Nancy Baker Cahill's monumental interactive AR experience Substrate (now on view through August 24, 2025) invites the viewer to consider connections between knowledge-making organizations by contributing their own descriptions of culturally significant artifacts. The project borrows imagery and examples from networks in nature and depicts three cultural institutions—LACMA, the Los Angeles Public Library’s Central Library, and California’s system of community colleges—as abstracted, interlocking trees with root systems and mycelial networks that produce essential nutrients for human health and well-being. The work is part of Baker Cahill's Art + Technology Lab project of the same name, which used futuristic civics and systems thinking to demonstrate the potential of collaborations between local civic hubs. We sat down with Baker Cahill to learn more.
Joel Ferree: Since you began Substrate a few years ago, the promise of Web3 as a future internet that emphasizes decentralization, user control, and a more open, community-driven web hasn't manifested how many of us had hoped. How has your own view of Web3 changed, especially with respect to Substrate?
Nancy Baker Cahill: My view of Web3 has changed considerably since I conceived of this project. Like many, even with a jaundiced eye, I saw potential for community action and alternate forms of collective decentralized governance. The underlying mechanisms of blockchain technologies—insofar as they act as a distributed ledger, archive of any minted entity at any given moment in time, and zone of innovation for democratic process—of course remain interesting to me and relevant to this project. But the sociopolitical promises that blockchain initiatives could decouple from financial incentives have largely failed to materialize. The same inequities and exploitative practices that undergirded Web2 and, honestly, all technofeudalist ventures, have not only flourished under Web3—they have even found new expressions as cryptocurrency is politically exploited.
I found myself increasingly disappointed in narratives that extolled myths about empowerment, especially as Web3 fostered more one percenter–style accumulation. I returned to my research into biomimicry, particularly in efficient networked systems in nature—which work incredibly well in sustaining the health of ecosystems through what mycologist Dr. Danielle Stevenson refers to as the moral economies of mycelium, soil, and root networks. The human-made technologies I was hoping to integrate only fit into non-commercial schema, and as an artistic experiment I believe it was successful. I’m proud of the work we did minting the phase one exhibition curated from within LACMA’s public collection by Karla Aguiñiga’s Long Beach Community College students, Shereen Moustafa, Casper Torres, Mark Sosa, and Miguel Zavala, and exhibited at the L.A. Central Library. Our ongoing hope is that this pilot project will one day be distributed through other library networks and inspire similar projects.
JF: How can the "mother trees" of museums, public libraries, and community colleges continue to support human health in a future that is increasingly informed by rapid technological development?
NBC: It’s a daunting question to answer as we’ve watched all three lose crucial support from the federal government. Their own wellbeing is compromised, so how can they support our cultural and epistemological needs? The ideological assaults on these institutions extend beyond defunding and include book-banning, the erasure of histories, and the implementation of surveillance systems that put everyone at risk. Accelerating technological developments, which rarely have human or institutional health as their mandate, only make these mother trees and those they support more vulnerable. Although rapid technological development could in theory be used to empower and support people, it has instead (in most cases) been weaponized for profit and extractive practices. In some cases, it will harm lives irrevocably
Our institutions, however imperfect, exist to serve a multitude of publics and the body politic. Here’s where I allow myself to risk naivete and get optimistic. I think people are longing for community, for human-to-human convenings, for collaboration and collective resilience. If these institutions, however embattled, can continue to provide the mechanisms through which we can continue to connect to each other and to our shared humanity, we may be able to reject and minimize the forces that insist instead on our dehumanization. Will that be possible without financial support? Unclear. But we must insist upon protecting the narratives, scientific discoveries, histories, and hard-won cultural insights that, left untended, could otherwise be eliminated. This may require more active participation on our part, and as a first step in the process, Substrate invites viewers to think about which cultural nutrients matter to people and why they are worth naming and preserving.
JF: In the wake of the Eaton Fire we saw mutual aid efforts pop up all over north east Los Angeles providing water, food, and other resources to communities in need. Are these informal networks also part of what a work like Substrate is driving at? Please tell us about your experience participating in these efforts.
NBC: Yes—and I too was blown away by the immediate organizing, mutual aid, donations, and support offered person-to-person, community-to-community, in response to both major fires. It was the only bright spot in an otherwise unfathomable collective trauma. My own experience was that while our local and state governments fell short in their efforts, everyday people leapt into action to provide community care, share information, help each other, and put the needs of the collective over those of a select few. If there is one thing I hope Substrate underscores, it is our essential interdependence particularly when human-built systems fail us. As the artist and abolitionist Jackie Sumell says, “we are all we’ve got.”
I was fortunate to come together with a bunch of artists experienced in organizing and mutual aid to form the LA AYUDA Network in response to the fires. Our motto is, “we keep each other safe,” and our acronym stands for Los Angeles Artists Yield: Union for Distributing Aid. As an artist-led volunteer group, we are committed to providing vetted health communications and resources (PPE, tenants' rights information) to Angelenos most impacted by the fires and, increasingly, the efforts of ICE to terrorize people. In our core principles, we state that we “believe that mutual aid networks—resilient, restorative, and responsive—best protect people and ecosystems doubly besieged within carceral, surveillant systems” and that “investing in networks of social justice and mutual aid is—and will continue to be—critical to the longevity and health of our communities in Los Angeles.” Distributed networks where strangers share resources with strangers for the overall health of a community, where we recognize each others' essential humanity; these are the models that animate the Substrate project, and I hope inspire others as we collectively navigate ongoing and future collapse.
The Art + Technology Lab is presented by
The Art + Technology Lab is made possible by Snap Inc.
The Lab is part of The Hyundai Project: Art + Technology at LACMA, a joint initiative between Hyundai Motor Company and LACMA exploring the convergence of art and technology since 2015.