The result is a “digital cabinet of impossible curiosities”, in which the rigid categorisations of classical science are suspended. Drawing on biological principles such as heredity, evolution and growth, as well as the fabled chimeras of historical “Wunderkammern” and the “hallucinatory” outputs of AI, the resulting imagery oscillates between artistic abstraction and the precise detail of the collection's artefacts.

The first part of the artwork extracts forms, textures and colours from the historical collection, focusing on marine organisms. Drawing on the morphology of deep-sea and coral-reef fauna, it renders the collection's osteological material and fluid-preserved specimens in a state of continuous flux – translating amorphous structures and gelatinous anatomical forms into a fluid, ever-transforming underwater environment, punctuated by unexpected mutations that echo the accelerating rate of species extinction observed in contemporary marine ecosystems. neochimera's second part draws on the surface textures of skin, hair and plumage documented across the historic and modern taxidermy collection, as well as the natural surroundings these species used to inhabit. Locomotion data captured from filmed specimens is translated into motion vectors that drive the transformational behaviour of the forms – grounding their movement in empirically observed biomechanics, while blending the species' own textures with those of natural habitats increasingly destabilised by climate change and rendered here as quasi-speculative catastrophe scenarios.

The installation is accompanied by a soundscape composed by Grischa Lichtenberger, which draws on the mineral, botanical and zoological domains of the natural world – the crackling of crystals, the rustling of leaves, delicate animal calls – deconstructing and reweaving them into new configurations. The result is an acoustic ecosystem that dissolves the boundaries between natural and artificial sonic spheres. Much like the visual organism unfolding on screen, the composition itself evolves through shifting textures, semi-familiar noises and granular sample hybrids.

The project neochimera is conceived as an evolving platform in which future iterations will deepen the dialogue between the historical collections of other museums and the newest developments in scientific imaging and analytical technologies. This includes advanced methods such as Scanning Electron Microscopy (see Seidel's project sputter) or Micro-CT Scanning, which reveal internal structures, hidden pigments and microscopic surface textures invisible to the naked eye, as well as AI-based generative, computational and data-driven approaches that translate these findings into new visual and postulated biological forms.