strange machines pt 2

I've been struggling a little bit with the notion of disgust. It's a weird thing to be working with bits of yourself, and there's a real tension between the intense subjectivity of handling your own bodily materials and trying to look at them clinically or objectively. Scraping off skin from my foot and baking it into a lovely sour dough bread has been making me feel particularly conflicted, more so than Saliva of the Fittest for some reason. I couldn't quite pinpoint why, but I think it's the lack of formality to it. Throwing a pile of dead skin into a bowl of flour and water just feels too raw; slightly neanderthal in a way and difficult to validate. 

So what it comes down to is the machines. The inspiration that's stuck with me the most has always involved these strange contraptions, and as my mentor said there's nothing like a machine to convince people of something being scientific or 'good.' I think the machines are what will formalise these interactions with the body, verifying the activity that's actually going on on a microbial level. 

I made a small compilation of some of my favourite biodesign projects, all involving a type of machine. The term 'machine' is very broad, and in some ways the bread itself could be seen as a type of natural machine, baking and churning and cultivating yeast. I'd just like that organic machinery to be manifested in something more concrete. 

I'll keep adding to this list as I find more, but here's a few categories for now.