Holons & Holarchy

Conceptually rooted in Arthur Koestler’s book Ghost in the Machine, Holons & Holarchy is an expanded body of work that contains prints, interactive web-art, digital objects, and video work. Together, they all reference the concept of Holon, where holos means the whole, and -on refers to the particle or the part. This single concept flattens the duality of whole-part and is an ontological tool to understand the complexity of systems around us. Koestler uses the ancient Roman figure Janus – the guardian of doorways and a symbol of time as a metaphor to explain the duality of a Holon. This body of work pulls these references from Ghost in the Machine and reinterprets them through the lens of creative computation to create artifacts, which refer to systems, time, and the universe.


Amay Kataria is a new-media artist whose practice reflects upon the speed of communication and how it has transformed our post-modern society. It intends to destabilize this pace by putting forth situations for “contemplative understanding.” By using time as material and repurposing processes, his practice advocates that the mechanization of social experience directly affects the inter-relational space between humans. He holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was previously a new-media resident at Art Center Nabi and Mana Contemporary. He has exhibited at Vector Festival, Hyde Park Art Center, Ars Electronica, Electromuseum, amongst others.