Organic Pulse Imagery is an installation art that unites the audience with parts of different organisms, an installation art for humans to experience different space, time and place. In this project, I will capture the electrical conductivity of the organisms in order to convey the message that there are various microorganisms everywhere around us. Then, I will send that input to Max/msp and generate a 3D/2D graphic of their electrical conductivity and project that graphic onto the wall, therefore the audiences can participate in the immersive space created.
This idea is more likely to be an exhibition approach, which people can choose the organisms by themselves and interact with it.
The installation includes a counter which has a projector built-in, on top of the counter is a Petri dishes slots that allow the participants to choose the organisms that they're interested to interact with and place it in the isolated slot which is connected to the Arduino, moreover the slots are used as an incubator for the organisms to keep them living with the suitable temperature.
The graphic style is inspired from the imagery of bacteria and other organisms under the microscope, which are mostly seen as dots and particles.
Capturing the electric potentials and generating the visual
To capture the electric potentials from the organism, I have to create a split petri dish with a small bridge between each slot to allow the electricity form the organism to flow, moreover, this approach will capture the electricity only from the organism, not the medium.
The selected organism is Physarum Polycephalum. It was cultivated on the aforementioned split petri dish. After many attempts, I found out that the most important factor is the timing, in that the slime mold needs around two days to cross the bridge. Longer than that then it will remain on its side. In contrast, earlier than that then it will not cross the bridge.
For capturing the electricity, I use the capacitive sensor method.
At the beginning, I captured the electricity from my hands in order to observe the numbers to differentiate between the electric potentials of human beings and microorganisms.
Then, I connected the wires to the organism.
The captured number from my hands is around 6000 - 7500, while the number of Physarum Polycephalum is around 10 - 21 and more stable. Because of the significant contrast between each organism, it can be discriminated to generate the different visuals. In this case, I experimented with two organisms; human and Physarum.
This patch is using jit.gen and jit.matrix to generate a particle effect. The jit.gen is used for calculating force and mass to drive the particles, as well as their movements. In the tutorial, the equation that he used is F = m x a and the particles will move in a vector quantity; in this case, to the center.
As a result, the particles are moving to the center when there are changes in electric potentials. On the other hand, when the input is unchanged, the particles will arrange themselves in a circle. The visual is inspired from the image of the organism that I cultivated inside a Petri dish.
After testing on the organism's electric potentials, I noticed a tiny difference in the result in every organism. I will use that input to shift the visual which are, in this case, color and shape to represent their appearances in an experimental way, so I set the three conditions to differentiate them. However, the particles' movement will remain the same in every input.
This implementation allows many participants to be engaged in the installation at the same time. There are many possible ways to interact with it; for instance, in this sample scenario, one person is changing the input while another is playing with the visuals and guessing which organism it is. As seen in the images above, the shapes' density depends on the serial read number and the styles are characterized separately.
The Setting
The ideal setting is not only to build the installation space, but also to produce a suitable place and environment for the organisms. The main element of the installation is the counter that has all the crucial components built-in.
The electrical conductivity data from the chosen organisms is going to be generated with Max/msp into a visual, then that visual will be projected onto the wall, as well as on their body.
In conclusion, there are many possible potentials for this project. For example, it can be used to cultivate a larger variety of organisms which also have different electric potentials, in order to generate other visual styles.
