Unveil the Marshes is a digital bioelectronic installation created from the study of microbial life in the marshes of Le Marais in Bourges, France. On one hand, a series of microscopic images of decomposing lichens found in the marshes is used to engage in a dialogue with a generative neural network (AI) that allows for speculative visualizations on how microbial agencies influence potential material transformations, altering their temporal and spatial scales as a kind of speculative time-lapse. At the same time, these visualizations are contrasted with the installation of a bioelectronic device (composed of microbial fuel cells, energy sensors, and digital processing) that use the detection of microbial activity in real time to drive their transformations.

Against the regime of invisibility of life in aquifers, the study of non-symbolic expressions and languages of more-than-human species comes into play to propose other imaginaries in the face of the crisis of the living. In this installation, the agencies and interspecies exchange relationships at various scales are brought to light to emphasize that the “energy production” resulting from microbial activity is not oriented toward human consumption, diverting its purpose toward the transformations and expressions of other modes of existence, opening dialogues through techno-poetic gestures.

Articulating new relationships with life beyond the human involves focusing on circular, metabolic, dynamic, degradable, mutable, impermanent organizations: Unveiling the marshes to glimpse the technologies of nature.

Unveil the Marshes is a project developed during a residency at La Box Gallery of the École Nationale Supérieure d’Art (ENSA) in Bourges, France.