Quote from Mark Twain’s manuscript at the exhibition entrance, New Taipei Gallery, 2022.
“I will be reborn as a microbe
As if waking from a metabolic dream
In this form I will exist for 3000 years
Then you and I will transform
By colliding into one another
Another panspermia
Another world will emerge”而我將重生為細菌，如同從新陳代謝之夢境中醒來
以此型態，長存三千年
你我，便以碰撞彼此的方式換變
另一類泛種論的興起、另一世界的起源– From the script of DJULIS001 錄像文稿
Project Description
As private spaceflight and satellite connectivity move from proposal to service, 3000 Years Among Microbes offers a counter-view of the space industry and of human-centered thinking. Working through technologies still developing quickly, from the microbial to the planetary scale and at sizes the eye cannot follow, it speculates on life among the stars through the logic of symbiosis and kinship.
The project began in early 2020, in a lounge at the MIT Media Lab, prompted by the space policy work of the Space Enabled research group and by the parabolic flights of the Space Exploration Initiative. After meeting many space stakeholders and researchers, Rae Yuping Hsu, Po-Hao Chi, and Nancy Valladares found that most research, policy, and commercial projects carried an uneasy colonial vocabulary. They set out to turn that structure over using art and storytelling, and spent two years on it.
A different kind of first contact
The title comes from an unpublished manuscript Mark Twain completed in 1905, in which a microbiologist is accidentally turned into a bacterium by a magician and observes the world from a nonhuman position while keeping his human memory. Taking that vantage, the artists wrote a first-contact story of their own.
In the future, those with power leave a post-warming Earth for space. One day, a minor character, a parts technician at a space center, stows away aboard a “space colonization” rocket, smuggles herself from Earth to Mars, and, on landing, runs in the opposite direction from the space city, past the edge of jurisdiction, until she finds somewhere to stand. There she meets the protagonist: an extremophile bacterium that has lived on Mars all along. In an encounter no words quite describe, the extremophile recognizes, among the microbes of the girl’s gut, an ancestor from its own lineage.
In this reunion between a Martian native and the ancestral strains of “humans,” will the two beings hold each other or harm each other? Symbiosis is not a peaceful transaction. Survival is braided from negotiation, conflict, and collaboration.
The metanarrative behind the story is panspermia and endosymbiosis. Once you notice that our sensory cells still carry the small tails bacteria use to move, the definition of the human “individual” starts to loosen. Biology has gradually accepted that humans evolved through bacterial symbiosis, and offers the term holobiont to say that life took over the whole planet through collaboration rather than combat.
From Space Invaders to Star Wars and Alien, the most common first contact on screen ends with humans and alien species conquering one another. The word “contact” heightens the act of discovering alien life, and deepens colonial behavior rooted in human history. Whether the genre casts humans or aliens as the winner, it still looks at alien life through a colonial lens made on Earth. 3000 Years Among Microbes works as a test of imagination: how should humans carry the lessons of the Anthropocene into space exploration, and plant symbiosis into how we picture interstellar ecosystems?
