PROJECT STATEMENTS: SKINS

INVISI­­BLE BODIES PRODUCE SKINS TO BREATHE 

In collaboration with the Arkin Lab for Systems and Synthetic Biology at the University of California at Berkeley, I cultured the bacterium A. xylinum, which produces cellulosic skins.

These skins were grown by a cloudy assembly of millions of invisible, seemingly insubstantial bodies. The organisms use these fleshy skins to buoy themselves to a liquid’s surface in an effort to breathe. In turn, humans harvest these mats for temporary skins, tissue scaffolding, acoustic membranes, even dessert—uses in or near our bodies. We do this, I think, because something about these skins seems like the stuff of us.

There’s something powerful about making art in collaboration with organisms whose nature is alien to my own. Living matter is no mute receptacle for my vision: it comes with ideas all its own, and it communicates them differently than I ever would. These skins, I’ve come to realize, have the ability to communicate directly with the body.

I’m reminded of a theory from ancient Greece that describes vision as a transfer of impossibly fine skins from object to eye. It’s an evocative image: skins mediating vision. It’s oddly direct, visceral.

As are the skins we see here. I consider the work I created with these organisms, and I consider the Greeks’ bizarrely literal proposal of embodied vision. I wonder: how might creating/seeing/dreaming in collaboration with another organism alter our perception?

I can’t pretend to answer this fully, but I can say this: As I look at these skins, I am conscious that I am beholding something grown, which has a presence altogether different than something made. And with all the subtlety of a punch in the gut, these skins remind me that I’m something grown, too.