aubrie's bounce zone

eros feeding thanatos feeding (eros)

2023

with Caitlin morris

Food scraps, microbes, embroidery floss, hardware, monofilament, pet-g, latex, led lights, sensors, motors, speakers

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 decayed over a two-week period, the installation environment changed, blurring the line between comforting and uncanny. At the end of the two-week period, the microbes and the newly-produced compost were returned to the earth at christian herter community garden.

this work generously funded by the council for the arts at mit