Cities lit by fireflies and bacteria

Bioluminescent fireflies and bacterial bioremediators can inspire new ways of lighting up our cities: this is demonstrated by two artists who have drawn inspiration from nature to create luminous works of art 

«In the early 1960s, due to air pollution, and especially in the countryside, due to water pollution (the clear blue rivers and ditches) fireflies began to disappear. The phenomenon was lightning fast. After a few years, the fireflies were no more. […] That “something” that happened about ten years ago will therefore be called the “disappearance of the fireflies”¹».

For almost forty years in Italy, the disappearance of fireflies has been a sign of the post-war economic boom, then of industrialisation and its political and social consequences. At the time of the “great acceleration”² of the Anthropocene, the image of fireflies is even more topical, but it acquires a positive evocative force: fireflies have not disappeared altogether, they are still present and possible in our society, albeit in flashes and at times. We need to look for them, escaping the dazzling lighthouse light that renders them obsolete³. 

José Manuel Berenguer is a physician, composer and guitarist. He teaches ‘Psychoacoustics and Experimental Music’ at the Master in ‘Sound Art’ at the University of Barcelona and is director of the Orquestra del Caos.

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Art, which, as artist and physician José Manuel Berenguer says, «is not only a way of telling but also a way of being», is in this sense a powerful tool to find them where they shine and help us reconstruct a new imaginary for our cities.

The synchronised rhythm of fireflies

«The fireflies I saw produced flashes, sparks and flashes, momentary illuminations that caught my attention: those flashes were rhythmic. I loved seeing myself surrounded by those flashes in the middle of the jungle».

José Manuel Berenguer, a doctor, composer and artist during the 1990s in Malaysia, South-East Asia, intercepted one of the places that still glow. «I saw fireflies emitting flashes. When night came and the ambient light disappeared, many fireflies started flashing synchronously next to each other. This could occur in a small pool of water, a lagoon, or even an entire mangrove swamp, and that is how I decided to study the phenomenon of firefly synchronisation». 

In the mangrove swamp, when the male firefly emits an intermittent signal, the female responds with a similar signal: the light emissions first resemble each other and then completely coincide. «The synchronisation of fireflies,» Berenguer points out, «can be stronger or weaker depending on the time the glow is active. If this time exceeds half of the off time, the synchronisation tends to be stronger».

Fireflies are thus an example of a system that tends to stabilise in certain states of periodic sequence, so-called coupled oscillator systems, which can form actual “artificial fireflies”. From this suggestion, Lucy. Sin nombre y sin memoria was born, the art installation reproducing a group of 64 artificial fireflies⁴.

«Each artist chooses his elements to create the relationship between art and technology and ultimately with science,» says Berenguer. The chosen element, in this case, is the 555 electronic circuit, which is present in Lucy‘s 64 units and which works a bit like a clock: it increases or decreases its pulsation (i.e. ticking) depending on the voltage introduced. 

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So how does Lucy work? Each “firefly” consists of four sensors and four infrared light emitters.

The sensors are arranged at right angles: when infrared light arrives, the voltage inside the circuit increases and so does the pulse that is transmitted to the emitters’, in a game of cross-references between emitters and sensors of one unit that are in turn directed towards the sensors of other firefly units. «When the light comes out of one of the fireflies, it stimulates the receiver of the other and increases its frequency» explains Berenguer. «Both feed off each other until a point is reached where the bounce game stabilises. In the case of two fireflies, the moment of stabilisation is predictable: the more firefly units increase, the more difficult it becomes». 

Not only that, Lucy is also able to simulate the perturbations that occur in nature. «When a visitor approaches a firefly unit, it causes a change in the light emission of the entire structure,» explains Berenguer. What happens is that the visitor «alters the ambient brightness and stimulates a new communication between the components and, therefore, a new path of bouncing and referencing between emitters and sensors. Although the synchronisation patterns, paths and starting points stimulated by the visitor are not always the same, there is always a stabilisation. Just as it happens in nature». 

In this way, Lucy becomes a study of «how information travels from one place to another and how information is transmitted in a network», explains Berenguer. «The city itself is a network in which information travels from one node to another». Complex networks⁵ in which even though the connections between the various nodes may change, the whole (or the system) is self-regulating and remains stable over time. «In a city, there are trends that remain stable for hundreds of years, dare I say millennia, like the streets», explains Berenguer. «Barcelona’s streets have remained the same since the 16th century, not to say the 15th century, but the activities associated with them have changed, as has their circulation. They are also self-regulating: if a street is no longer viable, suffers damage or is too busy, you go somewhere else. And the traffic continues to function».

Electricity from bacteria: the GEO-LLUM project 

Samira Allaouat is a transdisciplinary artist, fascinated by old technologies with new and contemporary applications. She researches and experiments with low-tech solutions for a more ethical, sustainable and resilient future.

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If Lucy is inspired by the bioluminescence⁶ of fireflies, the GEO-LLUM⁷ project by artist Samira Benini Allaouat exploits the work of bioremediation, i.e. the decontamination of soil or water through natural organic techniques such as bacterial activity, to produce electricity. GEO-LLUM, however, does not only draw inspiration from biological knowledge but also winks at art, electrochemistry, bioelectronic engineering, biodesign, and educational sciences.

GEO-LLUM is made up of two words: “geo”, which means “earth” in Greek, and “llum”, which means “light” in Catalan, and “more than being a work, it is an idea of re-imagining something that does not yet exist,” says Samira Allaouat. «GEO-LLUM is the result of a journey that began between 2014 and 2015, when on the occasion of my first art installation⁸I asked myself: “is it possible to make electronic music without conventional electricity?” I then built this musical instrument with a hydrolytic battery that used metals to create electricity: investigating further into the various sources of electricity in nature, I came across the research of Professor Derek Lovley⁹ of the University of Amherst, the discoverer of Geobacter».

