Making “poop-kin.” Inspired by Donna Haraway’s “Making Kin in the Chthulucene,” this project aims to observe the conversation between myself and my microbiome, a non-human set of organisms considered by researchers to be the human body’s 12th organ. The conversation is evidenced by what I eat and what I defecate.
Over several days, I’d collect as much information about “inputs” and “outputs,” visualizing those captures over time.
A day of fluids. We are goopy, mushy, watery meat bags-yet, these movements are invisible within our own body, or abstracted away by modern conveniences. We are rarely confronted with what fluids actually flow through us. What are the cycles of fluid/goo happening in our body? In the span of one 24 hour period, I will collect time/volume/imagery of as many fluids as possible. This information can be used to create a “fluid humunculus,” an abstracted visual of the cyclical fluid processes happening within and without us every single day.
Luckily, I already have data from a previous data visualization project at the NIH that shows how much liquid blood my heart pumps over the course of a heartbeat, which I can incorporate.
Eyeballs. What patterns are there in the eyes over the course of the day? Using video processing methods/machine learning, can I reveal the ebbs and flows of the eyes in one day? Will blood vessels/flow grow and shrink? Am I’m glazed over for the whole day or actively looking?