Get Clean

- concept -

We are currently experiencing the sixth mass extinction. Does it feel that way to you? It doesn't to me. 

In 1987, a group of researchers built a giant dome called Biosphere 2 in the middle of the Arizona desert that simulated all ecosystems on earth - the first zoo for humans to watch themselves survive. Neoliberal environmentalism is a lot like Biosphere 2: a managerial attempt to isolate nature and control it to suit our needs. We need to dismantle these ideological erroneous assumptions that nature exists in opposition to humanity. 

This has lead to the spatialization of nature. Nature is now a space. Humans, our houses and cities inhabit a space outside of nature. 

Well, I have news for you. If you got spiders, mice, pigeons or even people - guess what, bucko  - that's an ecosystem. People are part of nature if we like it or not. In fact, human cells only make up 43 per cent of all cells in the human body. The rest are microscopic organisms - bacteria, fungi, archaea and viruses. 

In 'Get Clean', a participant sees his face/body and direct surroundings emerged into a dynamic ecosystem full of natural elements. The participant can experience that separating themselves from this ecosystem is an active and difficult process which is nullified the moment you stop this act of separation. The participant uses a sponge to remove the ecosystem from his own surroundings and finds out that removing nature from themselves is feels very unnatural.

- implementation and description -

'Get Clean' is made up out of OF code (a modified particle simulator (OF particles example) and a video grabber), a beamer and a kitchen sponge which functions as a mouse. The beamer projects this 'grabbed' video, with the particle layer, on the wall. The sponge can be used as a mouse to interact and repel the 'ecosystem'. The sponge mouse was created by stripping a mouse and putting the relevant sensors inside the sponge. 

- video -

- process and motivation -

Creating an installation with OpenFrameworks was a hard and arduous process. Several ideas fell flat since I could not get the tech/OfAddons to work. I was experimenting a lot with altering the beamer projection with water and tearing up some of the older tools/technology I had laying around at home, like breaking open a mouse and exploring what I could do with the technology inside. Later, these mouse sensors found their way back into my project.

When I decided I wanted to make an installation on the spatialisation from nature, the question became in what way I would connect this to OpenFrameworks and what would work on OpenFrameworks. After exploring some of the OF examples, I found the example of the particle system and knew it would be a good basis to simulate the ecosystem. I then played around with the code and changed the interaction, so that the particles looked and behaved slightly different - repel when the mouse is pressed and wander randomly when the mouse was released. I added some video grabber software to add the participants' direct surroundings. I liked the idea of interacting with the sponge since it symbolises cleanliness. At first, I wanted to be able to track the sponge so that where the sponge was on the camera, there it would also repel the ecosystem, but this turned out impossible with the sensors I had laying around at home and the time I had left. Instead, I added the mouse sensors into the sponge. This sponge mouse turned out to be quite hard to operate which was a nice unforeseen effect which further drives home the point that spatialisation from nature is an active and difficult process.