Lisa Barnard: You Only Look Once. After Nature Prize 25

In her first major project in four years, British artist Lisa Barnard considers perception in relation to both human and machine experience. She addresses the complexity of technological progress and the ecological resources on which its promises depend.

Barnard’s research focuses on California, unfolding a multilayered, fragmented and nonlinear story that encompasses photographs, an immersive video installation, archival interventions, alternative printing strategies and AI-generated image analyses that weave together in the creation of a dense visual entanglement.

The project’s starting point is the Salton Sea in Southern California. This area previously served as a site for military testing during World War II, but has now become the site of economic desire and technological solutionism in the form of lithium extraction. Barnard’s work depicts the clear signs of ecological depletion of this once flourishing environment, while addressing the military gaze that is tied to the site and part of its complex history.

Barnard continues to explore how technologies that rely on vision and soundwaves impact interactions between humans and machines. Using echolocation in bats, Barnard focuses on current modes of object detection that are now ubiquitous in autonomous vehicles. Much like humans, these systems rely on a wide range of sensors and imagery in order to perceive and navigate the world. Although artificial intelligence learning programs such as “You Only Look Once” enable real-time object detection, machines will never have genuine or conscious experience.

In You Only Look Once, Barnard makes us aware of the parallels and differences between human, animal, and machine consciousness, and of the moments when recognizing the world devolves into an active way of shaping it. Reflecting on the extent to which today’s global multicrises are interconnected, Barnard comments on the entanglements created by machine “autonomy”. So, at a time when the climate is in crisis, we must ask how technologies can be developed that are not only efficient but also sensitive to the world they are intended to capture.

The double exhibition is curated by Katharina Täschner, Junior Curator at C/O Berlin. A corresponding publication will be released by Hartmann Books for each exhibition. After their first stop at C/O Berlin, the exhibitions will be on view in spring 2026 at the Open Space of the Crespo Foundation in Frankfurt am Main.