We do not meet nature “out there” and technology “in here.” We encounter both through skins — surfaces that sense, protect, and translate. Skin is not only a boundary but a tool for interaction and memory. Trees do this through bark and growth rings, humans through the epidermis, and digital devices through screens and sensors. My practice begins at these thresholds, where surfaces act as living records and materials shape how we perceive and relate to the world.
When natural and digital skins overlap — through light, gesture, handmade silicone fabric, or projection — they form a shared system of response. In Intertwined Skins: Glitched Sublime (2025), layers of bark, human skin, and glitch textures react to a viewer’s hand movements. This creates a choreography in which looking becomes a form of touching and memory emerges through behaviour rather than representation. My aim is to encourage slower, more attentive forms of interaction that reveal how digital systems can echo natural rhythms instead of overwhelming them.
Surfaces also hold time. The furrow of bark, the crease of skin, and the wear of a screen all show traces of past interactions. In Tactile Memory (2025), projected textures merge tree bark with images of hands and faces. As viewers touch the screen, the image shifts, suggesting that every contact leaves a mark — like a wrinkle, a ring, or a glitch. Reading surfaces becomes a way of reading living and technological systems together, acknowledging how both hold stories of care, pressure, and change.
Touch carries ethical weight. Interaction is not simply a technique for engagement, but a form of responsibility. When an installation responds to gesture — either through contactless movement in Intertwined Skins or direct touch in Tactile Memory — it raises a question: how do we approach a surface? In both ecological and digital networks, meaningful relationships depend on exchange rather than extraction. The most important connections arise when presence is met with recognition.
Time operates differently across systems. Trees move in cycles of seasons, while devices operate in rapid digital intervals. My installations try to bring these tempos into dialogue by slowing down digital responses and amplifying natural rhythms. Soundscapes built from forest biorhythms, recorded through plant – wave sensors, create an acoustic bridge between organic and technological time. These shifts invite viewers to notice what is usually too slow or too fast to perceive.
“Digital skin” is a useful metaphor, but it does not replace the world. Instead, it creates space for the world to enter. The handmade silicone fabrics in my works stretch, crease, and shape the projected light; sensors misread; glitches appear as traces of systems meeting at different speeds and textures. These imperfections matter — they reveal the negotiations required when organic and digital materials coexist.
Attention itself can be reshaped. Screens become sites of care when they reveal more than novelty, and natural forms become collaborators when their patterns and behaviours inform the work. Whether in the immersive installation of Intertwined Skins or the intimate responsiveness of Tactile Memory, the most meaningful encounters occur in the shared zone where natural and digital logics overlap.
Every gesture becomes a small act of authorship. A lifted hand, a pause, or a shift in distance changes the composition of surfaces and light. Perception becomes a shared process in which bodies, materials, and systems all participate. This collaborative approach reflects my wider interest in interdependence — how humans, non-human forms, and technologies continually shape one another.
In the end, the goal is not to choose between natural and digital skins but to inhabit both with greater awareness. To slow down, to notice, and to respond with care. All surfaces carry traces of life. To touch thoughtfully is to recognise our entanglement with the world and to acknowledge that attention itself can be a form of reciprocity. Through this sensitivity to materials — silicone, bark, skin, or screen— we can discover new forms of connection and belonging.
— 2025
Digital Skin: A Tree’s Monologue. Through the voice of an ancient Oak
References
Books
- Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things.
- Bridle, J. (2022). Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence.
- Essinger, J. (2007). Jacquard’s Web: How a Hand-Loom Led to the Birth of the Information Age.
- Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press. (See chapter: Tentacular Thinking)
- Hildyard, D. (2017). The Second Body.
- Donna Haraway, (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Chapter: Tentacular Thinking).
- Marks, L. U. (2000). The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses.
- Wohlleben, P. (2016). The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World.
Online Source
- Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Women in computing. In Wikipedia.from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computin
Artists Mentioned
- Tony Oursler
- Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg
- Harri Harrison
About the Artist
Zhannet Podobed is a Ukrainian multidisciplinary artist currently based in London. Her work spans digital art, painting, interactive media and installation, focusing on themes that explore the intersection of nature, humanity, and technology. Zhannet graduated from the MA Fine Arts: Computational Arts at Camberwell College of Arts, UAL in 2025.
Follow her works on Instagram at @zhannetpodobed
Websites: https://zhannetpodobed.com/
https://zhannetpodobed-ual.tilda.ws/