Selfish Bacteria #Linz

An Urban Cosmos Shaped by Invisible Lives

What if our actions and thoughts were shaped, in part, by the diverse bacteria living within our gut?

This work visualizes the gut microbiome data of h.o members Hideaki Ogawa, Emiko Ogawa, and their daughter Moe Ogawa, transforming their individual forms into small planets inhabited by countless microorganisms.

The project further traces the family’s twenty years of living in Linz. Their movements and behavioral patterns become environmental inputs for slime molds, whose growth generates speculative networks and urban forms, imagining a regenerating Linz.

Bacteria and slime molds are largely invisible to the human eye.

Yet they sense, adapt, and form relationships, continuously producing complex ecologies and networks.

Rather than viewing humans as autonomous individuals, Selfish Bacteria invites us to reconsider ourselves as living assemblages shaped through coexistence with countless other forms of life.