During Art Basel Week, Rebgasse in Basel will be transformed into a center for digital art: the Digital Art Mile, launched by ArtMeta in 2024, is the international fair for digital art. It brings together leading artists, curators and innovators from all over the world and creates space for exchange, new perspectives and radical artistic experiments.

The media art project TWO, which was developed by Beat Brogle in collaboration with iart, will also be shown there from June 16 to 22, 2025. The work can be experienced in the courtyard of Manor, opposite Atelier space25, at Rebgasse 25. Admission is free.

An artistic future lab

TWO is an interactive long-term project that poses the question of whether virtual beings can develop an ego of their own. In collaboration between the artist Beat Brogle and iart, a mixed-reality installation was created that interweaves art, machine learning and spatial design. Two virtual creatures in the form of bubbles observe each other, react, learn and change their behavior over time. This is not about technological efficiency, but about artistic research on the boundary between digital life and subjective experience.

Observing and influencing

TWO can be experienced in several formats: As an immersive projection in a darkened room in which the bubbles appear to act independently. Online, via a so-called web window, which makes the continuous development process visible like a digital live cam. And in mixed reality, where visitors enter the bubbles' space of movement directly using VR glasses. In doing so, they influence their behavior - not as controls, but as a kind of physical obstacle. The bubbles perceive people, bypass them and react subtly.

This complex interaction creates a new form of interplay between humans and virtual creatures. Observers become participants, become a “disruptive factor” themselves or even a performative component of a system that is constantly changing.

A growing project with global reach

The first public presentation took place at the Mesh Festival Basel in fall 2024. TWO is now in a second development phase in which reinforcement learning methods are being used. Inspired by biological, social and ethical models. The aim is to research context-dependent, autonomous behavioral patterns.

TWO is not only present in Basel. The installation has already been shown at the Biennale Némo in Paris (fall 2025) and the Tabakalera Center in San Sebastián (June 2025) - each accompanied by discourse formats such as panels, workshops and talks. It will also be shown at the MAP Museum in Bangalore in July this year.

Behind TWO: an interdisciplinary team

In addition to the two project managers, Beat Brogle and Valentin Spiess, a broad-based team of software developers, interaction designers and sound artists from iart helped to bring the project to life. The project was supported by the Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft Film and Media Art Committee and the GGG Basel.

TWO at the Digital Art Mile Basel

📍 Manor courtyard (vis-à-vis space25), Rebgasse 25, Basel

📅 Monday, June 16 - Sunday, June 22, 2025

🕛 Daily 12:00 - 20:00

🎟️ Admission free