⚠ This project contains flashing lights that may trigger photosensitive epilepsy.
Wet Dreams is an immersive biogenerative audiovisual experience exploring the symbiotic relationship between dance floors, biotechnology, and organic life. The project captures the DNA of dance floors, sampling from the air in spaces of collective energy exchange, where shared breath creates a humid microbiome rich with bioinformatic data that glimmers with our earthly hydro-collectivity.
The sonic-animal interface of dance floors gestates spatially enclosed weather systems within clubs and dance floors, creating ample space for microbial proliferation. Dance is a testament to the power of collective action and a desire to be in one's body. Dance floors are spaces in which we collect, charge, and release, cycling energy from speakers to senses and adrenal systems to muscular tissues. The by-product of this exchange collects on walls, floors, and ceilings, condensation as droplets of moisture.
The project uses a MinION portable genetic sequencer capable of operating everywhere—from the International Space Station to arctic depths—to collect and analyze ambient moisture samples from these charged environments. Within an hour, this advanced device provides real-time whole genome sequencing, metagenomic, and epigenetic analysis.
The resulting data, processed through MinKNOW and EPI2ME software, is transformed into dynamic, laser-projected environments via TouchDesigner's node-based visual programming.
As each performance adapts fluidly to its venue at a molecular level, Wet Dreams revisualizes the ambient byproducts of our hydro-collectivity, challenges biopolitical systems of division, and invites us to imagine new forms of united existence. The project reflects our globally interconnected condition by revealing the invisible molecular architectures we create together in spaces of celebration and communion.
“In a club strangely called “Earth” in 1989, I experienced a rain of human sweat that had accumulated on the ceiling after hours and hours of techno. Parts of everyone were falling, alien, damp, warm, back onto everyone because of our own repetitive churning.”
When exposed as an Immersive Multimedia Exhibition, the project explores the intersection of modern biotechnology, ancient craftsmanship, and interspecies caregiving.
The exhibition space, awash in hazy laser-projected bioinformatic visualizations, is inhabited by two semi-living sculptures :
A collaboration with Montreal glass artisan Jérémie St-Onge (VERRE D'ONGE), this Blown Glass Fermentation Urn combines art and biotechnology. Measuring 10" x 14", the urn rests on a custom steel pedestal (11" x 5'5") with an integrated incubator. Made with advanced glassblowing techniques, the subtly frosted vessel houses a genetically modified Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast (Scoby), transforming it into a living, breathing sculpture. Incorporating ancient pottery mechanisms to regulate fermentation pressure, the urn bridges traditional craft and modern science. Its glowing pedestal, equipped with sensors, monitors fermentation parameters, embodying themes of molecular entanglement and the interplay between organic and designed systems.
"Syphilis Plush" is a soft sculpture reanimating the Syphilis bacteria genome to explore queer bodies, disease, and socio-cultural conditioning. a 29” Pixelated Satin worm, patterned after the pathogen's entire genome, the culturally stigmatized microbe becomes cuddly, challenging narratives of "contamination" used to marginalize queer existence. Inspired by Giraldo Herrera, it critiques colonial co-optation of Amerindian syphilis knowledge, exposing violent biopolitical mechanisms. Interactive and tactile, the worms invite viewers to engage with the microverse, reevaluating our relationship with microbes through a lens of holistic, mystical integration that honors the sentience of all life and the fluid interplay of power, identity, and biology.
