The Forest – Alone Together - 1
Video, 2025
About the artwork
The forest stands as a paradox – alive with movement, yet deeply isolating. The Cripples wander among strange beings, each radiating emotions of joy, despair, fear, or longing. Surrounded by life, they are paradoxically alone. This part of the series dives into the digital connection that masquerades as true intimacy. The forest becomes a metaphor for the sprawling web of social media, where connection is instant but shallow, and where the more we reach out, the further apart we feel. The Cripples themselves embody this struggle – some laugh among the shadows, others cry under a digital glow, and many stare blankly at the screens embedded in their surroundings. Their faces reflect the burden of comparison, validation, and constant performance. The beings they walk among mirror them – distorted and raw. What does it mean to feel lonely in a crowd of millions? This question lingers, as the forest invites us to sit with the discomfort of our modern solitude.
Credits: Ümüt Yildiz & Simon Toni Rowas
Sound Design by Aleksandar Nikolic
Audio explanation
Listen to Ümüt Yildiz discuss this work.
Ümüt Yildiz is a lecturer of Creative Coding in Design at Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences and lives in Cologne and Berlin, where he has been exploring artificial intelligence since 2018. Outside of his teaching, he often collaborates with artists such as Cro, and Bilderbuch and brands such as Bulgari, Tods, and Vogue Italia, testing the limits of current technologies.
He participated as an exhibitor in the NFT Pavilion 2022 Venice Biennale. His work is characterized by themes of humanism and controversy through the use of original production. The intervention of artificial intelligence in the visual material of original production allows an interpretation of reality free from the mechanisms of rationalist self-determination of man, introducing the concept of "memory" of the machine, which does not preserve any experience paradigms or culture inherent in human nature. Visual works are created that catalyze the world of the irrational and the unconscious, where the need to create order is less, leaving room for a more intuitive and ancient vision of the subject.