This project is a visualization of the transient and invisible processes under the human tissue that make the continuation of life possible, namely the workings and cooperation of the neutrophils. The result is a series of overlapped abstract human tissue layers that exposes the flow of oxygen in blood vessels as well as the activation of Neutrophils (a type of white blood cell) which fight off infections under the skin’s surface! The goal of this project is to abstract and make visible the transient processes in the human body using the logics of swarm and flow analysis.

According to the article “Neutrophil swarming delays the growth of clusters of pathogenic fungi” published in Nature, Neutrophils are very intelligent, cooperating and forming “swarms” to attack fungi that are larger than individual neutrophils (Nature, 2020). We visualized and modelled this cooperation in our project using grasshopper C#. To better understand human tissue as having multiple layers, we projected the swarm model on top of a tissue-layer model made using Grasshopper C#, allowing the changing of tissue textures in real time. Lastly, we added another layer of blood oxygen information to demonstrate the complexities, layers, and interdependence between the immune system and oxygen that happen in the human body.