What can you smell?

Fermentation defines a metabolic process where under specific conditions (in this case no oxygen) microbes create energy, alcohol and lactic acid from sugar and starch. Some say that in its most basic fermentation is a controlled decay. Lyn Margulis, a scientist and a researcher of microbial forms, defined fermentation as a microbial invention, an unprecedented feat that humanity has not matched. Together with photosynthesis, oxygen breathing and removal of nitrogen from the air, fermentation is a miniature chemical system that has been part of the making of this planet.

Inspired by fermentation, let’s consider a city, a country, a planet, a pot, a jar, a field, a garden, a forest, a kiln, a computer, database, datasets as locations for and containers of transformations. Trans-formation. Change, movement where one kind of matter turns into another, where bodies become another. Positive change that makes , builds, creates life and destroys it.

And now, let’s take the process of fermentation to tell stories from the city and its surroundings. To tell stories from the jars as fermenting happens. To tell stories of things and bodies with computers, with people, microbes, neural networks, data, databases, buildings, districts, bodies and bogs.