Lux Meridiani

2014
Shown as part of RECAPS Rethink Environment at Human Resources LA 2014
Shown at b4bel4b gallery for Migratory Paths, curated by Joty Dhaliwal 2019

Lux meridiani is a cartographic science fiction, built on existing data. By playing with thresholds in the geographical data and reorienting certain land use classifications, Lux meridiani takes the continuous exchange of invasive insects through global trade to imagine the emergence of a new, unknown species that infests street trees in urban areas with relentless luminescence.

In this fable, Lux meridiani explicitly states what has been happening all along; that the recoding of our environment has been an economic rather than ecological engine all along. Areas of land that have been categorically defined as "urban" through night time lights satellite images become even more "urban" as the result of this fictional glow worm, suggesting that now, more than ever, the ecological and spatial structure of cities are defined by economic flows.

A version of it was also presented at the open studios at Headlands Center for the Arts, during my stint there as a resident.