Nature is the result of billions of years of collapse. All existing forms of life, visible or not, are the result of one big explosion. Likewise, they are the result of having survived one of many mass extinctions. With a resilience to survive and evolve, everything is heading for yet another great extinction, this time, encouraged and accelerated by a single species–humans. Humans have degraded a variety of habitats around the globe, making the lives of both humans and other species catastrophic to the point of extinction. Among many destructive human actions is the abuse of idyllic natural sites used predominantly for technological and biological advancement. One example is Gruinard Island in Scotland, used by the British during World War II as a testing ground for the effects of Anthrax on sheep. Despite this monstrous scenario, nature resisted human pressures in surprising ways thanks to its resilience acquired over 3.8 billion years of evolution. At testing sites, such as Gruinard Island, which became uninhabitable for humans in response to the Anthrax contamination of soil and water, other species have re-established themselves in the new conditions and now inhabit a safe haven. But how long will nature resist the insistent collapse created by us? In 32°C, we examine nature's resilience to collapse by taking samples of soil, water, air and other matter from toxic sites in Rhode Island, United States. This is an area which throughout its history has been a testing ground for a variety of military operations. Prudence, a 14 km2 island and a military graveyard now overgrown by native vegetation and a haven for ticks, became our site of interest. By cultivating microorganisms present in samples within a bespoke incubated environment with Morse code as a platform, the bacteria used this as a stage to communicate its narrative of the landscape. 32 °C is an attempt to create a landscape in which there are no communication boundaries between humans and non-humans; where everything attempts to reestablish itself after a collapse, through messages transmitted by another species. In this landscape the language is being driven by the ecosystem, not the humans.

This project is supported by the Art & Inquiry Grant: Center for Complexity Fourth Annual Symposium “Collapse,” at Rhode Island School of Design. We thank Dillon Foster for his philosophical reflections included in the videowork.