Bunker for a Tropical Pixel is a video game set in a post-tropical world where light has disappeared from the planet. In this environment, tropical bio-bacteria become the only beings capable of generating UV and spiritual light. Players follow the journey of a medusa-like parasite that must absorb algorithmic spiritual energies – empathy (X1), love (W3), and nobility (Z8) – while traveling through three symbolic worlds based on the RGB pixel system: the infra-tropic (Red), the wetlands and mystical swamps (Green), and the risky amusement tropic (Blue). The work rethinks how video games represent the tropics; moving away from colonial, exotic, or simplified views towards a post-tropical vision that questions these stereotypes and engages with ecological and technological issues.
The game mixes cinematic sequences with meditative puzzles. It’s designed as a short, narrative experience lasting around 20 minutes.
Tatyana Zambrano and Hernán Rodríguez have been collaboratively exploring digital world-building since 2021 through audiovisual experimentation in 3D animation, video games, and virtual reality. Their project Banana Valley (2022) was awarded First Prize at the Enjambre Festival: Collective Units for Complex Futures in Cali, Colombia. They have also exhibited their work at the Museo de América during the Mayrit Biennial in Madrid, Spain (2024), they were part of the Official Selection of the 16th Juan Downey International Contest in Chile (2023), and Winner of the Award Post-natural and other ecologies entanglements between art & technology, nature and culture and Residency co-commissioned by Gluon vzw, Museum of Tomorrow (Brazil) and S+T+ARTS Buen-TEK.
Their collaborative work explores how these immersive worlds can become spaces for political fictions. They've been particularly interested in constructing scenarios to speculate about territory, desire, and digital labor. They work from fragile illusions to a utopian land shaped by a neuro-dancing narrative, where cyber-mechanical labor continuously mints new illusions.