Glowing Lichen: Visually Sensing Social Spaces

Glowing Lichen is a media-art installation that explores a series of sensitive connections between a physical-digital artefact and an audience. This installation comprehends two luminous organisms that cohabit in the same ecosystem and react to the surrounding environment in distinct ways. Each organism has an individual pre-disposition, i.e., personality — it can gravitate across four types: calm, happy, nervous and aggressive. As a result of being sensitive to the audience behaviors, interactions and environment changes, each organism feelings and ransformations will be triggered by these characteristics. Hence, we propose a reciprocal system where the way an audience behaves will influence the way a set of artificial organisms evolves. In the end, this results in a series of emergent behaviors of two artificial organisms growing unique aspects spawn by the environment they inhabit. Additionally, we invite the participants to reflect on their own interactions when inhabiting a space in a certain moment either as individuals or as a community of shared behaviors and perceptions.