AAD EDIBLE SUMMITS

What if microorganisms were already composing—quietly shaping space through sound?

During fermentation, microorganisms grow, shift in size, and form colonies, constructing hidden architectures within food. As they multiply, they generate subtle vibrations and frequencies that overlap and resonate, producing a continuous field of acoustic activity. What is typically understood through taste can also be sensed as rhythm, intensity, and tonal variation. Shaped by climate, crops, water, and cultural practice, each fermentation carries distinct environmental signatures that extend beyond flavor into sound.

Symphony of Fermentation brings these processes into perception. Through a series of transscalar installations, microbial activity is translated into a layered sonic environment where recorded and live inputs intersect. Simple mechanical listening devices, inspired by automata, amplify and mediate these signals, allowing visitors to engage with biological processes that are otherwise imperceptible.

As microorganisms cluster and reorganize, they continuously reshape their environments, producing dynamic micro-architectures that evolve over time. These transformations unfold as cycles of growth, decay, and exchange, generating a sonic field that reflects both microscopic activity and broader territorial conditions. Sound becomes a means of tracing relationships between land, labor, ecology, and biological life.

By connecting microbial, bodily, and environmental scales, the project frames fermentation as a form of spatial production, one that links everyday food to larger systems of cultivation, culture, and material transformation. It suggests that architecture can begin to engage with these living processes not as static conditions, but as active and evolving systems.

Visitors are invited to listen closely, to move through these layered rhythms, and to experience fermentation as a living interplay between biology, environment, and sound.

Symphony of Fermentation is created by AAD Students Nicole Kertznus, Hyeseong Kim, Sungjik Kim, and Meng-Syun Sung in collaboration with Miguel Gallego (MFA Candidate in Visual Arts & Sound Art at the Columbia Computer Music Center).

The AAD Edible Summits is an initiative by the MS Advanced Architectural Design program.

RSVP by Monday, March 30th for Campus Access