Bacteria From People Used to Make Human Cheese
- 10 years ago
An art project called Selfmade that is showing as part of the Grow Your Own - Life After Nature exhibit at the Science Gallery in Dublin, Ireland features cheese made out of bacteria cultures from human beings.
What are the various sources of cheese you can think of?
A project on synthetic biology called Selfmade, shown as part of the Grow Your Own - Life After Nature exhibit at Trinity College Dublin’s Science Gallery in Ireland features cheese made out of bacteria cultures from human beings.
Art curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, celebrity chef Michael Pollan, and artist Olafur Eliasson are among the group of people including other artists, cheese makers, anthropologists, and scientists who had bacteria from their bodies turned into cheese.
One of the scientists behind the project is Christina Agapakis from the United States, who is quoted as saying: “Everybody has a unique and diverse set of bacteria living on their skin that can be amplified using techniques from microbiology and grown directly in milk to form and flavour each cheese. …We were surprised by how not only do cheese and smelly body parts like feet share similar odour molecules but also have similar microbial populations.”
Helping Agapakis on the project is a scent expert from Norway named Sissel Tolaas.
Subjects sent in samples of bacteria from their body that were then used to make one of the eleven different cheeses.
What are the various sources of cheese you can think of?
A project on synthetic biology called Selfmade, shown as part of the Grow Your Own - Life After Nature exhibit at Trinity College Dublin’s Science Gallery in Ireland features cheese made out of bacteria cultures from human beings.
Art curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, celebrity chef Michael Pollan, and artist Olafur Eliasson are among the group of people including other artists, cheese makers, anthropologists, and scientists who had bacteria from their bodies turned into cheese.
One of the scientists behind the project is Christina Agapakis from the United States, who is quoted as saying: “Everybody has a unique and diverse set of bacteria living on their skin that can be amplified using techniques from microbiology and grown directly in milk to form and flavour each cheese. …We were surprised by how not only do cheese and smelly body parts like feet share similar odour molecules but also have similar microbial populations.”
Helping Agapakis on the project is a scent expert from Norway named Sissel Tolaas.
Subjects sent in samples of bacteria from their body that were then used to make one of the eleven different cheeses.