計畫介紹
在私人太空旅行及衛星連網服務已逐步實現之際，《與細菌混了三千年》提出了對太空產業及人類中心思想的另類觀點。通過仍在迅速發展中的科技，從微生物到行星尺度，以肉眼難以觀察的規模，藉由「共生（symbiosis）」和「親屬關係（kinship）」邏輯去推測未來居於星際之間的生活樣貌。
2020 年初，在麻省理工媒體實驗室大樓的交誼廳中，以「太空增能（Space Enabled）」的太空政策及發展專題，與「太空探索倡議（Space Exploration Initiative）」組別的零重力飛行為契機，徐叡平、紀柏豪與 Nancy Valladares 在接觸眾多太空利益關係者及研究人員後，有鑒於大多數科研、政治及商業導向的項目中，常隱含著令人不安的殖民語彙及人類中心思想，便著手構思一個能以藝術與說故事方法翻轉既有結構的提案，展開為期兩年的創作與研究之旅。
有別於過往的「第一類接觸」
計畫名稱源自美國作家馬克・吐溫 1905 年完成的未出版手稿。該文本聚焦於一位誤被魔術變成細菌的微生物學家，以保有人類記憶的非人視角去觀察世界。受此啟發，創作團隊由微生物視角出發，虛構了一個關於第一類接觸的故事。
在未來，有權勢者紛紛從後暖化的地球移居太空。某天，故事的配角，一名太空中心的零件維修工，藏身於「太空殖民」火箭，從地球偷渡至火星，並在降落後朝太空城市的反方向奔跑，脫離管轄區找到落足之地。在那，她與故事主角相遇：一個早已棲居火星的嗜極細菌（extremophile bacteria）。在文字無法描繪的接觸過程，嗜極菌在女孩腸道的微生物群系中，被指認出源於相同系譜的祖先菌。
在火星原住菌與「人類」祖先菌的重逢故事中，兩個生命體會擁抱抑或傷害對方？我們必須記得，共生並不是一件和平的交易，而生存必然揉雜商榷、衝突與協作。
故事的後設敘述是泛種論（panspermia）與內共生學說（endosymbiosis）。當觀察到我們的感官細胞上還連著細菌移動所需的小尾巴時，人類是「個體」的定義便開始鬆動。生物學界逐漸接納人類是由細菌共生演化而來的理論，並提出「共生體（holobiont）」一詞來表達「生命並非經由戰鬥，而是通過協作佔據整個地球」。
從《太空侵略者》到《星際大戰》與《異形》，影視中最常見的第一類接觸，往往導致人類與外星物種互相征服。「接觸」一詞強化了發現外星生命的過程，也加深了根植在人類歷史中的殖民行為。無論科幻題材是將人類或外星人描述為勝者，仍是通過地球上的殖民鏡頭來觀察外星生命。因此，《與細菌混了三千年》像是一道想像力的測驗，反思人類應如何在太空探索的進程中，銘記人類世的教訓，將共生觀念植入對星際生態系的想像。
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- 3000 Years Among Microbes, installation view.
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- New Taipei Gallery, 2022.
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- ENKOUNTER, the djulis greenhouse, and footage filmed on location at TASA.
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- X-band receiving antenna at the Taiwan Space Agency, filmed during fieldwork.
DJULIS001（HD video, color, sound, 2021, 12 min）
During the space race of the 1960s, NASA built lunar mock-up bases across the western deserts of the United States, where astronauts trained for survival. DJULIS001 was filmed in that terrain, letting desert stand in for other planets and setting it beside galactic and microscopic imagery so that the difference in scale between humans and microbes softens. The film asks what training an astronaut with a symbiotic cosmology would need. Its narration comes from a collective microbial voice, speaking of the council of rocks, the council of dust, and the council of wind, of the rituals of entropy, and of what timekeeping means inside a life measured by splitting into twos, fours, eights.
在 60 年代的太空競賽中，美國太空總署曾在西部沙漠地區建立多個月球模擬基地，讓太空人在此訓練生存技能。《DJULIS001》即在此區取景，以沙漠地貌暗示其他星球，與宏觀星系及微觀顯微圖像並置，用以淡化人類與微生物在尺度上的差異，想像抱有共生宇宙觀的太空人應接受何種訓練。旁白由微生物的集體聲音發出，講石頭議會、塵埃議會與風的議會，講熵的儀式，講在分裂成二、四、八的無限壽命裡什麼叫做記時。
DJULIS001, 2021. HD video, color, sound, 12 min. Installation view at Rescaling the World, C-LAB, Taipei, 2023.
Booming Microbes 顯微聲音化裝置
Booming Microbes is a video and sound installation built on custom sonification software. Samples collected during fieldwork were observed and recorded with a portable microscope, then analyzed for motion, turning microscopic footage into synthesized sound that makes the microbes’ behavior patterns audible. The same system runs through DJULIS001.
《Booming Microbes》為影像與聲音裝置，以自行開發的聲音化程式為核心：以可攜式顯微鏡觀察並錄製採集而來的樣本，經動態分析將微生物顯微影像轉換為可彰顯其行為模式的合成聲響。同一套系統亦用於《DJULIS001》的製作。
Booming Microbes, Chi Po-Hao, 2022. Video and sound installation, custom sonification software.
CubeSat Model 立方衛星模型
Built to the specifications of a working satellite. Using extremophiles collected from the hot springs during early research, the team printed a skeleton, implanted mycelium, and cultivated a layer of bacterial skin as a three-dimensional model of a speculative Martian native. Sealed inside the CubeSat, it functions as a miniature theater for experimental music and moving image. Design and fabrication: Hsiangfu Chen.
