Hazal Ertürkan’s keynote offered a speculative exploration of the human microbiome and its implications for future food practices. Drawing from research that positions the human being as a superorganism — hosting billions of microorganisms across its internal and external surfaces — Second Skin reframes the body as a dynamic ecosystem shaped by diet, habits, and microbial symbiosis.
“Does knowledge of our microbiome give us more power, or just prove we were never in control to begin with?” – Hazal Ertürkan
Through this lens, Second Skin invites reflection on how microbiome awareness could transform our eating rituals, reconfiguring not just how we nourish ourselves, but also how we define bodily autonomy.
The keynote was opened by Wouter Meys, manager of CARADT, who contextualised the event within broader research themes of CARADT. His introduction underscored the importance of critical reflection on food, identity, and embodiment. Meys emphasized how the Second Skin project resonates with CARADT’s vision of creativity and critical imagination as a means to explore interdependent systems and speculative futures — placing artistic research at the heart, of rethinking bodily autonomy in a microbiome-aware world in the Second Skin project.
The keynote was part of the exhibition Second Skin: Microbiome-Centric Dining, which invited visitors to explore the idea of the human body as an entangled ecology. Through an XR installation, a digital, interactive layer allowed participants to visualize a ‘second skin’ on themselves. This immersive experience presented a futuristic dining scenario where microbiome awareness shapes eating rituals and redefines our agency over our own bodies.
Location: Avans Creative Innovation (EKP Building, ’s-Hertogenbosch)
Exhibition Dates: March 18 – April 13, 2025
This conducted research also led to the design of a multisensory XR experience, Microbiome Restaurant, where visitors can explore their body as an intertwined ecology of lifeforms influencing the body’s agency and autonomy.
Photography of the XR exhibition and the keynote presentation by Chantal van den Berg
The future alternative food and eating practices are a prominent area in current research and design endeavors. However, to date, the human microbiome and its affect on human body has not been taking into account during the development of possible future eating practices. But, how would seeing the human body as an ecology rather than an independent being affect our eating behaviour and practices?
‘I am eager to explore how unique qualities of ‘living materials’ can transform the way we think, feel and act.’
Hazal Ertürkan is a researcher within the Caradt research group Biobased Art and Design. She also works as a design researcher and material designer at Delft University of Technology. Her current PhD project is collaboration between TU Delft and Avans Caradt.
The research group Biobased Art and Design capitalises on the role of artistic practice in unlocking the unique potentials of living organisms for everyday materials and communicating these to a broader public. In doing so, the group aims to instigate and accelerate our widespread understanding, further development and usage of such materials. The group’s research approach encourages tangible interactions with the living organisms, such as algae, fungi, plants and bacteria, to explore and understand their unique qualities and constraints through diverse technical and creative methods taking artists, designers and scientists as equal and active partners in the material creation.
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