ASH ELIZA SMITH



Bacterial and Fungal Systems:
10½ ) 10 Swab Swipes for Agar Plates
11½ ) Photos of Bacterial and Fungal systems with Medium Format Camera

Materials: Bacteria and Fungal Samples on Agar Plates, Medium Format Photography

These samples were the result of an Elsewhere wide poll and then curated for growing on 10 plates:
-Deep within the ribbon pile in the ribbon room
-The New Indian book from Blue Monday area
-#6 on door key pad (606 Elm Street)
-Swing rope on Front Porch
-Pond Water from backyard
-Cleated Shoe in Transformatorium
-Ghost Wall in Ghost Room - Do ghosts leave behind bio traces (Emily Asks)?
-Very top Toy Doll of the Toynado
-Former residents' rust painting
-Artist's (Ash's) Body (Mouth and Armpit)

The digital points us to other kinds of sensing systems: the psychic, the biochemical, and inside the closed ecosystem of Elsewhere, I considered the bacterial and fungal systems within. I took swab samples from a toy, a ghost room wall, a shoe, a book, a swing, a keypad and placed them on Agar plates. Over the next several weeks these samples continued to grow, to emerge. Each plate contained it’s own uniquely patterned world. New entanglements between species decenter the human and welcome assemblages akin to Donna Haraway’s notion of “becoming with” asking who “we” will become when species meet. Similarly, recent research around our gut microbiome asks—who's in control: the human host or the microbiome? The extra-human may be able to teach us valuable lessons about “becoming” with other species and contemplating how these in-between worlds could destabilize data-driven systems of knowledge and information.

Medium Format Digital Photographs were created using the 10 Agar Plates and the 3D Printed Objects. Using colored lights and placing with the placement another artistic, an amplified aesthetic layer was able to be layered on top of these mini-worlds. This brought up a lot of questions around safety, contagion, parasitism, biomes and who is colonizing here. These Prints are available for blowing up to billboard size, making the micro...macro and viewing an ecosystem in a whole new way.