參照真實衛星的製作規格，以調研初期於溫泉區採集的嗜極菌為參考，打印骨架後將菌絲植入，培養出一層菌母皮膚，作為推測「火星原住菌」的立體模型，封存於立方衛星模型中，視為實驗音樂及影像的微型劇場。設計製作：陳湘馥。
CubeSat model, 2022. Installation view.
CubeSat model, 2022. Extremophile bacteria grown into a bacterial cellulose skin. Design and fabrication: Hsiangfu Chen.
Djulis Greenhouse 紅藜溫室
A greenhouse filled with djulis (Chenopodium formosanum) was built to screen the work. Footage of the X-band remote sensing data receiving station at Taiwan’s National Space Organization leads into it, so that the video inside reads as a signal transmitted from far away. Djulis is native to Taiwan and also a significant food source for long-duration space missions, rated by NASA among the crops best suited to astronauts.
為體現敘事主軸，實體呈現階段打造了一座用來放映作品的紅藜溫室，並以國家太空中心「X 頻段遙測影像資料接收站」的畫面為引導，象徵溫室內的錄像來自遠方訊號傳輸。紅藜不僅是台灣原生種作物，也是長途太空任務的重要營養來源，被美國太空總署評為最適合太空人食用的糧食之一。
Djulis greenhouse video installation, 2022. Greenhouse structure, living djulis, single-channel video.
Djulis greenhouse video installation, 2022. Detail.
ENKOUNTER（Document Installation 文件裝置）
A document installation combining interviews, academic research, screen media, and news clippings. It gathers the space-exploration material collected in the project’s early research: Cold War propaganda, video games and films, toys, contemporary space policy lobbying, space junk, Elon Musk’s red Tesla headed for Mars, CubeSat building, space conferences, online rumors, and local news. The material is threaded together as documentary evidence, showing how separate events connect and how differently each generation has looked at space.
結合訪談、學術研究、影視內容與新聞簡報的文件裝置。彙整計畫發展初期搜集的太空探索相關資料：冷戰時期的政治宣傳、電玩與影視作品、玩具，到近代太空政策遊說、太空垃圾、馬斯克駛往火星的紅色特斯拉、立方衛星實作、太空研討會、網路謠言及地方新聞。資料以文件線索形式串連，展示不同事件之間的相關性，藉以窺看人類面對太空的多樣視角，以及不同世代背景下所顯現的差異。
ENKOUNTER, 2022. Document installation.
ENKOUNTER, 2022. Detail.
Stakeholder Interview Publication 太空利益關係者訪談出版品
The project had planned a roundtable at MIT bringing private companies, government departments, research institutions, and artists to one table. The pandemic turned it into a set of in-person and online interviews instead, later bound into a volume alongside the fieldwork. The questions covered basic assumptions about alien life, the fear or fantasy underneath “contact,” the rights of planets and of nature, and how the language surrounding space exploration might be decolonized.
計畫原訂在麻省理工舉辦太空探索圓桌會議，邀請私人企業、政府部門、研究機構與藝術家同席，讓原本難有交集的價值觀相互激盪。受疫情影響，最終以實體及線上訪談形式完成，並將田野調查與訪談內容裝訂成冊。提問包含對外星生命的基本假設、「接觸」背後的恐懼或想像、行星與自然的權利，以及該如何想像圍繞太空探索的語言能去殖民化。
Research booklet, 2022. Bilingual publication, shown at Rescaling the World, C-LAB, Taipei, 2023.
Read ENKOUNTER: Space Stakeholder Interviews. Interviews with Alvin Harvey (MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics), Nicole H’uiller (MIT Media Lab), and Danielle Wood (Director, Space Enabled, MIT Media Lab).
