Eros Feeding Thanatos Feeding (Eros)
CAMBRIDGE, MA
2023
Our existence depends on relationships with living and nonliving entities that are far outside the scope of mutual perception. How can we cultivate an intimacy with these entities?
Eros Feeding Thanatos Feeding (Eros) animates the transformative, trans-scalar interdependencies of microbes and humans. We may think of ourselves as autonomous individuals, but we enfold and are enfolded by communities of collaborative beings. The microbes in our guts inform our perception and emotions through regulation of the love hormone oxytocin - they drive how we interact with each other and our surroundings. The same microbes also live in the world outside, and control processes like fermentation and decomposition.
This installation consists of a series of enclosures, which, like us, contain rich communities of microbes actively breaking down food scraps. These enclosed communities are given sculptural bodies, enabling their existence while approximating an alien yet humanoid presence. Sensors embedded in the enclosures feed data to light, sound, and movement in the gallery environment, creating a prosthesis for the microbes to animate themselves for our conscious awareness.
As the food scraps in the enclosures decay over a two-week period, the installation environment distorts, blurring the line between comforting and uncanny. At the end of the two-week period, the microbes and the newly-produced compost will be returned to the earth.
Materials: Food scraps, microbes, latex, lights, sensors, motors, speakers
In collaboration with Aubrie James.
Supported by a grant from the Council for the Arts at MIT.