Robin Meier and Ali Momeni, The Tragedy of the Commons (2011)
Photo: Aurélie Cenno

Swiss artist and composer Robin Meier has been selected by the Swiss luxury watch manufacturer Audemars Piguet for the company’s inaugural Audemars Piguet Art Commission, to be unveiled at Art Basel in Basel next June.

Meier’s work utilizes scientific research to investigate themes such as order and chaos. Using musical installations and compositions, the artist considers the role of humans in a mechanical world, and focuses on natural and artificial intelligence as a form of self-organization.

For the commission, Meier has created a  new piece exploring the theme of “synchronicity.” The large scale installation incorporates a number of unrelated elements, including music, fireflies, bioluminescent bacteria, and crickets, which are all coordinated to beat simultaneously. Nodding to ideas of craftsmanship, technology, and pulse, the piece is meant to evoke the sponsor’s elite watchmaking technique.

Speaking about the project and the theme, Meier said “Synchronicity pervades nature at every scale from the quantum to the cosmos. The Audemars Piguet Art Commission allows me to explore two strands of thinking—one explicit, measurable and the other implicit, subjective—but both looking at the same phenomenon: sync.”

Meier is working alongside the commission’s guest curator, Marc-Olivier Wahler, founder and director of the Chalet Society, in Paris.

The Audemars Piguet Art Commission will be presented annually at Art Basel in Hong Kong, Miami Beach, and Basel.