閱讀 《ENKOUNTER 太空利益關係者訪談集》，受訪者為 Alvin Harvey（麻省理工學院航空航天系）、Nicole H’uiller（麻省理工媒體實驗室）、Danielle Wood（麻省理工媒體實驗室 Space Enabled 主任）。
Zero-Gravity Flight 無重力飛行
A research strand by Po-Hao Chi and Rae Yuping Hsu, carried out during parabolic flight. Chi’s Harmony in Precarity (2021) builds an augmented acoustic device that treats weightlessness as both a metaphor and a method for understanding precarity. The instrument works in two modes: as a wearable responding to bodily movement, and as an autonomous object during microgravity. Embedded gyroscope data maps collisions and motion into shifting textures and pulses. Panspermia (Rae Hsu, 2021) is a performance in weightlessness carried out during a parabolic flight, presented in the exhibition as a flight suit, bacterial cellulose, and video.
紀柏豪與徐叡平參與的太空創研項目，於無重力飛行中進行。紀柏豪的《浮游共鳴體》（2021）開發一件增強式聲學裝置，把失重同時當作理解「不穩定（precarity）」的隱喻與方法。裝置有兩種模式：隨身體動作反應的穿戴物，以及在微重力階段自主漂浮的物件。內建陀螺儀將碰撞與運動映射為變化中的音色與脈衝。《Panspermia》（徐叡平，2021）為拋物線飛行失重狀態中的行為演出，展場中以飛行服、細菌纖維素與錄像呈現。
Harmony in Precarity, Chi Po-Hao, 2021. Augmented acoustic instrument, piezo sensors, custom sonification.
Panspermia, Rae Hsu, 2021. Performance in weightlessness during a parabolic flight; flight suit, bacterial cellulose, video.
Fieldwork 田野調查
Despite the pandemic and the limits on international travel, the artists carried out fieldwork in Taiwan and the United States, visiting the sulfur hot springs of Yangmingshan and the extreme terrain of Joshua Tree National Park and Death Valley National Park, developing scenes for the work and collecting natural material. They also filmed at Taiwan’s National Space Organization, recording the satellite control room, rocket models, and antennas in operation.
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- The antenna radome at Taiwan’s National Space Organization.
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- The antenna radome at Taiwan’s National Space Organization.
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- Joshua Tree National Park.
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- Boulder landscape.
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- Field team at a stone overlook above Death Valley badlands.
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- The field team at Kester’s Trading Post, Pioneertown.
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- Death Valley National Park, 2020.
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- Filming a performer across the textured surface of Badwater Basin.
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- Amboy Crater, Mojave Trails National Monument, 2020.
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- Drone fieldwork above the basalt lava field.
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- A drone records two performers against the Death Valley badlands.
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- Setting up the camera against the eroded desert hills.
Public Programs 公眾活動
顯微影像聲音化實作工作坊 Microscopic Image Sonification Workshop｜2020.11.21
An online workshop led by Po-Hao Chi, introducing data sonification through examples and then working in Max/MSP to analyze microbial footage recorded through a microscope, turning the small movements inside the frame into sound.
線上工作坊，由紀柏豪主講。介紹資料聲音化（data sonification）的概念與案例，並使用 Max/MSP 實作，分析顯微鏡所錄製的微生物影像，把顯微影像中的細微動態轉化為聲音。
Screenshot from the sonification Max patch.
與細菌混了三千年 藝術家線上座談分享會 Artist Panel｜2022.01.21
An online panel with the artists (Po-Hao, Rae and Nancy), extending the project’s discussion of decolonized space imaginaries.
參與藝術家進行線上座談，分享創作過程並延伸計畫中關於去殖民太空想像的討論。
太空花藝外交 插花工作坊 Space Diplomatic Flower Art: Flower Arrangement Workshop｜2022.02.27
Project consultant Maggie Coblentz, a researcher with the MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative, gave a talk on plants, seeds, and space travel, from anecdotes to current research. The workshop that followed, made with the studio Of Flower, invited families to build their own “floral satellites” from mixed media and from plants and seeds that have actually been launched into space, and to picture what cultural diplomacy in space might look like if it were conducted through flower arranging.
由計畫顧問 Maggie Coblentz（麻省理工媒體實驗室太空探索倡議研究員）進行專題演講，分享植物、種子與太空旅行的種種軼聞，以及最新研究進展。親子工作坊與《Of Flower 關於花》工作室合作，帶領大家以各類曾發射至太空的植栽與種子，結合複合媒材設計屬於自己的「花藝衛星」，一同想像若以花藝作為太空的文化外交途徑，將會是什麼樣子。
Talk session of the Space Diplomatic Flower Art workshop, with Maggie Coblentz presenting on screen.
