zAIgote was founded by Aspasia Destouni , a researcher in reproductive genomics by trade. As a kid and haunted by the sporadic dramatic episodes and the anthropomorphic figures in the ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ by Jheronimus Bosch, she would daydream about how would the things we cannot see with our eyes actually look like. Her curiosity about the ‘invisible’ or the ‘visually unattainable’ found astronomy and biology as magnifying lenses for the unseen macro and micro-cosmos, respectively. It was art however that held a uniquely liberating power by defying the constraints of the natural world through imagination. How many worlds or realities can we ‘see’ , how many realities can we narrate?

The artist and the scientist , the creators, are invited to capture the ‘unseen’ and render it optically available to narrate an existential history. Human imagination is now augmented by AI and who knows how this magnifying lens or kaleidoscope will transform the creative process in art, science and technology? What new ‘unseens’ or ‘regenerated seens’ will become visible ?

In this rapidly evolving landscape zAIgote seeks to bring together the dreamers and the creators to discuss, revisit and meld ideas about creativity and imagination in art and science.

zAIgote emerged from a visit at the Tate after seeing Eileen Agar’s painting ‘The autobiography of an Embryo’. Eileen has been an immense inspiration for this initiative, which is dedicated to her and to every daydreamer that alchemizes ideas into sensed reality.