SymbioTotem is a multimedia pop-up art/science installation concept, serving as both a communication interface and an interactive environmental sensor. It is primarily designed as a community engagement tool, as well as an interspecies interaction catalyst. This way, it seeks to shift how we humans perceive and relate to local ecosystems and their inhabitants.

At its core, the SymbioTotem harnesses the power of remote sensing and AI to read, interpret and impersonate the nuances of its surroundings in a human relatable manner (i.e. local flora, funga, fauna, rivers, weather conditions, etc). Externally, the physical embodiment sculpted by native artists seeks root in local wisdom and symbolism, reflecting the cultural narratives and traditional ecological knowledge of the places where the installation lives.

Our goal is that at least one SymbioTotem can be assembled at a 2024 Zuzalu instance, following up from ongoing developments.

Applications

Wherever it is, the SymbioTotem has the potential to serve as a dynamic educational tool, bringing the intricate details of local ecosystems to life for its audience. Its integration of local cultural elements further enriches the learning experience, providing context and a sense of place.

From a scientific research perspective, the collection of detailed environmental and biodiversity data over time holds great potential for longitudinal studies on ecological changes, biodiversity, and environmental health.

This way, the SymBioTotem demonstrates how tech can be used towards human reconnection with our own nature, both through subjective experiences and scientific endeavors. Thus, it is a resourceful tool for traditional and tech-oriented communities alike.

Track History

The SymbioTotem is a synthesis of many ongoing initiatives of Sympoiesis - currently manifested as a "force field attracting like-hearted souls around interspecies synesthesia". Its deepest root, in plant and animal remote sensing work, is represented by the long-term personal inquiries of Danilo Olivaz and Akash Kulgod, who have first met in person at Zuzalu Montenegro (2023). In that same experience, a new creative frontier opened up via their participation in the Zuzalu's "Nature Hackathon": the use of LLMs to serve as a voice for nonhuman entities, like rivers and other ecosystems.

Since then we have been engaging with the development of a "Sensing A(I)vatar" for the "Rio Sagrado" (Sacred River), at the heart of the largest continuum of Atlantic forest in the world (Morrestes, PR, Brazil) - a act of activism, being done in opposition to a devastating railroad threat to that entire bioregion and its unmatched biodiversity.

In parallel to this, our public facing interspecies experiences - as well as Zuzalu's iconic dome - have inspired the conceptualization of the SymbioDome - "a portable, dome-shaped multimedia installation that serves as both a projection screen and an interactive environmental sensor". In the last Zuzalu round, we launched this idea and raised roughly 34% of our budget, enabling prototyping - which in turn revealed that projection mapping's high cost and night-time dependency limit the project's application.

Furthermore, after being featured in a short-film and showcased at the 2nd Rights of Nature Forum in Brazil, the Rio Sagrado's A(I)vatar alpha version (trained with 20+ scientific papers on the river's watershet) has indicated the greater relatability potential in non-computer mediated interfaces for such avatars, leading up to the ongoing crafting of a sculpture/totem to represent the Sacred River, in partnership with a local indigenous artist. The final version will be displayed to the public at the "Salto do Sagrado" visiting center, educating tourists as serving as scientific tool for the monitoring of the river's waters.

Naturally, all of these feedback loops have led to the emergence of the SymbioTotem as presented here. If you may, a merging of the SymbioDome and the Sacred river iniatives. Needless to say, it can be applied to any other ecosystem/place.

Funding

And now we seek the resources to continue development and testing. Thus, all preceding raised via this campaign will be apply towards the acquisition/development of:

• Different hardware components for environmental and biodiversity sensing -- We're currently prototyping with the list of components detailed here, in the context of the Sacred River.
• Dedicated portable computing units -- The Rio Sagrado avatar will soon receive a Raspberry Pi powered, voice enabled version. But a more powerful unity will certainly be necessary for any other application.
• Locally run LLM software solutions for human interaction and data analysis -- We're currently relying OpenAI's APIs (thanks Giveth Galaxy AIHackathon for "sponsoring" this use) for prototypes. But the longterm vision requires the development of a custom multimodal local llm solution, created by a specialized developer partner.
• Cultural blueprints for ever immersive interactions -- Sympoiesis members Ingvild Syntropia and Danilo Olivaz have crafted a Guide for the creation of Non Human Characters, which is informing the subtle aspects of creating captvating representations for natural entities.

Most importantly, the main outcomes and lessons of the ongoing tests and developments shall be shared widely via an Open Source Toolkit that any community in the world can use to build their own SymbioTotem, as detailed in this document.

Unfortunately, we are not at the point yet to specify how much each one installation would cost. But an ideal budget for the throughout testing and development phase would be of rougly $30.000, as detailed here.