AI-AR Sculpture - launched August 2025
Gill Gatfield, Habeas Corpus
NARS Foundation NYC

CHIP is a mixed reality sculpture with two interconnected parts – a white stone column and a small digital I-form revealed in extended reality (XR). The minimalist plinth is both a sculptural object and a support for sculpture. It holds a gold barcode: a gilded portal scanned to release the I-figure using a mobile phone and the artist’s bespoke app. The figure rises on top evoking a primordial totem or a classical pedestal-bust in the digital age.

This virtual 'chip' is carved from the codified ancient heartwood of a giant tree in a buried forest in Aotearoa New Zealand, carbon-dated to over 45,000 years. Standing as a universal and personal symbol, it embodies a fragment of time and existence in 3D pixels. Forged by artificial intelligence (AI), this micro-chip serves as both interface and artifact, preserving the roots of evolution as a digital echo. Intersecting ancestral, ecological and technological domains, CHIP navigates the crossroads between physical absence and perceptual presence.