Title
Preview
Description
From the artist statement:
Public comprehension of health science is often limited to what is taught in school or can be accumulated from an internet search, thus our understanding of more complex biological processes and microbial organisms can be poor. Specifically, the perception of microbes, microscopic creatures including bacteria, fungi, and viruses, that we develop, sees them as harmful. The facts that microbes can cause illness is true, which causes this negative perception, but what many people don’t understand is that only 1% of bacteria are harmful. I dispel this misconception of microbes in the text of my book which explores the five main microbiomes, or collection of microbes in our body, oral, lung, gut, urogenital, and skin, and what role they play in a symbiotic relationship with us – as they help us digest food, protect against infection, and even maintain your reproductive health. The pocket-accordion structure is overall an off-white, alluding to the sanitation-oriented mindset, but then contain a design with the various microbial structures, giving implication to the misleading and unattainable reality of a microbe-free environment. The cards inside the pocket, with a color closer to skin, contain the text that surrounds three different figures, whose front visuals serve to highlight the different microbiome body sections, but it’s back contains the figure made up of microbes. Each configuration of microbes is different, pertaining to the microbes found in the specific microbiome, as well as alluding to the fact that each person’s microbiome is distinct, due to differences in diet, birth, habitats, and many other factors. The combination of the text and visual revealing different facts and knowledge of microbes and the microbiomes allows the reader to question how they originally viewed microbes, how it contributes to actions we take in bettering our health, and what contribution a media-centric distribution of scientific knowledge makes to misconceptions.
Type
Image
Location
John C. Hitt Library
Department
Special Collections & University Archives
Recommended Citation
Prado, Claudia, "Microbiomes" (2022). 16th Annual Student Book Arts Competition. 6.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/bookartsexhibit-16thannual/6