This human cheese project was cooked up by bio-hacker artists Christina Agapakis and Sissel Tolaas, as part of a new exhibition called 'Grow Your Own… Life After Nature.'



Hosted by Trinity College in Dublin, the installation displays a bunch of cheese wheels made from bacterial samples pulled from the feet and armpits of different people. The idea behind the project was to explore "intersection of our interests in smell and microbial communities led us to focus on cheese as a 'model organism.'" .

And that's just the beginning of all the weirdness. Since the focus of the installation is on synthetic biology, they're also showcasing other off-the-wall projects like portraits made from analyzing human DNA found on things like discarded cigarette butts, a project suggesting that humans incubate and give birth to dolphins, and even this hybrid heart out of electric eel DNA that works like a built-in defibrillator.




Sounds... fascinating. And gross. Here's hoping that they'll be handing out free samples of the human armpit cheese while you wait in line.

[Science Gallery]