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Single Cell - An interactive exploration of our changing relationship to isolation, in an age of viruses and virality.
Single Cell simulates a microscale world of self-replicating, sound-emitting organisms.
Each Organism represents a Subject related to the theme of isolation (for example: Friendship, Introspection, Loneliness, etc). Each Organism has a unique visual form, sonic quality and descriptive annotation, generated by acoustic, visual and linguistic models which analyse real-world communication online. New Organisms are created as relevant new Subjects begin to trend on the internet. An Organism’s rate of replication correlates to the online virality of its Subject - in this way, some die out as others are born.
A microscope interface allows the user to pan around, focus, and zoom in to examine these Organisms, inside each of which (at a certain point of magnification) other Organisms can be seen replicating. One can continue to zoom in ad-infinitum to navigate through this recursively scaling biological environment. The Subject of each Organism is related to that of the Subject which emcompasses it, much like a venn diagram. Live updates from web searches and social media feed back into the system, allowing for a dynamically changing network of Subject relationships.
Single Cell offers the user an immersive spatial audio experience that changes in relation to their motion as they travel through the world. The generative sounds emitted by Organisms vary greatly, and the emotional positivity or negativity of an Organism’s Subject determines the consonance or dissonance of its tonal qualities. As replication occurs, this results in beautiful, rich harmonies or deep, discordant drones - sounds that will change dynamically along with updates in real-world online discourse.
The above videos are work-in-progress tests exploring visual techniques, and use manipulated audio from Burial / Visible Cloaks. The complete piece will incorporate my own generative spatial sound composition.
“There is something strange and not a little bit voyeuristic about experiencing a viral illness at incredible remove, with both fear and distance, through widely-shared stories on the internet, stories that may themselves be going viral. The spread of illness and the spread of information online have become collapsed in our vocabulary. Of all the real life metaphors for internet phenomena, I had always thought this made most sense… The wildfire spread of information has always seemed to me quite like a pernicious and unpredictable virus, a permanent condition of contemporary life, lived online.”-- - Sophie Haigney
“The economic system [which is] founded on isolation is a circular production of [that] isolation. The technology is based on isolation, and the technical process isolates in turn. From the automobile to television, all the goods selected by the spectacular system are also its weapons for a constant reinforcement of the conditions of isolation of “lonely crowds.” The spectacle constantly rediscovers its own assumptions more concretely.”
- Guy Debord
“You know the feeling. We all know it, now. It’s a kind of vertigo, a feeling of displacement. Everything is contingent, uncertain and in flux. Like we’re all standing on the edge of a cliff, and if somebody doesn’t act fast, we’ll all just tumble right off it… Like we woke up one day in somebody else’s home but we’re not quite sure how to get back to our own?”- - - Yi-Ling
isolation
remote
interiors
introspection
self-reflection
“self-improvement”
anxiety
death
hope
home
solastalgia
invented realities
personal truths
filter bubbles
subjectivity
heuristics
cope
touch
looping
closed system
cybernetics
*second order
observer effect
spectacle
