We are inspired by the organisms that surround us, especially the small ones. The world of bacteria is incredible and has a lot to tell us. Their structures, functions and how they react to the outside environment is something we wanted to explore. In order to integrate computing and nature, we created different scenarios that showcased these changes.

The project explored the concept of how to grow bacteria using Processing. We created a tool to show in a creative and dynamic way, how microorganisms (bacteria) might behave, given special conditions and for that, we created different environments with different constraints and variables to watch our bacteria grow and change accordingly.

Our main objective was to showcase the different forms that bacteria may have and also, how different environments with different given conditions might affect their growth, color and metabolism. Through Processing, we created different forms of bacteria, culture media and their visualization, which is a visual representation of what happens day to day in the environment.

Processing is a very flexible tool and through the exploration of procedural shapes, types of lines, different qualities of shape (as color and opacity) and randomness, interesting patterns were created as well.

Learning programming is sometimes like being in a Lab! 

“Bacteria have been programmed to behave like computers, assembling themselves into complex shapes based on instructions stuffed into their genes.” - Robert Roy Britt (Live Science, 2005)