NATURAL CONTACTS is malware that commandeers its host machine for 24 hours. The software transforms the user's desktop into a dynamic virtual garden where time is compressed: 24 real hours mirror a complete yearly cycle in this synthetic ecosystem. At the heart of this digital wilderness lies a quietly rotting corpse, around which a slow collective drama unfolds. As days become nights and seasons pass, the landscape evolves. Remnant files blow in the digital wind, resting birds scatter at the swift movement of a cursor, and flies make their home around decaying flesh. The once verdant landscape transforms into a barren, snow-laden field, only to regenerate anew. This is a world where technology and nature coexist in a strange, indifferent balance of spreadsheets and dirt. 

The software integrates every digital element into this slow performance. Seasonal birds appear on procedurally generated vines, startled by cursor movements. Flies emerge from the decomposing digital form, their paths tracing algorithms across the screen. The landscape cycles from lush growth to barren winter fields and back, with previous states resurfacing as wind-scattered image files. 

Taking inspiration from John Cage's prepared piano techniques, NATURAL CONTACTS functions as a prepared desktop. While basic computer functions remain such as email, web browsing, and video playback, these activities become subordinate to the persistent natural environment. Unlike typical malware, it operates with an unusual benevolence, turning the machine's processes into a meditation on decay and renewal.  

The software resists categorization, being neither game nor tool. It asks its audience to surrender normal computer use for 24 hours, creating a technological silent retreat that forces engagement with slower rhythms. Weather patterns emerge and fade, seasons advance and recede, and digital flora and fauna follow predetermined cycles. The decomposing figure remains central, its decay marking time's passage. 

Code: Mark Fingerhut
Graphics: Peter Burr
Sound: Matthew D Gantt
Life: Bridget DeFranco 

NATURAL CONTACTS is made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature through the Media Arts Assistance Fund a regrant partnership of NYSCA and Wave Farm. 

NATURAL CONTACTS is a benevolent form of malware that transforms a user’s desktop into a meditative ecosystem over 24 hours, compressing a full year’s cycle into a day. Around a central decomposing digital corpse, seasons pass, birds scatter, files drift like leaves, and decay gives way to renewal. Inspired by John Cage’s prepared piano, the artists recast the computer as a “prepared desktop,” where spreadsheets coexist with flies and cursor movements disturb the peace of a virtual wilderness. Blurring the boundaries between software, sculpture, and time-based art, the work invites users into a slow, unsettling reflection on life, death, and digital nature.