SAUNA LAB ODC 2025 Exhibition and Presentation
SAUNA LAB ODC 2025 marks BiOVE’s presentation and exhibition at the Organoid Developer Conference 2025 in Seoul.
SAUNA LAB 시리즈는 바이오브 BiOVE 대표 염인화의 생성형 AI 기반 비디오 설치 및 예술연구 시리즈로, 기후위기 시대의 지식 위계와 자본주의적 가치 체계를 비판적으로 재사유하는 작업입니다. 이 프로젝트는 아시아 온천 문화의 유산, 노화하는 몸, 전통적·체화된 지식, 그리고 AI 기반 영상 환경을 통해 과학 자본 중심의 담론 바깥에 있는 대안적 가치 체계를 제안하고자 합니다.
본 프로젝트는 ODC 2025에서 Day 01 Session 02: Organoid Intelligence 발표와 함께, Organoid Developer Conference 2025 exhibition의 초청 전시로도 소개되었습니다. 전시작은 series (2024–25)이며, 멀티채널 비디오 설치 기반의 3D 퍼포머티브 장치-환경(멀티 채널 비디오 설치) 형식으로 서울 마곡 코엑스에서 선보여졌습니다.
BiOVE presented and exhibited SAUNA LAB at Organoid Developer Conference (ODC) 2025, held on June 13–14, 2025 at COEX Magok, Seoul. ODC25 was framed not simply as an academic conference, but as a festival-format event bringing together science, art, and culture. Within this context, SAUNA LAB was introduced both as a research presentation and as an exhibition-based artistic project.
The project was supported by Artience Daejeon and the Daejeon Foundation for Arts & Culture, and was presented by Inhwa Yeom in collaboration with Youngjeon Lee, PhD, a researcher at KRIBB. The presentation took place in Day 01, Session 02: “Organoid Intelligence,” a session themed around the convergence of next-generation artificial intelligence and biological computing.
About the Project
SAUNA LAB: Towards Alternative Knowledge Capital in the Climate Change Era is an ongoing series of artistic research and iterative works that challenges dominant hierarchies of climate knowledge and capitalist valuation through Asian thermal bath culture heritage, aging bodies, and AI-powered moving-image environments. The project asks how embodied, place-based, and intergenerational forms of knowledge might operate as alternative systems of value in the climate crisis era.
Developed within BiOVE’s framework of the AI-powered 3D performative apparatus-environment, SAUNA LAB redefines relationships between aging communities, traditional wisdom, scientific capital, and technological mediation. In this framework, AI is not treated merely as a tool for visual production, but as part of a performative environment through which new value structures and new modes of sensing can emerge.
Presentation at ODC 2025
SAUNA LAB ODC 2025 brought together exhibition, presentation, and artistic research within ODC’s science-art-culture platform.
At ODC 2025, SAUNA LAB was presented in Session 02: Organoid Intelligence, which focused on how emerging AI and biological computing open new frameworks for understanding life, intelligence, and innovation. Positioned within that setting, the project extended the conversation beyond technical development alone, asking how art can intervene in the politics of knowledge, value, and environmental futures.
The presentation emphasized that climate discourse should not be shaped only by institutional science, productivity metrics, or market-centered innovation. Instead, SAUNA LAB foregrounds aging, thermal culture, embodied memory, and collective survival knowledge as meaningful and undervalued forms of intelligence.
Exhibition at ODC 2025
As both a conference presentation and an invited exhibition, SAUNA LAB ODC 2025 highlighted BiOVE’s approach to Gen AI-based performative environments.
In addition to the conference presentation, SAUNA LAB was also shown in the Organoid Developer Conference 2025 exhibition as an invited artwork. The exhibited work was listed as the <SAUNA LAB> series (2024–25) in the format of a 3D Performative Apparatus-Environment (Multi-Channel Video Installation). This exhibition took place during the same ODC25 program at Magok COEX, Seoul, further situating the project within ODC’s broader convergence of scientific innovation and creative practice.
Artistic Context
The SAUNA LAB series has unfolded through iterations across Daejeon, Hualien, and Hong Kong, tracing how local thermal cultures, aging populations, climate anxiety, and biotechnological imaginaries intersect across different Asian urban contexts. Through these iterations, the work proposes that artistic research can help validate marginalized forms of embodied knowledge and imagine alternative models of capital beyond extractive and market-driven systems.
Rather than understanding aging as decline, the project approaches aging bodies as carriers of memory, adaptation, and alternative temporalities. Rather than treating climate response as a matter of technical efficiency alone, SAUNA LAB explores slower, more communal, and culturally embedded forms of environmental intelligence. These questions are central to BiOVE’s ongoing work at the intersection of AI, XR, performance, and artistic research.
Abstract
SAUNA LAB: Towards Alternative Knowledge Capital in the Climate Change Era
Keywords: AI, Aging, Biocapital, Alternative/Speculative Research
SAUNA LAB is a series of artistic research and iterations that challenge climate knowledge hierarchies and capitalist valuations through Asian thermal bath culture heritage and aging bodies. Within the framework of AI-powered “3D performative apparatus-environment,” the works redefine relationships between aging communities, traditional wisdom, and scientific capital, while proposing alternative systems of values. Through iterations in three Asian cities—Daejeon, Hualien, and Hong Kong—the series demonstrates how this performative approach establishes alternative capital structures and validates marginalized forms of embodied knowledge, suggesting methodological possibilities for climate technology and discourse beyond market-driven metrics.
Event Details
- Event: Organoid Developer Conference (ODC) 2025, website
- Dates: June 13–14, 2025
- Venue: COEX Magok, Seoul
- Session: Day 01, Session 02 — Organoid Intelligence
- Session Theme: Convergence of next-generation artificial intelligence and biological computing
- Presentation by: Youngjeon Lee, PhD (KRIBB Researcher) and Inhwa Yeom (BiOVE)
- Exhibition format: <SAUNA LAB> series (2024–25), 3D Performative Apparatus-Environment (Multi-Channel Video Installation)
- Support: Artience Daejeon, Daejeon Foundation for Arts & Culture
- Produced by: BiOVE