This project investigates the deconstruction and reconstruction of multiple data forms during a bat’s flight. This high-speed, complex, three-dimensional behavior contains multitudes of information to extract. Scientists approach this by capturing discrete moments from continuous movements.

We selected four pivotal moments that form a bat’s wingbeat cycle and created four structures containing data derived from that time point, such as the start of the downstroke.

The suspended layer presents fluid and symbolic images where data merge together, along with manipulated echolocation call sounds. The upper layers represent derived data, like 3D plots of the wingtip position and text depicting the behavior at that time as a concrete poem. The bottom layers represent the most direct forms of data, such as screenshots of the bat in flight and a spectrogram of the echolocation call.

Biomechanics and behavior must be broken down into pieces like these in order to understand and investigate them scientifically. Viewing these layers together simultaneously through cast acrylic creates flux, allowing us to arrive at new understandings while also creating noise and losing information.

The four structures sit at the XYZ coordinates of each time-point, representing a translation from 2D-3D. The positions and heights of the pillars embody the flight path taken by the bat, with wires from the speakers drawing the trajectory. In this way, the audience members embody and re-enact the flight path of the bat as they navigate through the structures.

"My first thought was that the project would be physically so much smaller than it turned out to be - instead of a three-dimensional version of a computer screen plot of that size, it became something to walk through while observing, listening, and nearly touching. Sound also became a much larger component of the project than I was expecting, and I’m very grateful for my collaborator’s role in that since it ended up conveying the idea that what we hear is not what the bats hear and vice versa."

—Brooke