SYMBIONT

Symbiont (2021) is a multimedia installation which transforms the Eden Gardens stairwell space into a ‘living biofield’. The limits of ordinary perception are overcome by shifting the unseen world of lichens and tardigrades—micro-organisms which are just half a millimetre long —into macroscopic view.

These ancient, resilient lifeforms are symbiotic in nature, and serve a critical role in maintaining the integrity of our broader ecosystem.

In Symbiont Ferracin sensitises the viewer to the delicate interplay of the human and non-human dimensions of micro-habitats, encouraging a mutually beneficial approach to co-existence which echoes the evolutionary principle of symbiosis.

The Symbiont video captures the life of tardigrades, commonly known as water bears. Tardigrades coexist in a symbiotic relationship with the microorganisms that live on lichens.

Both tardigrades and lichens play an important role in maintaining the wellbeing of the ecosystem through monitoring pollution, generating micro-habitats, and increasing biodiversity.

In the laboratory, Ferracin has extraordinarily filmed a tardigrade performing the cryptobiosis phenomenon; an adaptive biological response triggered to overcome dry environments and extreme temperatures.

At just half a millimetre long, tardigrades are invisible to the human eye. Symbiont shifts this unseen, phenomenal world into macroscopic focus.

The beginning and end of the video shows the tardigrade contracting its body to slow down water loss, transforming into a ‘tun’, a microball, by packaging itself with a specific technique to prevent tangling or breaking when the process is inverted with the arrival of rain or intake of water.