Symbiosis 3.0: Artificial Flavour curated by Richard Bakes and Shan Wong (Flyingpig) examines the deepening symbiosis between natural phenomena and human-made artefacts. Drawing from the food industry—where synthetic compounds mimic or replace natural tastes—it employs artificial flavour as a powerful metaphor. With prolonged exposure, people gradually forget the original taste: the synthetic version becomes the new norm, reshaping memory and perception while demanding ever-stronger, more intense iterations to satisfy the senses and sustain excitement—an insatiable, self-perpetuating cycle that, once begun, never ends. Lenka Bakes explores biological plasticity through anomalies such as the starfish strawberry, as well as genetic interventions—technology, psychedelics, urban environments—and how these reconfigure identity and perception. Foreseen Agency in Unconnected Broadband transforms Hong Kong’s colonial staircases into game-like maps that lure curiosity to fuel endless revelation. Similarly, Liao Jiaming in Open Yourselves (Ourselves) manipulates AI-altered dating-app images, transferring faded results onto worn clothing to capture how algorithmic reconstructions intensify queer desire.

Some works subtly resist technological dominance: Miroslava Večeřová (with Lucie Kordačová) in Arietis Sisters and the Sun embrace ecofeminist harmony while acknowledging how artificial forces threaten to overwrite these organic rhythms. Stanislav Zábrodský dramatises computational collapse by imprinting failing digital infrastructures onto molten tin, producing chaotic bio-mimetic forms that mimic natural processes in the Anthropocene. Lenka Glisníková bakes digital prints with plaster and polymers into tactile hybrid objects resembling processed food, dissolving boundaries between the artificial and the organic.

To simulate the artificial world, Eason Tsang Ka Wai in Tape archives everyday logistics tape of urban traces from transportation and packaging, highlighting how hyper-capitalist technological progression traps the self within endless cycles of consumption and dystopian anxiety. Ruba Al-Sweel in Plastic Pilgrims traces a stolen phone’s journey through mythologised e-waste chains, exposing technology’s seductive promise of connectivity as a disposability-driven cycle that overwrites social realities. Debbie Ding in Aunty 101: Drift Alley immerses viewers in a cyberpunk VR world of marginal digital economies, demonstrating how synthetic architectures supplant original realities with addictive, escalating immersion and fragile care. The exhibition reveals how today’s rapid technological development drives humans to adapt to and increasingly depend on devices, blurring the boundaries between the organic and the engineer.