Dark Oxygen: Malum Prohibitum

Upon entry, visitors first encounter two replicas of actual polymetallic nodules, precisely scanned by the Senckenberg Ocean Species Alliance and produced using a metal 3D printer at the Institute of Metals and Technology (IMT) in Ljubljana. These replicas are presented as geological artefacts of the future, symbolising planetary processes, our understanding of electrochemistry, and the exploitation of nature. At the core of the installation is a bioreactor module containing archaea, ancient microorganisms that require oxygen to survive. Their metabolic activity affects the voltage of the electrolytic cell: higher activity results in increased oxygen release at the platinum anode, while lower activity leads to a decline. A camera tracks the formation of microscopic oxygen bubbles, and the system translates visual data into sound and light signals.

In the contemporary world, polymetallic nodules are caught between two opposing logics. On one hand, they are a source of metals required for batteries and the infrastructure of the green transition. On the other hand, they are extremely sensitive geological entities that grow only a few millimetres over thousands of years and are embedded within microscopic ecosystems that we are only beginning to understand. From this dual perspective, the project engages with object-oriented ontology (OOO), which proposes that nodules are not merely raw materials but objects with their own reality, hidden properties, and capacities that cannot be reduced to their utility value. They exist independently of human perception and therefore require different ethical and ontological considerations.

The project encourages reflection on object-oriented ontology, which rejects the privileged position of the human and supports the idea that non-human actors, nodules, minerals, and bacteria alike possess their own reality that does not exist solely in relation to a human observer. The bacteria that trigger changes in sound and the nodules that carry the metals of the future are not simply materials or tools, but entities with their own logics and distinct temporal layers. This perspective allows the installation to be read as an assemblage of multiple modes of existence, in which technological, biological, and geological processes are no longer separate but actively intertwined. Organism-oriented ontology, a contemporary philosophical and biological perspective, further asserts that living organisms carry a specific ontological weight, regardless of how small or invisible they may be. Organisms are autonomous, world-forming agents that, through metabolism, self-regulation, and the interpretation of environmental signals, co-create the environments they inhabit.