Respiratory Encounters

Respiratory Encounters makes the invisible relationship between breath and aquatic plants perceptible. A glass body connects visitors with algae and microorganisms. Photosynthesis becomes tangible as a life-sustaining cycle, while conscious breathing before the sculpture creates a moment of slowing down. Sensors capture and translate these processes. The installation reminds us that inconspicuous organisms produce most of our oxygen and invites us to protect waters as fragile, shared breathing spaces.

Half of the oxygen we breathe is produced by algae and microscopic phytoplankton. By life forms we can neither see, nor feel or address, yet which form a base condition of our existence. The ethnobotanist Enrique Salmón belongs to the Rarámuri people, an indigenous people of the Sierra Madre Occidental in Mexico. He describes with the concept of iwígara a shared breath connecting humans, plants, land, and sky. For him this is not a metaphor, but a cycle that already contains us before we can name it. To breathe, in this sense, means to participate in a process one cannot step outside of and which therefore creates a form of responsibility. The biologist and philosopher of science Donna Haraway describes such connections as entanglements. Conditions that are not based on reciprocity, but on coexistence under unequal conditions. We are entangled with these organisms, without them grasping us as counterparts.

Respiratory Encounters makes this dependency tangible. At its center stands a sculptural glass body made of Duran glass, a material developed for scientific precision, which here becomes an organic counterpart. The water within it, raised above the surface of the pond, is habitat for beings carrying out exactly this photosynthesis. Sensors measure CO₂, oxygen, pH, and temperature in real time, translating these values into a digital interface that carries what happens inside the glass outward and makes it readable. The interface unfolds across two views, showing organic forms whose movement shifts with the state inside the glass: with the metabolic activity of the microorganisms, their equilibrium, their fluctuations. This state is followed by a breathing exercise, not as instruction but as an invitation to attune to a rhythm the body cannot fully read. A click shifts the perspective: the same network visualization now appears alongside the four sensor values as the technical legibility of the system, accompanied by an explanation of what these values mean. What becomes clear through the interaction: there is no stable harmony, but a cycle dependent on other breathing beings in and around the habitat.

In the context of an exhibition on medicinal plants and plant knowledge, Respiratory Encounters shifts the focus: away from the plant as substance, away from healing as effect. What heals here is not an extract but an atmosphere, a network of processes that continues whether we perceive it or not. This form of responsibility invites us to recognize algae and phytoplankton as often overlooked co-creators of life, and to protect bodies of water as fragile, vital spaces of breath.

Text by Anthea Oestreicher
Link to webinterface: http://respiratoryencounters.antheaoestreicher.com/

Anthea Oestreicher (b. 1991, Karlsruhe) is an artistic researcher and doctoral candidate at the Zurich University of the Arts. Her transdisciplinary practice explores the entanglements between technological systems and living organisms at the intersection of art, design, natural sciences, and the humanities. Her work focuses on planktonic life forms and more-than-human relationships, which she makes perceptible through artistic and ecological methods. In collaboration with scientific institutions such as the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology’s Institute of Bioengineering and the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity, as well as through field research aboard the research vessel RV Meteor, her work demonstrates how artistic and design practices can render complex ecological interconnections visible and intervene critically within them.

Credits

Artistic Researcher: Anthea Oestreicher
Webinterface: Pascal Meyer
Curators: Martina Huber, We Are AIA; Manuela Dahinden and Caroline Weckerle, Botanical Garden of the University of Zurich
Commissioned by: We Are AIA and Botanical Garden of the University of Zurich
Special thanks to the glassblowing workshop of University of Zurich, as well as to Alexander Damm and Peter Szövényi, and to the research project Interfacing the Ocean, Zurich University of the Arts.
Supported by: The Ernst Göhner Stiftung.