Harsh Pandya
RSD13 session contributor: Alberto Iberbuden
A deep dive into the intricate systems, relations and roles of plants, microbes and humans that exist under our feet.
There exists a life right below our feet that has existed for over 400 million years. About a million of them can occupy just the head of a pin and weigh about 5000 pounds over an acre of fertile agricultural land. They are the smallest, oldest, wisest and the biggest living organisms on earth. They are everywhere. They decay the dead, mobilize trapped nutrients, and, through their small actions and relations, sustain life as we know it on Earth. Without them, life on earth would not have sustained long enough to evolve into thousands of species of flora and fauna across diverse environments. This map explores the system relations between microbes, plants and humans. It primarily focuses on the roles of bacteria and fungi and represents their actions and how their importance. The map compresses information sourced from multiple sources and aims to represent them in an engaging visual narrative. Through illustrations, the aim is to represent complex relations between the players and simplify it for the viewers by anthropomorphizing the role of microbes. It puts into perspective the importance and impact of our tiny friends and questions our role and contribution to supporting this system that has existed long before us. The goal is to inform the audience about their deeds through various animated scenarios. The viewer is free to decide their own starting point, to explore their findings and interactions with the map.
KEYWORDS: system oriented thinking, biology, soil systems, microbes, relationships, illustration, nitrogen
