PHYGITAL FORMATION EXHIBITION

The “Phygital Formation” project is an exhibition that aims to explore the way contemporary society exists intertwined with digital spaces, the new meanings that this synthetic world adds to human existence, and the hybrid identity created in the search between the fluid realities of the physical and the digital.

The “Phygital Formation” project is based on the concept of “phygital,” a marketing term referring to the synthesis of physical and digital experiences. Here, we interpret the “phygital” concept in a multi-layered sense—that is, in the sense of connecting physical and digital realms—and we argue that this is necessary to produce hybrid meanings based on the potential of digital technologies to influence and transform human existence.

In our technology-shaped future, the direction of change and transformation is leading us towards the phenomenon of "digitalization." However, currently, the phenomenon of "digitalization" constructs existence as a structure confined to a virtual space, disregarding the physical nature of existence. The future of digitalization, shaped by technology, should be placed within the realm of societal relationships, and the layers to which it extends should be demonstrated. In this context, phygitality, where the physical and the digital coexist, will represent an expanded reality where, in the future, there will not be an immutable virtuality specific only to meta-environments, but digitalization will expand to encompass humans, machines, plants, animals, and all aspects of existence, bringing together all cultural fields such as science, technology, biology, zoology, philosophy, and art.

The exhibition's conceptual framework revolves around physical and digital reality. This framework is based on Haraway's theories of "coexistence" and "multiple existence," which she sets forth in her figurations such as "The Cyborg Manifesto," "Companion Species," and "The Humble Witness." Haraway's theories generally "connect actors and practices" and produce "meanings and bodies that have a chance for the future." According to Haraway, "Cyberhumans and companion species bring together the human and the non-human, the organic and the technological, carbon and silicon, freedom and structure, history and myth, rich and poor, state and subject, diversity and extinction, modernity and postmodernity, nature and culture in unexpected ways."

Haraway's departure from mainstream ontological paradigms, her blurring of boundaries between nature, culture, and technology, and her subversion of hierarchies between species, genders, and identities, is a strategy aimed at enhancing human capacity, expanding its limits, and establishing a broader network of relationships with the universe. In fact, this strategy, while eroding identities on the one hand, expands shared living spaces by producing synthetic categories on the other. According to Haraway, technologies and scientific discourses can be understood partly as formalized forms—that is, frozen moments—of the fluid social interactions that constitute them; however, they should also be seen as tools for putting meaning into practice. In this context, our "Phygital Formation" project, based on Haraway's theories of "multiplicity," focuses on investigating the patterns of meaning created by phygitalization, a field evolving from digitalization. Thus, the broad framework of physical and digital transformation will become an opportunity to transcend boundaries in terms of existence, creating a technological, scientific, and futuristic totality and a methodology.