Virtual Exhibition
Social Organism is a Virtual Exhibition I created during my self isolation months in London due to the pandemic outbreak.
The virtual exhibition hosts 3 original installations that could be seen navigating with the arrows and mouse of a pc or by mobile.
Near each installation a black info point can be activated and a text box will pop up with more information.
The installations and spaces were created with a 3d design software and then converted with a virtual reality application, Shapespark, to create navigation.
Click play to start.
Use your keyboard’s arrows and mouse or point your finger on mobile.
About the 3 installations:
I see humans as an entire, collective organism, forming communities and cities in order to enhance living conditions.
Aristotle describes society as something that precedes the individual. “Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to is either a beast or a god.”
The ability to create communities is common in nature. There are striking similarities between bacteria colonization and human urbanization.
Bacteria are generally too small to be seen at naked eye but when they proliferate they grow in three-dimensional structures, like small cities “polis” covered by a biofilm, a complex architecture hosting millions of organisms reunited to create better conditions for survival.
I created these installations inspired by the formation of bacterial biofilms and used human body shapes as a collective architecture instead.
In recent times, with the pandemic outbreak, it is clear that the advantages of a great social organization are vital and that individualism is a threat to an overpopulated society.
Entering the installation populated by rod-shaped bacteria I want to create a sense of disorientation where different life forms exist. Navigating the inside of the globe-like structure, the point of view is easily lost and you can acquire a new one, testing your limits of perceiving space without gravity.
Life on this planet existed and will always exist even without the conditions that make living possible for us.
The installation is inspired by The Great Oxygenation Event, a geological episode occurring around 2.35 billion years ago when, on this planet, there was very little oxygen. A group of organisms (cyanobacteria) developed a way to get energy from the sun and produce oxygen as a waste product. All the anaerobic species died off because oxygen was a toxic gas for them, It was perhaps the biggest mass extinction life would face on Earth.
We are born without memories.
Society changes very slowly, we are not able to make fundamental changes, we absorb.
The scene is a conceptual installation inspired by standard sadomasochistic ideas about power, humiliation, and arousal.
Do we explore freedom in the confinements of our biological or social limits?
The big open mouth becomes a collection point of the “urine” of our entire society transported by a complex system of drainage pipes.