Internal Biome
The project projects a real-world video in the background with a coded version of simulations of flocking representing the digital overlay on our physical worlds. The name ‘Internal Biome’ comes from the imaginary sense of viewing the stalactites and stalagmites video as an augmented documentation of our internal body, perhaps the intestinal gut system and the coded boids as proteins and stimulants moving within our internal biome.
Created using Open Frameworks, C++
The project processes a coded digital simulation over real-world footage. During the winter break, I visited the Luray Caves. The Luray Caverns is one of the largest caverns in West Virginia. It showcases natural formations of Stalactites and stalagmites among other natural formations. While exploring this alien-looking landscape, I wondered what it would be through different scales of perception.
On the other hand, our world is so enveloped with a layer of the digital in our everyday transactions, this project attempts to showcase the theme of the digital overlay. Art has previously tried to imitate society, for example, In the case of Andy Warhol, his famous artwork showcasing Campbell's soup cans, in 1962 projected the information consumed in that timeline of the society. Today, we hear more conversations surrounding technology, and alien intelligence also known as Artificial Intelligence, the heavy use of technology in all our transactions whether through phones, virtual reality headsets or other mediums. The diaspora reflecting our society today is much more abstract, as no one has definitive answers of where the digital revolution will take us precisely. This project attempts to showcase the abstract with a digital simulation of the boids which add life and movement in an otherwise static background of beautiful alien landscapes discovered in 1878. The boids are the main source of activation of the canvas, as they move around as programmed intelligence with flickering colours imitating a throbbing life.
The ‘internal biome’ idea follows the changing perspectives at looking at the same visual information through different scales. Without the context of the actual scale of the natural formations, and other contextual information, it is easier to perceive the same as an endoscopy footage of our intestines and gut biome. These changing perspectives and scales for the narrative are some flexibilities I have used as an artist and are purely imaginary.