Common Index
An Ecology of Beasts
An Ecology of Beasts is a research-driven project by Common Index that revisits medieval bestiaries as speculative systems for understanding the world. Rather than approaching bestiaries as collections of isolated creatures, the project treats them as ecologies: interconnected structures where myth, belief, observation, and imagination coexist. In medieval culture, beasts were not simply animals, but ways of describing behaviors, environments, and relationships within a shared system. Starting from this perspective, An Ecology of Beasts translates the logic of the bestiary into a contemporary digital context. The project developed across two closely connected moments: a first presentation at TXT Studio in January 2026, realised in collaboration with Sole°, and a second at BASE Milano during Milan Design Week 2026, with R4M and Daydream.
Through an open call, participants reinterpreted different creatures from a custom digital deck through video, generating a heterogeneous yet cohesive collective bestiary. Presented as a physical exhibition, the works coexist within a non-hierarchical display system, while an interactive generative installation – Cartography of Entangled States – shapes the ecological conditions in which they appear. Conceived as an open system rather than a closed artwork, An Ecology of Beasts becomes a framework for collective experimentation: a space where practices, imaginaries, and interpretations overlap, interact, and remain in dialogue over time.
Through an open call, participants reinterpreted different creatures from a custom digital deck through video, generating a heterogeneous yet cohesive collective bestiary. Each participant was assigned a creature drawn from a custom digital deck designed by Common Index, with the freedom to reinterpret it through any tool or technology, and a single formal constraint: vertical video.
Forty-four participants produced a heterogeneous body of work spanning 3D, generative systems, AI experiments, motion design, DIY approaches, and text-based pieces. That diversity is not a side effect but the structural condition of the project: there is no dominant voice, no hierarchy of languages.
© Valerio Salvatore - 2026
The central curatorial question was how to present forty-four works without imposing a hierarchy. The answer was technical before it was editorial: delegate the decision to the system itself.
The physical installation consisted of eleven screens distributed across the space, managed by three networked Raspberry Pis sharing a single distributed brain. The system operated according to two precise principles. The first was democratic: each time a video was shown and experienced, the count was saved and weighed on the likelihood of that video being shown again — ensuring an equitable distribution of visibility over time. The second was environmental: via OSC communication, the installation received real-time data from sensors describing the conditions of the space — sound level, movement, density of presence — translating them into states such as calm, aggressive, dynamic, agitated. It was the beasts themselves — with the characteristics described in medieval bestiaries and reinterpreted by the artists — that decided whether and when to assert themselves, and in what configuration.
In this way, curation did not disappear but shifted: away from the judgement of those who organise, and into the rules of the system and the intrinsic characteristics of each creature.
© Maria Sole Falcomer - 2026
© Maria Sole Falcomer - 2026
Cartography of Entangled States is the interactive installation that expands An Ecology of Beasts beyond the open call. If the collective bestiary gives form to individual interpretations, the installation gives form to the environment they inhabit. Inspired by medieval mappae mundi — maps that described not geography but the conditions of the world: zones of erosion, darkness, origin, and accumulation — the installation constructs a living digital landscape, modulated in real time by the presence, movement, and sound of visitors. The public does not observe the ecosystem: it is part of it, and every gesture contributes to the transformation of a common space that continuously records and layers its own history.
© Valerio Salvatore - 2026
Credits
Concept & System Design: Common Index
Spatial collaboration (TXT): Sole°
Collaboration (BASE Milano): R4M, Daydream
Presented at: TXT Studio, Milan — January 2026 and BASE Milano — Milan Design Week 2026
© Valerio Salvatore - 2026
Press:
Common Index: Experimentation that begins with the way we are present
Quello che nasce quando nessuno deve dimostrare niente
An Ecology of Beasts - Not for impact but for care
© Luca Venturoli - 2026
© Maria Sole Falcomer - 2026
© Maria Sole Falcomer - 2026