Fermented Reality

‘Fermented Reality’ is an app that allows us to experience the environment through the lenses of the microscopic organisms that inhabit everything around us (and inside us). The app brings the bubbling process of fermentation to the center. A reality that is not available to human eyes unless we use magnifying instruments or learn to identify their presence by their resulting products. Different cultures have learned through time to cohabitate and develop relationships with microbes, experiencing their environments through fermentation. During fermentation, organisms orchestrate a symphony of chemical reactions that lead to common products like bread, wine, beer, vinegar, cheese, yogurt, pickles, kombucha, and more. This app also speaks about a reality that is in constant change, where collaboration between diverse organisms brings cultures to develop new flavors, new environments, and new worlds. The process of fermentation demonstrates how microbes are collaborators that can provide sustainable solutions from the creation of food, to plastic alternatives and soil amendment (Bokashi composting). We invite you to explore your surroundings through the app and see the world through fermentation. — Fermented reality is a collaboration between Joteva Studio, Maru García and Olderbrother. Joteva Studio is led by Eli Joteva, Bulgarian intermedia artist and researcher based in LA. With a practice rooted in digital media and computation, she is influenced by contemporary research in the fields of quantum mechanics, neurophysics and machine vision. http://www.joteva.com/ Maru García is a Mexican, LA-based artist/chemist working across art + science + environment. Her areas of interest are biosystems, multispecies relations, and the capacity of living organisms (including humans) to act as remediators in contaminated sites. https://www.marugarciastudio.com/ The app was created thinking of the Olderbrother Fall- Winter 2022-2023 collection that used fermented processes like the Kakishibu vat dyeing techniques, iron, and minerals to achieve their (soil-deep) earth-tone palette that ranges from orange-brown to slate gray. https://olderbrother.us/