MORAKANA – Live from MicroWorld

Tiri Kananuruk and Sebastián Morales

Microscopic organisms navigate a drop of water while computer vision algorithms analyze their activity. Abstracted into data, the microbes’s behaviour is transcoded by an audio synthesizer to generate a sonic landscape. The living images and the sonic score, accompanied by improvised and human sounds, are packaged and broadcasted live across the internet.

Invisible to the naked eye, rotifers, paramecia, protists, and other microscopic organisms swim in search of nutrients, responding to stimuli, and leaving tracks of chemical reactions. Their existence, mediated through lenses of the microscope, is not very different from ours—Sheltered in place, our existence is too, mediated through networks, lenses, and screens.

The performance reveals the connections between species, technology, and the planet. Highlighting both the scalar connections between different system components and describing the network connections between the actors of the performance itself. Microbes, humans, microscope, video feed, computer, image recognition, synthesizers, microphones, streaming programs, protocols, routers, switches, antennas, fiber, 4G/5G/LTE, internet. The stack of technologies entangles our living systems, supporting, sustaining , and in often cases, restraining.

Link to Soundcloud : Please use headphone (Binaural sound)

Support received from

Mana Contemporary
Tropical Futures Institute
The National Gallery of Singapore
Elektron
CultureHub