Nature of Man – Otso, Andreas, Luis

We found him lying on the floor here. Dead.
He called this room his Chapel of Life.
He used to spent all his time here. Visualising, measuring and analysing life.

Sometimes he wouldn’t leave his chapel for days.
He was obsessed. He wanted to find answers.

People visit from everywhere to see this room.
This is all we have from him. This is all he left behind.

About

Nature of Man is a video installation discussing control, nature relationship and life.

In the center of the installation is an aquarium with living spirulina algae. It is surrounded by monitors with different representations which are controlled by microscopic footage of the spirulina.

First concept sketches in Blender

Setup for cultivating spirulina and microscopic images

We wanted to make cultivating spirulina a communal effort at media lab. The aquarium was in a public space and we had a public webcam feed.

Technical setup

The visuals are created with an openFrameworks sketch that generates the visuals based on microscopic footage of the algae. One big frame is sent to Mad Mapper via syphon. Mad Mapper splits the frame for different screens.

A lot of adapters and cables for the monitors…