Photo // Synthesis
An installation by Jack Chown (kiskadee) & Neal Coghlan (Studio Aszyk)
Nature as Collaborator
What if plants, habitats, and weather systems weren’t just observed — but treated as co-creators of art?
Nature is at the heart of Photo // Synthesis. Composer Jack Chown (kiskadee) and digital artist Neal Coghlan (Studio Aszyk) began with a simple idea: what happens when you treat nature not just as inspiration, but as an active partner in making art?
Through collaboration with the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the National Trust for Jersey, they gathered sound and image directly from the island’s landscapes - birdsong at dawn, reeds in the wind, the textures of rare plants. These raw fragments became the foundation of the work.
Fragments of Time
Every plant scan and field recording captures a fleeting moment, given new permanence in sound and image.
The installation is built on the idea of preserving what is fleeting. A gust of wind. A bird’s call. A plant in bloom.
Using field recording and photogrammetry (a process of building 3D models from thousands of photographs), these moments are held in place, then reshaped into soundscapes and visuals. Each scan, each recording, becomes both documentation and transformation - at once archive and imagination.
The documentary shows the messy, tactile side of the process: climbing dunes, setting up microphones in the wind, scanning fragile leaves in changing light. It highlights the collaboration not just between artists, but between humans, nature, and conservationists.
DURRELL
An unseen world where rare crops grow to feed animals — prickly pear, cape gooseberry, feijoa, figs. A closed loop of nourishment.
For over 45 years, Durrell has operated an organic farm to grow food for the zoo’s animals. The farm is unusual in Europe: a closed-loop system where nothing is wasted. Animal manure becomes compost, compost feeds vegetables and fruit, and the harvest cycles back to the collection.
Here, the artists scanned unusual plants — prickly pear, cape gooseberry, chilean guava, figs — each scan a delicate portrait of resilience and adaptation.
“We’re the only known zoo in Europe with a working farm for the animals,” says farm manager Nick Morgan.
St Ouen’s Pond & Dunes
Once a landfill, now a fragile sanctuary for orchids, pinks, lizards, and migratory birds — a landscape of loss and recovery.
St Ouen’s is a living paradox: a place once used as a rubbish tip, now transformed into one of Jersey’s most biodiverse reserves. Wetlands, dunes, and grasslands sustain a shifting community of life: the delicate Jersey Pink (a wildflower found only here), migrating birds, reptiles, and rare orchids.
The fragility of this place is written into the work: habitats can be restored, but they are never permanent. The scans and sounds from St Ouen’s carry both beauty and precarity.
“It’s one of the most biodiverse areas of the island,” says ecologist Henry Glynn. “But these habitats are fragile, fragmented and need active care if they’re to survive.”
A Space for Reflection
Arms wide: forces grow, melodies rise. Hands together: calmness, and hidden poems emerge.
The installation responds to gesture.
Stretch your arms outward, and melodies unfurl like horizons. Draw your hands together, and stillness descends, revealing a hidden layer of poetry.
The audience is not passive. They are co-creators too.
Sit, stretch, explore. The installation responds to you — but it also asks you to pause and notice.
Above all, Photo // Synthesis is a place of quiet.
A gallery space reimagined as a breathing landscape — where audiences can slow down, wander, and reflect.
Not everything has to be activated. Sometimes the most powerful act is simply to sit, to notice, and to listen.
An Ongoing Conversation
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Photo // Synthesis is not a closed work. It is part of a longer process — a way of thinking about how nature and technology might coexist in art.
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Unreleased soundscapes from the installation
Behind-the-scenes stories and images
Updates on future projects
