Jurģis Peters (FI/LV) and Laura Beloff (FI)
The Black Fly
Interactive installation
2025 / 2026
The Black Fly, Jurģis Peters, Imatra, Finland, 2025
The Black Fly is an interactive installation that explores the boundary between the natural and the synthetic, the attractive and the repulsive. The work is based on a real-time projection that gradually transforms the viewer’s reflection into a hybrid form of a human and a fly, which after a short time transforms back into a human. The work takes its cue from the unexplained mass appearance of black flies (mäkäräinen) in the city of Imatra, Finland. The fleeting physical metamorphosis created by the work addresses the inevitability of our coexistence and the tension it generates. This fleeting and distinctly physical experience highlights the discomfort we often feel toward both artificial life and the “undesirable” elements of our ecosystem. However, rather than striving for a harmonious symbiosis, the installation highlights a quiet and inevitable coexistence.
Jurģis Peters is a new media artist and doctoral researcher (at the University of Tampere, Finland) based in Helsinki who explores the interconnection between humans and artificial intelligence (AI). He creates interactive and generative systems based on the viewer’s body data, thereby establishing real-time feedback loops between the viewer and AI. Jurģis holds a Master of Arts (MA) in Audiovisual Art from the Art Academy of Latvia and a Master of Science (MSc) in Computer Science from the University of Birmingham.