Microbes, especially bacteria ranges from the essential and useful, to the harmful. Existing at both ends of the spectrum, it shapes how life on Earth is. However, I see urbanization extending as a pathogen of the natural space.

Visual: Organic Growth Patterns 
Technique: Microbes Cultivation (Mold/Bacteria)

The hypothesis was to capture the growth of the bacteria/algae samples, represents that fluid movement into both how cityscapes are developing from the core of civilization and also how organic forms work in such splendid ways. Either interpretation is relevant to my overall compositions and hope for viewers to recognize both (good/bad) meanings to it.

The experiment process was quite D.I.Y as the materials and facilities to properly cultivate clean samples is logistically costly.

The 3 primary components to perform the test were;

• Sterilize and control environment = Petri Dish
• Catalyst agents = Nutrient Agar
• Host = Bacteria / Mold samples

Nutrient agar was recreated by mixing bouillon cube with jelly powder. The bouillon cube serves as the protein agents while the jelly acts as a base.

Petri Dishes was generously given to us from the Experimental Medicine Lab.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While the samples I extracted, while found in usual urban spaces, such as pavement, bus stop seat and used utensils.  The resulting visuals were quite diverse as the different space hosts different types of bacteria and mold combination.

Visual Outcomes : Stop-motion Growth

For the implementation to the media walls, I took scans each day to monitor the growth of all the test subjects and selected a few individual colony as the motifs. The selected visual were treated to a stop-motion sequencing (clean up in AfterEffect) that shows the development of the microbes.