The second exhibition room houses the synthesis – refrigerators in which the fruits of cutting-edge research is preserved as though in a safe. This research aimed to use state-of-the-art technology to convert natural raw materials such as hemp, straw, wood, algae, fruit waste, whey, proteins, vegetable oils and starch into innovative packaging solutions. What was sugar yesterday looks like plastic today – and will be compost tomorrow. The exhibition documents the transformation of the natural into the synthetic, as well as into the artistic – as illustrated by the designer gourds grown by Jan Velthuizen. During the exhibition, visitors discover that today’s packaging has a much wider application than its original intended purpose. Arnold Reinthaler’s project ‘Entanglements’ uses marketing mechanisms to incite us to order a knitting set, while Constantin Luser examines the relationship between visible and explanatory structures by injecting a text into an air bubble wrap, which rids it of its protective wrapping function and turns it into a conveyor of information, around which it forms a protective shield.

‘The bag’ by Emanuel Danesch, David Rych and Gabrielle Cram protects our private space from the over-stimulation of the public space. Visitors may be tempted to partake in the ‘packaging buffet’ (Communicatering) while serenaded by the ‘No. 1 Vienna Vegetable Orchestra’, the instruments of which are all crafted out of vegetables. If the audience does indeed choose to eat one of the items from this edible sculpture, they not only transform this work of art into waste but suddenly find themselves caught in a contradictory position, being part of the synthesis and part of the artistic process. And this is the very intention of the artist, who aims to underline that people alone are essentially the only thing that really matters.