Bio-tracking
Bio-tracking was a pioneering locative media based exhibition by Anna Dumitriu that took place in 2006 combining GPS (Global Positioning System) data a leading edge smart phone software (at the time suitable for Nokia Series 60) called Socialight www.socialight.com enabling the placement of virtual 'sticky notes' around various locations and bioart, as part of Brighton Photo Biennial Fringe. As participants walked around the route, images, text messages and sound files were sent to their phones.
Anna Dumitriu sampled and cultured various locations for normal flora bacteria and moulds, revealing this incredible, unseen and sublime world to us through a series of beautifully enhanced digital micrographs. Luciana Haill, Ian Helliwell and Juliet Kac created a series of sound works to accompany the images. Microbiologist John Paul wrote scientific text descriptions of the microbes.
The images create a kind of dialectic, bringing together the pure emotion of the sound responses and the analytical texts. Philosopher’s such as Schopenhauer have written much on music’s ability to capture and express emotion “ as an immediate objectification and copy of the whole will as the world itself”.
By bringing in the use of GPS in the initial creation of the work, mapping the locations where the microbiological swabs were taken, the work draws together the microscopic and the macroscopic, drawing a thread between the satellites orbiting the earth and the bacteria at our feet.