The project is inspired by Philip K. Dick’s short story “The Preserving Machine” (1969),  presenting the collapse of Western Civilisation where the protagonist, Doc Labyrinth, invents a machine designed to preserve acclaimed music’s partitions, transforming them into living creatures.

The thought-provoking quality of this short story led me to explore the connection between ethical concerns raised in the plot and current research on storing data as DNA.

The tension between evolution and preservation, archiving and living, data and mutations pushed me to wonder: 

What is conservation in terms of biology? What are the ethical implications of preservation?
Are all beings on Earth already an expression of data?
What is that data telling us about our past and our future?

The artworks stems from extensive research on microplastics, cadmium, and uranium and their impacts on our bodies and health. 

The first set of three scenarios explores how the human skin microbiome has adapted to contact with these pollutants while the second set depicts a more extreme adaptation within our bodies.