I Spread

Dome format and 360 audio immersive experience at the Zeiss Grossplanetarium in Berlin. The audio version in this website was downmixed in 5.1. This version is from February 2024.

Based on scientific experiments, this project explores the possibility of trees as bioluminescent entities. Reflecting about “synthetic biomes”, or the human manipulation of ecosystems, physical modeling synthesis was employed, to simulate the sounds of hypothetical biological systems based on their real physical qualities. The project aims to create biological, synthetic sonic environments, prompting reflection on our ability to give shape and voice to the imaginary in the context of our interaction with the physical world.

This project was a result of a collaboration between the udk Berlin students and faculty, the Fraunhofer Institute Berlin, and the Zeiss Grossplanetarium in Berlin.

Videos taken insitu during the "Portale" show at the Zeiss Grossplanetarium Berlin:

There are many things I hide. Will you look into my shadow? What do you see? What do you hear? I am the forest, and the forest is a multiplication of my psyche. Each tree of the biome is a fractal compound of other invisible entities: microorganisms, networks of inaudible voices, synthetic and organic synergies. The push and the pull, the resonator and the exciter, the interaction and the silence.

Test rendering point cloud 3D scans in touchdesigner and animating them:

This project in an exploration, a pulse that grew from the alternate, the hypothetical. Thinking the possible, the imaginary, I came about a series of studies and research about the possibility of making trees bioluminescent entities. Extracting DNA from natively bioluminescent organisms like some species of jellyfish, algae and fungi, the experiment sought to inject this genetic information into trees. The purpose? To help reduce the carbon imprint on the planet. See, the logic was that if we have enough bioluminescent trees at night, street lamps would not be needed anymore, because trees would be lighting the cities. As a consequence, the energy consumption would go down.

Synthetic biomes: environments which have been directly altered by human actions and intercations. Injecting genetic sequences from one organism to the other poses the question of how that will affect the organisms’ perception? As an analogy, injecting sounds into stable iterations and creating sonic generative webs from the physical properties, or behavior of living beings, opens the question: What would hypothetical biological systems sound like? What type of interruptions, glitches, and interferences would appear as a result?

I spread is about visualizing and giving voice to these variations, opened wide into the breaches of a new alternate world where things seem to be an iteration, a mirroring, fluctuating syllable of an already existing world.

AI generated images of a modeled world:

Some pictures of the user interface within Modalys, the physical modeling synthesis software I used for creating my experimental instruments from 3D meshes of trees and (or tree stumps).