Bunker for a Tropical Pixel is a research and production project exploring world-building in video games, with a particular focus on the representation of tropical environments. Through 3D animation and the format of the movie game, the project investigates post-tropicalization—a process of deconstructing the simplified, exoticized, and stereotypical portrayals of the tropics often embedded in gaming narratives.

«We aim to critically examine how tropical imagery in video games has functioned historically as a visual shorthand for paradise and adventure, but also as a stage for colonial and extractivist logics. Our project proposes to reimagine these digital landscapes, attending to the social and environmental dimensions they obscure, and reflecting on how climate change is reshaping our imaginaries of the tropics in virtual worlds».

Tatyana Zambrano and Hernán Rodríguez have been collaboratively exploring digital world-building since 2021. 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), and were part of the Official Selection of the 16th Juan Downey International Contest in Chile (2023), among other platforms.

Their work explores how immersive worlds can become spaces for political fictions; with particular interest for developing scenarios that speculate about territory, desire, and digital labor. The duo works from fragile illusions to a utopian land shaped by a neuro-dancing narrative, where cyber-mechanical labor continuously mints new illusions.