Gut Feelings

Melbourne Museum will explore the connection between our brains and our guts in a new exhibition, Gut Feelings: Your Mind, Your Microbes, which will be located in the Mind Gallery (formerly the Mind Body Gallery) on Level 1, from March.

Our stomachs host literally trillions of microbes, microscopic organisms that include bacteria, viruses and fungi, which live all around – and in – us. These microbes outnumber the cells in our bodies by a whopping 8 trillion (scientists estimate there are 38 trillion microbes, and just 30 trillion cells). Social media’s recent romance with fermented foods such as kombucha, kimchi and kefir taps into this – and as the exhibition attests, we have the science to back it up.

The exhibition is aimed at an adult audience who are interested in the phenomenon of gut health. It will use interactive technology, multisensory art installations and object displays to take visitors on a visually stunning, personal journey into the world of microbiomes (a community of microbes) and ecosystems – other people’s, and their own.

Body-mapping technology will overlay dynamic biological content onto visitors’ reflections in smart mirrors, while the total number of gut microbes in the room will be clearly on display, jumping by trillions as visitors enter and leave.

Visitors will be able to explore cutting-edge research that shows the far-reaching impact of gut microbes and may even take part in a world first real-time data mapping project showing how, or if, our inner microbes reflect our daily lives.

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