bug
2023, media installation
CODE 2023
IMPAKT Center for Media Culture, transmediale Berlin
ISEA 2024 Melbourne, As Above, So Below exhibiton
Recently, videos of bug fights swarm the internet. Our relationship with other-than-human
species is mediated by digital encounters, always one a click a way from insect
livestreams. We look at animals via computational interfaces, marginalizing their
embodied existence outside the screen. This speculative instrument merges aesthetics
of telescopes and camera lenses with microscopes and weapons. Instead of looking
up into space, you gaze down into the sewage system. The manhole functions
as a portal to an uncanny encounter with a bug’s fictional reality: As you stand face-to-face with the eye’s of this insect, you notice being looked at – by the bug, yourself,
and other surveillance systems.