Anna Dumitriu tells Imperica's Wearable Horizons event about the most intimate wearable technology that one could possess - bacteria.

1. Wearable Bacteria and
Hypersymbiotics
Anna Dumitriu
Artist in Residence: The Modernising
Medical Microbiology Project

2. Stranger than fiction!

3. We are already wearing bacteria

4. Your bacterial flora can affect you in many ways

5. “A positive feedback loop exists between the preferences of the
host for a particular dietary regime, the composition of the gut
microbiota that depends on this regime, and the preferences of
the host as influenced by the gut microbiota” (Garnas)

6. And they are all communicating -
“The Communicating Bacteria Dress” by Anna Dumitriu in
collaboration with Dr Simon Park, Alex May and Dr John Paul

7. “The Communicating Bacteria Dress” (detail)
Installation view, The Barn Gallery, University of Oxford

8. We have the ability to affect how they grow and what they do (limited
by our understanding)
MRSA Quilt making workshop V & A London with Anna Dumitriu and
the Modernising Medical Microbiology Project/Public Health England

9. “The MRSA Quilt” (detail) by Anna Dumitriu, Dr James Price and
Dr John Paul (Modernising Medical Microbiology Project)
Patterned with MRSA bacteria and antibiotics (sterilised)

10. “VRSA Dress” by Anna Dumitriu, Dr John Paul and Kevin Cole
Patterned with VRSA bacteria and antibiotics (sterilised)
“It’s like an arms race” (Dr Simon Park)

11. “Blue Henry” by Anna Dumitriu
Altered historical artefact,
engraved with a “TB transmission map”

12. “Romantic Disease Dress” by Anna Dumitriu, Dr John Paul and Kevin
Cole. Stained with madder root, safflower and walnut with The
extracted DNA of TB, Watermans, London

13. “Where there’s dust there’s danger” by Anna Dumitriu, Dr John
Paul and Kevin Cole, needle felted wool and dust lungs
containing the extracted DNA of killed Tuberculosis (sterilised)

14. “The Hypersymbiont Dress” (Anna Dumitriu and Dr John Paul),
Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipai, Taiwan

15. “The Hypersymbiont Salon” by Anna Dumitriu in collaboration
with Dr John Paul, performance commissioned for The Wellcome
Collection “Superhuman” exhibition

16. The next steps?
• Every bit of new research reveals some other
complex interaction
• How can we truly enhance our bacterial flora
to make us ‘better’ people (and by better I
mean more ‘attractive’, ‘happier’, more
creative, and more ‘moral’)?
• What are the risks?
• What are the best ‘delivery systems’?

17. Is the world ready for:
HYPERSYMBIOTICS ™
© Anna Dumitriu and Dr John Paul

18. Websites
Website
www.normalflora.co.uk
E-mail
annadumitriu@hotmail.com
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/annadumitriu
Twitter
@annadumitriu