Cybacteria

‘CyBacteria’ stands for cybernetics and bacteria.

As industry grows, the effects of environmental damage are becoming more severe. By adding pollutants to microcolonies in a petri dish or modelling environmental impacts, the link between macro and micro becomes apparent.

The aim of the project is to appeal to the public to reduce pollution by amplifying the microscopic behaviour of bacteria.

Gallery

AR APP

The aim of this App is to image an infected world by scaling up microscopic colonies to a visible scale, so as to remind everyone to take care of the environment and reduce the impact on Earth. When an audience scan the poster image, the cyber petri dish will pop up over the plane.

Ambient music and visual effect are toggleable with two seperated buttons.

The App was developed on the Unity platform using the Vuforia Engine AR development suite; and the shader mask was designed with Touchdesigner and Python Script.

Poster

8 posters have been designed and exhibited in the NEST Space, Beijing. The information of each poster consists of different influence sources on petri dishes, the mycelium distribution under specific influences and textual detail of influences.

Audiences can explore further environmental impacts by scanning the posters with the developed augmented reality app of this project.

Research

Inspiration

To investigate the potential future materials, I conducted a series of biological experiments with a bacterial mixture—SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast).
During the experiments, I observed that the growth of the bacterium displayed characteristics similar to Earth's ability to maintain equilibrium.
Hence, I wanted to engage with existing environmental issues by actively influencing the micro-environment and visualize the impact.

Anthropocene

The term Anthropocene was coined to take into account the impact of the irreversible damage caused by the over-consumption of natural resources.

Anthropocene was popularized in the early 2000s by Paul J. Crutzen.

Scientists noticed that environmental changes were leading the Earth system away from the relative equilibrium it had known since the beginning of the Holocene, 11,700 years ago.

Cybernetics

Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems.

One of the most well known definitions is that of Norbert Wiener who characterised cybernetics as concerned with "control and communication in the animal and the machine".

Contemporary cybernetics varies widely in scope and focus, with cyberneticians variously adopting and combining technical, scientific, philosophical, creative, and critical approaches.

Microbial Colony

A microbial colony is defined as a visible cluster of microorganisms growing on the surface of or within a solid medium, presumably cultured from a single cell.

Obtaining such genetically identical organisms can be useful.

This is done by spreading organisms on a culture plate and starting a new stock from a single resulting colony.

Being physically connected allows the colonial organism to distribute nutrients and energy obtained by feeding zooids throughout the colony.

Plus, a biofilm is a colony of microorganisms often comprising several species, with properties and capabilities greater than the aggregate of capabilities of the individual organisms.

Case Study

Microbial Rainbow (Tal Danino)

is an evolution of the original Microuniverse series that shows the astounding diversity of bacteria patterns collected from around the world.

The bacteria images in this project will pair with a smartphone augmented reality (AR) app for additional engagement, allowing users to connect the similarity of patterns across scales throughout the greater universe.

Florence (Helen Steiner)

is a bio-media installation project that glimpses into our future where both our natural and digital worlds co-exist in harmony through enhanced communication.

Nature has its own language. Plants synthesize a very large amount of information via electrical and chemical signals and deliberately make changes to themselves, their neighbors and the land nearby for their benefit.

In this system, the user first attempts to communicate with or influence the plant through modulated natural language. Their inputs are analyzed for semantic content.

Experiment

Biological Cultivation

First, Add the sugar and black tea to the nutrient solution, and pour the pure water into the tank. After cooling, add SCOBY and yeast to the tank, then cover it with a cotton cloth and tie it with string. To harvest, collect the biofilm and spread it on the cloth. Cut the biofilm into small even pieces, place them in different petri dishes and add pure water.

In conclusion, SCOBY is feasible to explain the Cybernetic logic procession above the bio-material field, as it can reproduce thicker if there exists enough energy resourse, appropriate pH value and humidity.

It is also a good media of the effects of artificial pollution or natural effects on microorganisms and reflects onto the whole ecological environment.

Influence Tests

8 influence factors were selected to investigate the possibility of environmental effects.

Drought Simulation

Artificial and natural drying methods were implemented to simulate the effect of drought, the experiment samples went thinner and the nutrient substance were less.

Visual & Audio Development

Bacteria Growth simulation

Reality Abstraction

This experiment aims at further visualizing the infected world with cyber bacteria by abstracting and amplifying the micro activities into real view.

Audio Design

This project took three approaches. The first was to reconstruct the sound signal from an image of the Petri dish using Mathematica, then to generate the wavetable and audio sample using Ableton Live, and then to generate the full album using CLIP Interrogator and Mubert AI techniques.