Symbiosis.live

A speculative ecosystem where inorganic life forms from the internet and single-cell organisms come together in symbiosis. Humans are invited along, but only as observers.

Summary:
Part digital, part physical, fully alive. Symbiosis.live is an estuary website where micro cellular organisms meet their digital equivalent, internet bots. Together, they begin to develop a symbiotic ecosystem, bots travel the world though cables to deliver food into the bioreactor. The cells in turn, modify servers to attract or repel internet bots. Humans are invited along, but only as observers.

More about the piece can be found at https://symbiosis.live.

Featured Images:

Screen Capture
Screencapture of Symbiosis.live

Bots are swarming the server as paramecia eat under the microscope.

Progress bar shows number of bots needed until next dose of food is released into the bioreactor.

Paramecia eating
This video was recorded a week after the water sample was collected

Migration Patterns
Over the curse of 2 months that the project was live, information such as IP address was collected to be later analyzed.

Bots could be classified into different types, all showing different behaviors and migration routes. 
 

Bioreactor
The bioreactor is capable of providing food to the cells, oxygenating the water, as well as controlling fluid levels inside the reactor.

Future iterations will control light composition and temperature.

Photo: Tiri Kananuruk

Microscope Control
The human control over the system is limited to movement of the microscope slide and scrolling though the server logs.

Humans are invited along, but only as observers. 

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Thank you:
Kat Sullivan
PhD Carlo Quiñonez
PhD Elizabeth Henaff
Jannae Jacks
Yen Chen
Tom Igoe
Shawn Van Every

Special thanks to:
Tiri Kananuruk
Sejo
Aaron Montoya
Yuli Cai

CONACYT