Morteeeza :: Incarnation

Fakewhale continues its commitment to exploring artistic practices that expand the relationship between digital and physical space, reinforcing the idea of art as a catalyst for new perceptual models and new forms of presence. Within this framework, Incarnation by Morteeeza (Morteza Mahdizadeh) stands as a key point from which to observe how body, image, and technology shape a shared ecosystem of reality.

Incarnation unfolds as a territory where perception enters a state of continuous construction. Morteeeza’s exhibition at Dayhim Innovation Factory articulates three moments of this formation through a language in which the body becomes interface, medium, and sensorial field. Anatomy of Pain, Blindness, and Ontogeny emerge as three articulations of a single inquiry: how does a body take form when image, technology, and presence operate within the same system.

Entering the industrial space introduces a state of suspension. The installations do not occupy space but transform it into an environment that responds to position, movement, and proximity. The exhibition behaves like an organism that converts perception into active material. The viewer’s body becomes part of the sensory infrastructure and the technological apparatus acquires an almost epidermal dimension.

Anatomy of Pain opens with a mirrored environment that multiplies gesture and constructs a geography of reflections. The digital body activates through hand motion and generates a continuous interplay between physical presence and image. Sensitivity becomes spatial, and the relation between light and figure produces a tactile perception of distance.

Blindness introduces a logic of instability. The rotating display transfers its momentum to a digital body governed by gravity. Sound and vibration travel across the floor and orient the experience toward a permanent state of tension. The rotating figure advances along a trajectory of sustained adaptation that reshapes the notion of control.

Ontogeny proposes a vision of growth as a generative phenomenon. Embryonic forms, produced through a model trained on high-definition pathological imagery, emerge across twelve screens that respond to proximity. Noise, distortion, and variations in luminosity create a perceptual rhythm that transforms observation into direct engagement with the evolution of the image. Formation unfolds inside the technological realm and the body appears as an event in a continuous state of becoming.

Incarnation develops a theory of the image as presence. The installations transform the relation between body and media into a shared system in which every gesture generates change and every change returns as sensory effect. Perception becomes active material and technology becomes an extension of the body.

The exhibition positions itself within contemporary discussions on digital embodiment and subject formation in hybrid ecosystems. Morteeeza offers a vision in which the body functions as a structure in continuous transformation. The image becomes a field, technology becomes tactility, and presence becomes a coordinated act between physical and computed reality.

To expand the conceptual horizon of Incarnation and deepen the underlying questions that guide its architecture, Fakewhale developed a Dialog Flow that invites Morteeeza to reflect on the ideas that shape his vision and the evolving role of embodiment within his practice.

Fakewhale: Your work transforms perception into active material. How do you imagine the future of embodiment in environments where the body, the image, and the machine co-produce the same field of experience?

Morteeeza: I see embodiment shifting toward a condition where sensory experience is co-generated rather than individually owned. When body, image, and machine produce the same experiential field, the old boundaries dissolve into a shared ecology of responsiveness. The body stops being an external observer and becomes an active component within the circuitry. So the future of embodiment is not about augmenting physical ability. It’s about the emergence of hybrid perceptual organs. These are sites where biological sensation and computational feedback collide to generate new forms of presence. We are moving into environments that sense us as intimately as we sense them.

Fakewhale: Incarnation creates a space where formation remains in a perpetual state of transition. What does “becoming” represent to you as an artistic method, and how does it open new possibilities for understanding subjectivity?

Morteeeza: “Becoming” is not a metaphor for me. It is an operational condition. It describes a system, whether biological or digital, that remains deliberately unfinished and open to ongoing reconfiguration. As an artistic method, becoming replaces representation with emergence. Instead of constructing images of subjects, I build the conditions through which subjectivity can surface. This instability reframes the self as something undefinable. It becomes a trajectory, a gradient, or a negotiation between forces. It positions the body not as a fixed identity but as a continuously unfolding event.

Blindness, Morteeeza, exhibited in Incarnation, Dayhim Innovation Art Factory, Tehran (2025)

Fakewhale: Blindness introduces a form of instability that reshapes the viewer’s position. How do you conceive the role of uncertainty as a creative force inside technological systems?

Morteeeza: Uncertainty returns agency to both the system and the viewer. We often imagine technological systems as deterministic, yet meaningful interaction depends on the capacity for unpredictability. We need spaces where the system can deform, resist, or exceed expectations. In Blindness, instability is the generative force. The rotating body is never fully controllable; it responds to gravity, velocity, and friction. This unpredictability pushes the viewer into heightened attention. Here, uncertainty is not a malfunction. It is the most human and sensorial dimension of technology.

Fakewhale: Ontogeny reinterprets growth through a computational model trained on pathological imagery. In your view, how can technology generate new forms of interiority beyond biological paradigms?

Morteeeza: Technology can generate interiorities unconstrained by biological survival or evolutionary logic. A computational model trained on pathological structures learns grammars of deviation like mutation, collapse, and asymmetry. These patterns allow technology to imagine growth as divergence rather than improvement. Interiority emerges through noise, reconfiguration, and failure. Technology here does not imitate biology. It produces alternative anatomies of feeling and inner worlds the biological body alone could not generate.

Fakewhale: Your practice merges electronics, cinematic language, and emotional states into a unified architecture. What guides your decisions when translating sensation into structure, and how do you envision the next phase of your research?

Morteeeza: I am guided by the desire to give form to intensities rather than events. I want to translate the atmospheric and pre-verbal into spatial behavior. Electronics function as a nervous system, cinematic language provides temporal logic, and emotion becomes the energetic field that organizes the whole architecture.

Moving forward, my focus is on sculptural forms that possess their own autonomy. I am drawn to structures that behave like independent organisms: sensing, resisting, and evolving. Ultimately, I aim to create perceptual ecosystems where the viewer witnesses an unfolding process, yet one where their very presence has the potential to disrupt.