August Shells is an ongoing research-based art practice by Maciej Kodzis, blending visual art, sound, and ecological philosophy.
At its core lies an investigation into balance – between nature and technology, emotion and observation, control and chaos. The project’s visual work often begins with 3D scans: artificial shells, hollow yet charged with presence. These digital artifacts capture fragments of time and space – light on a spider’s web, a ripple in water, a pattern in a cloud – and transform them into meditative forms. Each scan is a paradox: a frozen accident of nature refracted through imperfect digital tools. The result is an archive of fleeting beauty, where natural patterns and technological noise coexist.
The musical layer continues this exploration of regulation and equilibrium. August Shells draws from traditions of experimental and meditative music, focusing on acoustic textures and the physiology of sound. Breath is central—a universal rhythm that connects body and environment. Wind instruments, drones, and natural field recordings merge into slow structures designed to calm, re-tune, or attune the listener’s nervous system.
Culture is nature. Every system – biological, social, digital, political – is part of the same ecological field. August Shells is a practice of homeostasis activism, an attempt to restore balance in a world increasingly divorced from it. The project doesn’t offer answers but observations: traces of connection, small meditations, visual and sonic invitations to remember that we are, still, nature.