The Starter Project
A collaborative project where I have asked people in multiple locations, including Miami, Los Angeles, Savannah, Chicago, Brooklyn and many more, to collect samples of wild yeast--a practice used for over 6,000 years to harvest a leavening agent for baking bread.
The wild yeast cultures are very particular to location and have developed in response to the local environment. Each participant harvests their local wild yeast and then mails a sample to me in San Francisco where I continue to sustain the individual cultures and use them to bake bread.
As each wild yeast culture produces a unique tasting bread, the consumption of the bread becomes a shared sensory experience of remembering the original location as it is manifested in taste, texture, and smell. The project investigates a type of foraging, notions of time, place, memory and experience.
The wild yeast cultures are very particular to location and have developed in response to the local environment. Each participant harvests their local wild yeast and then mails a sample to me in San Francisco where I continue to sustain the individual cultures and use them to bake bread.
As each wild yeast culture produces a unique tasting bread, the consumption of the bread becomes a shared sensory experience of remembering the original location as it is manifested in taste, texture, and smell. The project investigates a type of foraging, notions of time, place, memory and experience.
