections between living organisms, industrial materials, and algorithmic logics, positioning itself at the core of contemporary debates on nature, technology, and hybrid ecologies. Through the use of manipulated algae and tar, the project constructs material configurations in which the organic and the artificial coexist in tension, generating an aesthetic space that challenges traditional ontologies.

From a posthumanist perspective, the work can be understood as an assemblage in which algae act as agents within a network that includes the artist, processes of manipulation, and algorithmic structures. Drawing on thinkers such as Haraway and Braidotti, the series embodies “naturecultures,” hybrid entities that dissolve the boundaries between the natural and the technological.

Within the field of living materialities, Alg@rithmus aligns with an expanded bioaesthetics that approaches the living through its agency and capacity to generate patterns. Biological temporalities introduced by the algae intertwine with the temporality of the artistic gesture and the abstraction of the algorithm, producing a processual aesthetic in constant transformation.

The project also resonates with algorithmic epistemologies: repetitive patterns, bifurcations, and compositional structures evoke modes of thought characteristic of computational culture. The work materializes algorithmic logic, revealing how living systems also operate through rules, rhythms, and variations.

Finally, the presence of tar introduces a critical ecological dimension linked to dark materialism and contemporary ecological theory, where the living and the toxic coexist. As a whole, Alg@rithmus functions as a conceptual laboratory that invites viewers to rethink agency, relationality, and co‑evolution in the technoscientific era.