This is the world’s shittiest piece of art.
Now, I’m not saying that as a statement on its quality.
As a mechanical engineer I personally really like the mix of metal, plastic, and glass.
No, the reason that I’m calling it the world’s shittiest piece of art is because for
literally every single day of the last decade it has been doing a dump to the fascination
and disgust of people from all around the world.
This is ‘Cloaca Professional’ at the Tasmanian Museum of Old and New Art.
I’ve left the gallery and gone outside for a moment.
That’s firstly so we can get a view of MONA from the outside; it looks seriously
just like a James Bond villain lair - that's because most of it is built underground.
And also because the gallery itself was smelling really really bad; a bit like a gone-off vanilla milkshake.
‘Cloaca Professional’ is part of a series
of nine other works, all of which operate on the same principle of turning food into poop.
Not just any poop either, but by having the artist and his exhibit eat the
same meal for about a month they found out that it is 95% similar to human poo.
That's incredible but also really disgusting.
‘Cloaca Professional’ is the brainchild of Belgium conceptual artist Wim Delvoye,
he’s a pretty controversial figure in the art industry but I’m pretty sure that’s his point.
He’s also produced a range of different artworks in the gallery, including this one
which is ‘Trailerbed, Truck, and Cement Mixer’.
I’m not sure what it means but it does look pretty cool.
“Cloaca” is the anatomical word for the
tube that birds pass both their eggs and faeces through – it’s a passageway for life and
death which is as poetic as it is gross.
Opinions on what the piece means are divided.
For some it's a statement on the futility of life, others that modern art is sh*t.
My personal interpretation is that Wim was in the pub one day and this was the most ridiculous thing he could think of.
Regardless, with that art lesson done let's get back to engineering.
Our story begins at the museum café.
When it was on tour, ‘Cloaca Original’ had French chefs vying for the privilege of feeding
it their finest cuisine although ‘Cloaca Professional’ gets the same stuff as they sell at the museum café.
For today that's a burger, falafel, and some bread rolls.
In theory ‘Cloaca’ can eat anything that we humans can, although since vegetables give it the runs it's on a strict carb-heavy diet.
Twice a day an attendant places some carefully chopped up pieces of food into a stainless steel bowl.
This is equivalent to the mouth.
After pouring in some water the food then passes through a commercially available insinkerator unit
This is equivalent to teeth and chops up the pieces of food even more finely.
It then passes through a tube, equivalent to the esophagus, before hitting the first of two stomachs.
Obviously humans only have one stomach yet,
as you can see, ‘Cloaca’ actually has two separate containers.
That's because the stomach plays two very distinct rolls.
The first of these is mechanical digestion where muscles in the stomach will squeeze and churn the food.
These two vials automatically add acid or base throughout each of the stages in order
to maintain optimal the optimal pH for whatever process is taking place.
That's a pH of three for the first chamber - very acidic - but closer to seven - more neutral - for the rest.
Coming out of the first stomach we have a mushy paste of long fat and hydrocarbon chains.
The body can’t absorb these directly so instead these need to be broken down in
the second stomach by using some enzymes.
Each enzyme works on a different molecule; lowering the energy required to break it up.
The human body produces these naturally, but must be artificially added in for the robot.
We’ve now reached the small intestine which is where the “eating” bit of digestion takes place.
It’s actually spread across three separate containers which progressively break down the food.
Ironically, at seven metres in length, the small intestine is actually really long.
It’s full of these tiny folds which increase the surface area available for absorbing nutrients.
Since it’s made from glass ‘Cloaca’ can’t use any of these nutrients and instead
has to run off electricity.
This weird black stuff you can see around the sides is a colony of live bacteria.
This gut biome plays an essential role in breaking down our food into something that
can actually be used by the body.
The original colony was donated by the artist
which is how the stool samples from Wim and his machines can be so similar;
they are literally using the same bacteria.
Unfortunately, about seven years ago, an error in one of the control units meant that
all of the containers spontaneously boiled themselves which killed out all the bacteria.
Now in the market for a new colony of gut bacteria the team decided to go with the most
pooey individual they could think of which, as it turns out, was from a baby belonging
to one of the people who run the gallery.
My initial reaction to this was “oh my god
this is incredibly gross why are they allowed to show that to the public?!”.
Which, to be fair, is a good reaction to most of the things at MONA, but -you know - this is particularly gross.
After a while though I got thinking, this might actually be the start of something really useful.
Not everyone has a healthy gut biome – be that because of medical issues or just from a really bad diet.
Apparently, fourth century Chinese medicine worked out that by having an unwell person
drink a liquid suspension of a healthy person’s faeces this would result in a transfer of
gut bacteria and potentially save that ill person’s life.
Today a safer and much more clinical procedure has been used to treat a range of conditions.
I even heard of one athlete who sought out poo samples of another more successful
athlete and actually improved her own race times due to having a super healthy gut biome.
Please, and I can’t believe I have to say this, “check with your doctor before
drinking a liquid suspension of someone else's sh*t”.
Since we can completely control what ‘Cloaca’ eats and whose gut biome we use to start the colony, it may be possible
to build similar devices as a sort of reservoir for healthy gut bacteria.
Such a device may one day help save your life or at least improve your mile times just a little bit.
After finishing up with the small intestine
we then move into the large intestine which is this clear cylindrical tube.
It’s here where we remove all of the moisture content -or pee - and deposit it into a nearby toilet.
At precisely 2:00pm a piston inside this cylinder
- which could only be described as a robot rectum - is going to extend; pushing out yet another piece of art.
Waiting for the greatest sh*tshow on Earth this has been James Dingley from the Atomic Frontier.
Keep Looking Up.