There is a particular kind of blindness that comes with familiarity. We recognise the veins of a leaf, the curve of a shell and the shifting colours of a sunset, yet we have seen them so often that we rarely stop to look closely. Nature becomes scenery, admired, photographed, perhaps missed after too many hours indoors, but rarely examined as a system whose logic might have something to say about the way we work, make decisions or live alongside one another.

Cluj-base biologist and explorer Alexandru Stermin has spent much of his life resisting this kind of inattentiveness. His work has taken him from the jungles of South America to Siberia, studying the relationship between humans and the natural world. For him, nature has never been entirely separate from the questions that shape human life. Adaptation, symbiosis, diversity and rhythm belong to biology, certainly, but they also describe processes we encounter in communities, relationships and our own attempts to navigate change.

This was the territory explored during Qubic Talk: Lessons from Nature, an event organised by the Cluj Cultural Centre as part of Studiotopia. Designed as an informal fireside conversation held at Qub – centre for science and arts, the evening brought Stermin together with Ciprian Sipoș, a specialist in circular design and Zero-Waste behavioural strategies, in a discussion moderated by Simona Niste, environmental engineer, professor and sustainability advocate. The premise was to look at nature as a source of knowledge in our lives.

The conversation moved easily between biology and everyday experience. What do our bodies need in order to regulate themselves? What does a healthy rhythm look like in a culture built around acceleration? How do relationships affect our wellbeing? And what happens when sustainability is understood not only as a matter of resources and environmental ethics, but as a question of how we inhabit our own lives?

Again and again, the discussion returned to the idea that nature is not external to us. Stermin spoke about the natural world as an early source of gentleness, patience and unconditional acceptance in his own life. These were personal observations, but they opened onto larger biological questions. Living systems survive through relationships; scpecies adapt to conditions rather than abstract ideals; cooperation, symbiosis and diversity are not sentimental concepts imposed on nature by humans, they are observable strategies through which life continues.Seen from this perspective, nature offers a rather different vocabulary for thinking about wellbeing.

From resilience to circular thinking

The conversation at Qub pushed further. Reconnection was discussed as a way of paying attention to the systems we already belong to and recognising that human relationships, personal wellbeing and ecological thinking are not isolated concerns. From there, Ciprian Sipoș shifted the focus towards the way these systems actually work, inviting us to look more closely at the efficiency of natural processes. Nature rarely follows the linear logic of take, use, discard. Matter changes state, resources circulate and what appears to be the end of one process can become the beginning of another. Circular thinking brings some of this logic into design and education.

During Qubic Talk, Sipoș spoke about ergonomics and simplicity, and about how principles observed in nature can help generate more responsible and creative processes. The point was not to imitate a forest literally or turn biology into a collection of business metaphors. Rather, it was to examine the assumptions embedded in the systems we design. What do we call waste? Why do we build processes around disposal rather than transformation? When does complexity solve a problem, and when does it simply reproduce one? These are questions of sustainability, but also of imagination. A circular system first requires someone to see a resource differently.

Later that evening, the conversation left the chairs and entered the exhibition space.

Making the invisible visible

After the conversation, the evening continued with immersive installations created especially for the event by Cluj-based artists Catrinel Săbăciag and Alexandra Podariu. Here, the dialogue between science, nature and creative practice became physical.

Catrinel Săbăciag, a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores product design, light and optical effects, turned her attention to magnetic fields, invisible phenomena that subtly guide our everyday lives. Through a special container filled with ferrofluid, visitors could interact with magnets and watch the liquid respond, forming dynamic, three-dimensional shapes. The magnetic force itself remained invisible, but its effects acquired a physical form through the movement of the ferrofluid. As visitors changed the position of the magnets, movement, form and symmetry shifted with them, turning observation into interaction and the scientific phenomenon into a perceptual experience.

Alexandra Podariu’s rezoNatura entered another imperceptible territory: waves and frequencies. Her installation translated them into a multisensory experience, allowing scientific phenomena to move into the visual language of art. Colour, optical effects and shifting perspectives turned perception itself into part of the experiment.

Together, the works led visitors through magnetic fields, colour spectra and optical illusions, offering a practical reminder that seeing is never entirely passive. The depth we perceive in a space depends partly on the position from which we look. Change the perspective and the image changes with it. Under certain conditions, something previously invisible can suddenly acquire form.

This is where the intersection of science and art became particularly vivid. Physics shaped the behaviour of the works themselves, while art changed the way these phenomena were encountered. A magnetic field moved beyond the diagram of a physics lesson, just as frequency became something to experience rather than simply measure. Both could provoke fascination before explanation and curiosity before certainty.

Studiotopia was created around the belief that meaningful encounters between artists and scientists can generate new ways of understanding complex questions. At Qub, that encounter shaped the entire evening: a biological observation led to reflections on human relationships; a natural system offered a different way of thinking about resources; a physical phenomenon became the material of an immersive artwork. Perhaps this is one of the most valuable things that can happen when science and art share a space.