Also called the “PR of the earth” due to their ability to attract other bacteria, Geobacter metallireducens are harmless to human health and anaerobic: as they do not need oxygen, they live in moist soils as well as at the bottom of oceans, and can produce electricity by decontaminating the soil.

These micro-organisms have become the basis for the functioning of GEO-LLUM, conceived as a real living organism. «GEO-LLUM was conceived following an aesthetic and functional design approach based on biomimicry: an example of this is the mushroom shape of the lights, which also serves to collect water», explains Samira Allaouat. «Starting from the top, the upper part of the “mushroom” is a funnel that channels water through the stem and fills the container that waters the earth below and makes the geobacteria thrive».

But how is electricity created? GEO-LLUM’s battery, called Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC), comprises several cells: each consists of a coke granule anode on the inside and a carbon felt cathode on the outside. The felt is then in contact with the earth: the geobacteria, attracted by conductive materials, colonise it, i.e. they attach themselves to it, and begin to produce a biological film or biofilm, formed by true nanowires, the pili. From this activity, the bacteria excrete electrons and between the anode and cathode of the cell, a potential difference is created and thus electricity. The MFC consists of 14 cells capable of producing around 3-4 volts of energy, this is stored by an accumulator so that there is a smooth current without the surges of organic activity.

«Every time the light comes on», confesses Samira Allaouat, «it’s a magical moment».

In the GEO-LLUM energy circle, in which all parts are interconnected and interdependent, the human being takes care of bacteria, rather than trying to eradicate them. A bacterial turn that Allaouat advocates because «we have more bacteria than human cells: we already live in symbiosis with them. In the history of science, there has been a direct attack on this fundamental part of nature, this invisible part that we ignore but which is at the very basis of our ecosystem. I am happy that GEO-LLUM is allowing me to publicise their importance and the new way of thinking about bacteria by engaging with people from different backgrounds: scientific, artistic, and scholastic».

The prototype is currently being implemented in Barcelona, in collaboration with the Bioe research group of the University of Alcalà de Henares, but aims to be a scalable model, with different designs, in various cities around the world. 

Art illuminating new paths

«I, though multinational, would give the whole of Montedison for a firefly,» wrote Pasolini. The fireflies have not disappeared completely and Lucy. Sin nombre y sin memoria shows us that the urban system, while remaining stable over time, can change its internal paths to favour a more ecosystemic and sustainable vision in which fireflies, and what they represent, find their own space.

Art, as Berenguer states, «in its role as an expression of freedom, has the task of conveying the idea that we have options and has the function of being a critical spirit towards constituted power». 

The artistic gaze thus helps us to leave behind roads that are no longer passable to illuminate new ones, in this case literally. GEO-LLUM is an example of this: starting with a new kind of lighting in urban public spaces, it is possible to make a difference and to promulgate thinking that is ecological, luminous and collaborative. 

1. Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “The Void of Power”, later to become famous as “The Article of Fireflies” in the volume Scritti corsari. See Pasolini, P. P. (1975). Il vuoto del potere [Articolo delle lucciole], Corriere della Sera. ↩︎
2. Engelke, P., McNeill, J.R. (2018). La Grande accelerazione. Una storia ambientale dell’Antropocene dopo il 1945. Torino: Einaudi. ↩︎
3. According to the French philosopher and art critic Georges Didi-Huberman, the light of fireflies is not replaced by darkness, but by a huge lighthouse projecting artificial light, represented by the mechanisms of exploitation and consumption. Postmodernism has not defeated the small fireflies by erasing them from history, but has made them obsolete, like a small natural light covered by a dazzling beacon. See. Didi-Huberman, G. (2010). Come le lucciole. Una politica delle sopravvivenze. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri. ↩︎
4. Lucy. Sin nombre y sin memoria was hosted within the Ars Electronica art, technology and society museum centre in 2008, on the occasion of the festival Beep Electronic Art Collection. ↩︎
5. Living beings are complex systems, characterised by emergent properties: the behaviour of the whole is difficult to predict from the laws that govern the behaviour of its individual parts. A complex system can be represented as a network consisting of nodes and links through which information travels. See. Dominici, P. (2023). Oltre i cigni neri. L’urgenza di aprirsi all’indeterminato. Milano: FrancoAngeli. ↩︎
6. In chemistry, bioluminescence is a phenomenon whereby living organisms emit light (“bioluminescence” in International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry).  ↩︎
7. GEO-LLUM was selected as part of the ‘Repairing the Present’ 2022 residency of the S+T+ARTS programme funded by the European Union. It was then realised within the Centre of Contemporary Culture in Barcelona through the collaboration of the Akasha Hub Barcelona and the researcher Abraham Esteve Nuñez of Bioe Group, within the Imdea Agua research centre of the University of Alcalà de Henares. Exhibited at MAXXI in Rome in 2022, GEO-LLUM was nominated for the S+T+ARTS Prize 2023. ↩︎
8. Allaouat, S. (n.d). No Plug Sound Machine. ↩︎
9. Professor Derek Lovley, a researcher in physiology and ecology of anaerobic microorganisms, was one of the first discoverers of Geobacter. See. Lovley, D. (2011). Geobacter: The Microbe Electric’s Physiology, Ecology, and Practical Applications, Advances in Microbial Physiology. ↩︎