Mapping the Invisible

Mapping the Invisible is an augmented reality installation that makes the microscopic life of the Ebro Delta perceptible to the human eye, ear and body. At its centre are diatoms — single-celled algae whose ornate silica shells have inhabited and documented the delta's waters for millennia, functioning simultaneously as living organisms and as inert evidence of an ecosystem's present and historical reality. Visitors to the installation encounter giant animated reconstructions of these organisms suspended in real space, experienced through tablets and noise-cancelling headphones delivering spatial 3D sound. The AR is activated via printed image trackers distributed through the installation, making each visitor an agent in the act of rendering the invisible legible. The 3D forms are not scientific illustrations: developed from assemblages of scanned physical materials found in and around the delta, they sit at the threshold between the biological and the geological, the archival and the invented — drawing the diatom's structural logic out of the laboratory and into dialogue with the territory it inhabits. As a collaboration between artist and cultural producer Jaume Vidal Arasa, sound artist Carlos Martorell (shoeg) and digital artist and programmer Lauren Moffatt, the work grew from dialogue with researchers, farmers, irrigation engineers, and local communities working in and around the Ebro Delta, as well as direct observation of the ecosystem itself. This encounter between artistic and scientific methodologies proved generative in both directions. A recurring thread across these exchanges was the question of language: the work resists terms like 'invasive species', which the artists understand as anthropocentric constructs that naturalise political assumptions about belonging and migration. The diatoms, as witnesses to millennia of environmental change and instability, offer a different framework — one in which mutation, migration, and transformation are the norm rather than the exception. The piece is therefore conceived as mutable: rather than arriving at a fixed, singular form, it is intended to be shaped by each context in which it appears, collecting influences from the sites of exhibition, just as the environment has always shaped the organisms at the work's heart. The installation is built from the contributions of sound artist Carlos Martorell and digital artist/programmer Lauren Moffatt, with scientific data from the IRTA (researcher Rosa Trobajo) and the facilitation of Amposta-based artist Jaume Vidal Arasa. The AR project is accompanied by 'Sonic Silica', a separate data-driven sound engine and sonic performance by Shoeg, which can be experienced in the application via headphones and performed live. Sonic Silica is a generative sound engine that emerges from the invisible, complex and profoundly threatened ecologies of diatoms inhabiting the brackish waters of the Ebro Delta (a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve facing imminent ecological collapse). Through microsound synthesis, artificial life algorithms and data models from IRTA research (as well as datasets from Copernicus, AEMET, SMC covering 1990–2019), it constructs a responsive sonic ecosystem that speaks, collapses and regenerates according to the tensions between human activity and environmental resilience.