Our collaborative installation City of Gods and Madmen combines the human, binary and microbiological realm. A street map is printed on microfilm and coated with local water samples. A camera mounted to a microscope relays a magnified image of this scene as a large scale projection. Visitors are able to navigate the city by turning knobs of the microscope stage. The movement of water microorganisms in the city is observed and analyzed by a tracking algorithm that activates a set of robotic machinery around a nearby pool, creating currents and adding oxygen to refresh the water.
The title of this installation borrows from Jeff VanderMeer's book City of Saints and Madmen, where a fictional urban sprawl is inhabited by different sentient species, each coexisting in their own reality, unaware of one another. Microorganisms might be aware of us to the extent that we influence their world, almost as two-dimensional effects on the ground, like shadows or clouds. We exist in some other dimension, beyond their consciousness. Similarly, we are constantly immersed in microcosmic life, without being able to directly perceive it. Microorganisms create our soil and atmosphere, seed our clouds, break down our food and eventually our bodies. They are the invisible forces that drive our lives. But we can only witness their presence and agency indirectly or through devices that expand our perception.