Bio-tracking is a mobile phone based exhibition using GPS (Global Positioning System) and a leading edge new smart phone software (suitable for Nokia Series 60) called Socialight downloadable via www.socialight.com which enabled the placement of virtual sticky notes around various locations in Brighton. The exhibition was part of Brighton Photo Biennial Fringe in 2007. Visitors could download the software and wander around the sites receiving text messages, sound files and images straight to their phones, in fact due to the nature of Socialight the exhibition is still live and can be viewed now.

Anna Dumitriu sampled and cultured various locations in the city of Brighton for normal flora bacteria and moulds, revealing this incredible, unseen and sublime world to us through a series of beautifully enhanced digital micrographs. Luciana Haill, Ian Helliwell, Ollie Glass and Juliet Kac created a series of sound works to accompany the images. Microbiologist John Paul wrote scientific text descriptions of the microbes.

The images created a kind of dialectic, bringing together the pure emotion of the sound responses and the analytical texts. Philosopher’s such as Schopenhauer have written much on music’s ability to capture and express emotion “as an immediate objectification and copy of the whole will as the world itself”.

By bringing in the use of GPS in the initial creation of the work, mapping the locations where the microbiological swabs were taken, the work drew together the microscopic and the macroscopic, drawing a thread between the satellites orbiting the earth and the bacteria at our feet.

A guided walk around the sites took place in September 2006, bio-hazard precautions were unnecessary but were taken anyway. We also carried GPS to track our route and a geiger counter to take unnecessary radiation readings.

Anna Dumitriu and Luciana Haill have co-authored a paper on Bio-tracking, which was presented at The International Mobile Music Technology Workshop at STEIM in Amsterdam. See more on that here. Bio-tracking is featured on the website We Make Money Not Art, see the interview by Regine Debatty here.