Southwark Park Stroll

Southwark Park Stroll

by Yunzhi/Melissa Li

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Southwark Park Stroll

Video and Petri Dish Installation • Sat 18 & Sun 19 July • All Day • Bertrand Russel Room

Southwark Park Stroll is a site-specific installation that works with the surrounding park as a shared environment, examining the unseen ecosystems that coexist with us in everyday spaces. The artist collected samples from soil, leaves, and contact points, then cultivated bacteria from them in petri dishes. Once these cultures matured, they were 3D-scanned and then translated them into an immersive, walkable digital terrain in Unreal Engine.

The project is informed by Donna Haraway’s idea of tentacular thinking, which understands life through ongoing relation, contact, and coexistence. From biological sampling to digital imaging and spatial installation, what is usually too small to notice becomes a landscape to explore and reflect on.

This installation works in dialogue with the Microbe Sampling Lab workshops, growing directly with the samples collected by participants.

These are drop-in sessions happening throughout the 18th and 19th. For more information, please read here.

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ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Yunzhi / Melissa Li (she/her) is a Chengdu-born, London-based computational artist whose practice spans interactive installations, web-based experiments and immersive 3D environments. She examines how images, code, and audience interaction shape our sense of identity, memory and place. At the heart of Li’s work is the translation of the intangible experiences, making the unseen visible. She offers a blending of online and organic systems, inviting viewers to consider how their personal experiences, histories and digital traces intertwine.