São Paulo was built on top of the Mata Atlântica, a formerly vast forest habitat that, in spite of the radical reduction to 8% of its original land cover, still contains a large proportion of unique (endemic) species.

In the software-driven animation Mesocósmico (Paulista), aspects of urban life and the surrounding Brazilian rainforest–trees, animals, water–are combined with São Paulo’s urban and indigenous patterning. Enormous bullet ants, tiny flea frogs, gangly vultures, and spider-like muriqui monkeys are interwoven with the punctuating beat-driven rhythms of the city. Forest dwellers are visible in the graphic mosaics, in the urban growth of buildings (competing like trees for air space), and in the footsteps of giant humans hammering out the rhythm of commerce and mobility.

In the fall of 2014, when this piece was projected into the busy shopping street Avenida Paulista, the specter of the World Cup was still in the air. Forest trees were still falling. The particulate accumulation of 21st century urban nature continues:  airborne pollutants, airplanes, and electromagnetic waves.