Insun Kang

Gut Feelings

Collaborators:

Marta Borowska (PhD candidate in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, UChicago)
Minyoung Kang (MFA candidate in Interior Design, SAIC)

Advisors:

Brenda Lopez Silva (Lecturer, Art and Technology Studies, SAIC)
Erin Adams (Joseph Regenstein Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, UChicago)

Funded by UChicago Art, Science, and Culture Graduate Collaboration Grant

Gut Feelings (www.gutfeelings.art) is an embodied extended reality (XR) experience that brings the audience into an intimate microworld of a human gut. The users decide between geographical, lifestyle, health, or social inputs to explore the changes that happen upon these inputs to the gut microbiome in the virtual space. The users are encouraged to explore all four choices and engage their bodies to investigate how the immersive physical space interconnects these factors. We will create four pods (suspended chairs or tunnels) that represent each of the factors mentioned earlier, where users enter into unique spaces that provide a feeling of coziness and intimacy. Once in a pod, the user can wear a VR headset and travel through the gut to meet and interact with microbes and cells of different types and forms. The goal of this project is to let the user’s curiosity drive the exploration of someone else’s intimate space, the gut, to gain insights on how various external forces impact their own gut microbiome.