DIGESTIVE SYSTEMS
We all eat.
We all need to eat.
In the Digestive Systems exhibit here at Pace University,
EcoArtTech, Maria McKinney, and Dana Sherwood use
photography as part of their practice to explore food
production and consumption. Through the commonality of
food—the sustenance of life—the artists poignantly illustrate
the interconnectedness of human and non-human animals.
In this Anthropocene epoch, during which the Earth's climate
is predominantly impacted by human (in)actions, the artists
advocate that we must care for our shared environment. The
artists have collaborative processes that serve as potential
models for sustainable relationships among humans and
between species. Further, each highlights our planet's inherently
symbiotic ecosystem by finding the synergy in and between
manually manipulated and digital lens-based media.
EcoArtTech, a joint project of Leila Nadir and Cary Adams
Peppermint, is exhibiting Microbial Selfies, a series of
photographs created with custom built electronics and software
that allows the microbes within fermenting fruit and vegetables
to take their own "selfies." The resulting abstractions—including
close-ups of blueberry mead, red cabbage kraut, and kombucha
generated when a microorganism moves—are vividly colored,
biomorphic forms with algorithmic alterations triggered by the
submerged sensors' chemical readings of the bubbling recipes.
In the artists' own words, they work "collaboratively with local
communities (human, bacterial, and ecological) to resuscitate
fading food practices including fermentation" to facilitate our
shared recovery from what they call "industrial amnesia." By
fusing new "hi-tech" computer components and ancient "low-
tech" cooking techniques to make visible that which is invisible,
