Ars Electronica Festival

The Museum of Edible Earth is an interdisciplinary project centered on a collection of soil samples eaten by different people around the world for different reasons. It invites audiences to physically question our relationship with the environment and the earth, and to challenge our knowledge of food and cultural traditions through creative thinking.

The Museum of Edible Earth deals with the questions: What is behind the traditions of eating the earth? Where does the edible soil come from? What are the potential benefits and dangers of eating soil? How do we as humans deal with our environment?

Photography by masharu

The Museum of Edible Earth is a mobile museum with more than 400 samples of edible soils, mostly clay, such as B. kaolin and bentonite, but also chalk, limestone, volcanic rock, diatomaceous earth and topsoil. The materials come from 34 countries. In addition to the soil collection, the museum also includes graphic design materials, photography and video works, an online interactive database of edible soil, installations and performances. It encourages collaborations with scientists, artists, designers, researchers and cultural communities. The project won an Award of Distinction in the category “Artificial Intelligence & Life Art” at the Prix Ars Electronica 2021.

The project by the Russian-Dutch artist became the inspirational starting point for a series of projects entitled
Taste your SOIL are summarized. Art, society, technology and science see themselves expanded by a concept – nature. “Taste your SOIL” stands for the urgent project to make the digital part of our cultural identity on the one hand and to restore our lost cultural awareness of the earth on the other.

Taste your SOIL stands for the expansion of Ars Electronica’s cultural mission, namely to use technology in such a way that it acts in a sustainable, connecting and expanding manner between us humans and nature. A nature whose radical changes are forcing mankind to take action and sustainable transformation processes without alternative.

Photography by masharu

Taste your SOIL finds its logical position in the “New digital deal”, as well as “the digital” must be part of any “Green Deal”. This manifests itself in many items on the program and began with the move from POSTCITY to the park of the Johannes Kepler University. The newly introduced concept of the garden symbolizes the basic relationship status between man and nature and is part of all cultural concepts worldwide. It continues in the basic supplies of the festival. Local hosts, local and organic staple foods and “EARTH” as the basic theme for the cooks.

Taste your SOIL is a community project with a large partner network. Soil samples with photos and videos are sent to us from these partner gardens, where the soil and its taste are described. In Taiwan, top chefs take on the theme of the earth and cook with it. In CHILE, the “cooking for freedom” project is dedicated to the pandemic situation in the Andes, and in Russia, the ITMO University is creating an entire exhibition on the subject of “EARTH”. And of course the theme can also be found in Kepler’s Gardens in artistic projects and interventions, in botanical or bacterial excursions, in workshops and much more throughout the festival. All gardens have been asked to send soil samples in order to do this Museum of Edible Earth
at the Ars Electronica Festival 2021.

Ars Electronica – Community Project
Ars-electronica – New Digital

More information: Ars Electronica, MEE