We want to hear the harmony of the Air and see its lifeforms, through the musical game of gases and showing bacterial growth as 3D objects.

It always starts on a personal level, everyone grew bacteria in their kitchen. The sample became a nudge, as we live in a shared environment our habits affect its form and create a “landscape” in multiple scales.
Then swabs from the installation of Tomas Saraceno, Algorithms, (people touched the cables, traces of interaction) were cultured and turned into 3D images and sound. Perhaps no one wants a swarm of bacterial memories as constant companions, but the visualisations and the sounds are a reminder that all presence has consequences – and that humans are a small part of an ongoing experiment in life.

But, how to hear our environment? Gases in the air (Palais de Tokyo, home’s bacterial) and from the bacterial cultures were input through Arduino then into visuals and sounds using Grasshopper and Pure Data.

If the visitors could see what they left behind, it would be like having these 3D visualisations in a permanent orbit around them. Perhaps no one wants a swarm of bacterial memories as constant companions, but the visualisations are a reminder that all presence has consequences – and that humans are a small part of an ongoing experiment in life.

We wanted to hear the harmony of the Air, through the musical game of gases. During the workshop we manage to do it for the bacteria scale, our intention was to compare the quality (harmony) of the air by collecting gas data from three different scale environment.