SPIRITUAL MICROBIOMES

The spiritual microbiome and holobiont is a term I use to describe the hypothetical microbes that coexist within a group of people practicing the same faith, or the microbial signature of the ‘spirit’ itself. This is an ongoing project about visualizing faith and the microbial kingdoms that potentially coexist on the spiritual surface. The microbiome is the community of microorganisms (fungi, algae, bacteria, and viruses) that exists in a particular environment. In humans, the term is often used to describe the microbes that live in or on a particular part of the body, such as the skin. A holobiont is a collection of closely associated species that have complex interactions, such as a plant species and the members of its microbiome.

ROSE WINDOW

These mockups are for the “Rose Window”. A project where I inoculated a collection of Petri dishes containing a medium of sheep’s blood agar with holy water from the Vatican and cured them in resin in order to fashion it into a large-scale rose window. The idea is to visualize the microbial communities captured in the water of those practicing the same faith. Do microbes change when they enter the holy water? Do practitioners share parts of their microbial signature with one another? Is there a sacred microbiome?

Blood, sheep, shepherding, and holy water are all important symbols in Catholicism. Through the observation of what grows in the holy water the practitioners use to cleanse and bless themselves upon entering holy sites, I can speculate that the microbiome from their skin enters the pool creating a unique bath of sinners and prayers; instead of the individual, the unique signature of the flock.

Research has been conducted to demonstrate the correlation between being close to one another, and sharing similar bacteria. “The researchers found that people who lived together — no matter their relationship — tended to have the same microbe strains in their mouths, and the longer they lived together, the more they shared. ” (Ewen Callaway, Nature.com) The “Rose Window” would NOT be a tool to prove the legitimacy of faith, but a way to look further into the concept that we are all connected through seen, and unseen systems. Is it the signature of a flock? Could a shared microbiome be initiated by the act of blessing oneself? Are there sacred microbes?

This is an ongoing project about visualizing faith through speculative microbiology.

Observation and Ritual

This was the first project in the Spiritual Microbiome series. I began this project in Japan as a way to capture the microbial signature of Kami (Kami (Japanese: 神, [kaꜜmi]) the deities, divinities, spirits, phenomena or "holy powers", that are venerated in the Shinto religion.) entering and exiting the Kami Sama dwellings within the Shintō shrines of Onishi in 2016. The Petri dishes were inoculated with air from inside the Shinto shrines which spirits are believed to inhabit. I used a variety of samples and found that the colonies reflected dark and light bacterial growth. The spirits in the Shinto religion are said to be good and bad like rain during a drought versus a typhoon, and humans contain these spirits within themselves. This is the same with bacteria. We have good bacteria in our bodies but when it moves or transforms, the bacteria can cause a lot of problems. It is important to maintain a balance of light and dark so one doesn’t take over the other. Although imbalance is inevitable at some point, rituals can help maintain a healthy relationship with balance. 

To read more about these projects please visit Observation and Ritual and my journal entry on holy water and blood experiments.

My Blood inside a dead sea crystal

DEAD sea crystals- are you tombs for microbes?

The Dead Sea is not in fact, dead. Necrophagic salt-loving microbes scavenge the remains of microorganisms past creating a rich life of algae and bacteria beneath the surface, invisible to the human eye.

These crystals could essentially be, the mummification and entombment of microbes.