MACROBIOME
by Chmara.Rosinke
2026 Textile, rope, straw, 3D-printed PLA, metal, wood, upholstered elements
We are more microbial than human. The cells that carry our genome are outnumbered by the bacteria, fungi, and yeasts living on and inside us. These organisms shape our digestion, immunity, and moods, yet remain imperceptible—too small to see, too quiet to hear, too constant to notice.
The Macrobiome chaise longue borrows its form from the geometry of yeast cell division—budding, separating, multiplying. As you approach, sensors detect your presence and activate a sonification of microbial activity, rendering the rhythms of fermentation and cell division audible. As you recline, you are enveloped by these otherwise imperceptible processes.
The work proposes a reversal of relations. Instead of carrying microbes invisibly, we lie within an enlarged one. The interior life that inhabits us becomes the environment that holds us. It is an exercise in interspecies attention, a way of sensing, briefly, the other organisms we already are.
*Macrobiome draws on a theoretical concept developed by Maciej Chmara, which reframes the human body not as a host to its microbial inhabitants but as one organism within a larger biological whole (ref. PhD Brehu).