Flow State

A public video sculpture that reveals the hidden labour and infrastructures of biomedical research through shifting abstraction and close-up detail.

Installation view of Flow State in the front window of the Francis Crick Institute showing branching clusters of synchronised screens.
Photo by Fiona Hanson.

Flow State is an interactive double-sided digital video sculpture commissioned for the front window of the Francis Crick Institute in London. Built from 28 synchronised screens arranged in a branching form inspired by phylogenetic diagrams, it draws on footage gathered through extended access to laboratories, instruments, and working spaces across the institute. From a distance the work reads as a shifting abstract image, but as viewers approach it reveals the finer detail of scientific infrastructure and the repetitive manual actions carried out by researchers.

The closer viewers move, the more the institution opens up, so looking becomes part of the work’s structure. Scientific labour appears not as a polished result but as a layered field of instruments, gestures, and repeated actions. This gradual disclosure connects Flow State to May’s ongoing interest in mediated perception and in the systems that make knowledge visible.

Additional notes

  • Commissioned by the Francis Crick Institute, London, with support from the Francis Crick Family Trust.
  • Developed through an extended residency and research period with access to laboratories across the institute.
  • Installed in the front window facing St Pancras International station in July 2018.
  • Included 28 individual monitors and 28 Raspberry Pi computers running synchronised video playback through custom software.
  • The reverse side of the sculpture presented a meditative light installation based on the DNA sequence of the yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe.
  • The physical installation was deinstalled in 2020. A follow-up video work, Flow State: Epitaph, was later commissioned as a legacy piece.

Talks, exhibitions, and updates connected to this work.

  • Paradoxical Objects

    Flow State was included in Paradoxical Objects, an online exhibition tracing the history of video sculpture from 1968 to the present.

  • Artistic Exploration of BioRobotics and Sequencing

    Alex May spoke at SynBio19 at Warwick University about art-science collaboration, biorobotics, sequencing, and algorithmic image-making across projects including Flow State, Sequence Music, and Algorithmic Photography.

  • Francis Crick Institute commission

    Alex May was awarded a commission to create Flow State, a permanent digital artwork for the front window of the Francis Crick Institute in London.