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- Space Diplomatic Flower Art workshop, 2022.
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- Participants building floral satellites.
Exhibition & Screening History 展出與放映
- 2022.01.14–02.28 3000 Years Among Microbes 與細菌混了三千年, New Taipei Gallery 新板藝廊, New Taipei City, Taiwan
- 2022.10.07 Splintered Realities, RIXC Art Science Festival, Riga, Latvia (screening of DJULIS001)
- 2023 Like a Lurch of Earth on the Edge of Sleep, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, Lebanon (online, aashra platform)
- 2023.09.01–07 Rescaling the World 重置世界的尺度, STS 年會, Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-LAB) 臺灣當代文化實驗場, Taipei, Taiwan
- 2024.01.22–25 YES screening series, Microscope Gallery, New York, USA
Press & Links
- 3000 Years Among Microbes Exhibition in Taiwan, MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology
- 《與細菌混了三千年》展覽，新北市政府文化局藝文中心
- 《3000 Years Among Microbes》與細菌混了三千年，非池中藝術網
- 3000 Years Among Microbes 與細菌混了三千年，國家文化藝術基金會
- YES: Nancy Dayanne Valladares & HSURAE, Microscope Gallery, New York
- Like a Lurch of Earth on the Edge of Sleep, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut
- 科技藝術工作坊｜顯微影像聲音化實作，融聲創意
- 3000 Years Among Microbes，融聲創意 Zone Sound Creative
Writing 相關書寫
- 打造比人類更多的科幻太空未來原型 (Prototyping A More-Than-Human Sci-Fi Space Future)，紀柏豪，《藝術收藏+設計》，2022
- 當科幻成為現實：太空探索中的藝術及創意實踐 (When Sci-Fi Becomes Reality: Art and Creative Practice in Space Exploration)，紀柏豪，《藝術收藏+設計》，2022
- 太空如何成為藝術？太空發展的別樣過去及未來 (How Does Space Become Art? A Different Past and Future of Space Development)，紀柏豪，《藝術收藏+設計》，2021
Related Works
- Harmony in Precarity 浮游共鳴體, 2021. The augmented acoustic instrument developed for the zero-gravity flight strand of this project.
- Interfaces of the Invisible 無形介面, 2022. A site work made with Chucho Ocampo Aguila, who also contributed to this project.
Credits
- 藝術家 Artists｜徐叡平 Rae Yuping Hsu、紀柏豪 Po-Hao Chi、Nancy Dayanne Valladares
- 創作協力 Supporting Artist｜Chucho Ocampo Aguila
- 立方衛星設計製作 CubeSat Design & Fabrication｜陳湘馥 Hsiangfu Chen
- 空拍指導 Aerial Photography Guide｜Maggie Coblentz
- 攝影協力（臺灣）Supporting Photography (Taiwan)｜張耀翔 Yaoxiang Zhang
- 專案執行、展場設計 Project Manager & Exhibition Design｜賴慧珈 Caitlin Lai
- 行政協力 Administrative Support｜陳旻靖 MinChing Chen
- 視覺設計 Visual Design｜吳瑞桓 TRACY’S
- 網站設計 Website Design｜賴慧珈 Caitlin Lai
- 展務執行 Exhibition Execution｜詹若禾 RuoHe Jhan
- 計畫顧問 Project Consultants｜Maggie Coblentz、Ariel Ekblaw、Danielle Wood
- 指導單位 Supervised by｜文化部 Ministry of Culture
- 主辦單位 Organized by｜新北市政府 New Taipei City Government
- 承辦單位 Presented by｜新北市政府文化局、新板藝廊 Department of Cultural Affairs, New Taipei City Government / New Taipei Gallery
- 學術指導合作單位 Academic Partner｜麻省理工學院藝術、文化與科技學程 MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology
- 特別感謝 Special Thanks｜國家太空中心 NSPO
- 出品 Produced by｜融聲創意 Zone Sound Creative
Harmony in Precarity additionally supported by the MIT Space Exploration Initiative and the National Culture and Arts Foundation, Taiwan. 《浮游共鳴體》另獲 MIT Space Exploration Initiative 與財團法人國家文化藝術基金會支持。