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Claire Fall Blanchette



Recent Projects ︎︎︎

Ground Truthing
Ecotone
Fragments, for the possibilities that lie ahead
Conflux
thinking with the river

Tangled Currents
1-800-SCOBY
Ruins
To Pass Through Two Doors at Once
Alien (New Wild)
Works on Paper


Older Work ︎︎︎

Place in Hand
A Perilous Decay
On a Ley Line
Rubbings
Prints
Painting


Info︎︎︎

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Claire Fall Blanchette
Jar of Kombucha SCOBY with wires coming out of the top which are connected to sensors in the SCOBY and connected a phone, allowing for interspecies communication. Log book recording conversations sits to the right of the phone.

1-800-SCOBY 

collaboration with Gabe Farley

1-800-SCOBY examines our desire to communicate with non-human lifeforms and questions the answers we seek by talking with these organisms. SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) is created from and facilitates the fermentation of kombucha. Using this living culture, this installation critiques the anthropomorphism of more-than-human life.

Presented as a self-help line, 1-800-SCOBY prompts visitors to “call in” to the symbiotic system and record their encounter in the logbook. However, the experience is entirely pre-constructed. The attached sensors are not transmitting anything to the audio heard from the phone, instead using soundbytes recorded directly from the culture. Through this illusion, we explore whether humans can communicate outside their own anthropocentric frameworks, interrogating whether interspecies translation is a fantasy or if genuine exchange could be possible.

What do we hope to learn, solve, or uncover, and how may we implement the knowledge of our interspecies partners? 1-800-SCOBY invites participants to investigate whether these are authentic bids for connection or a projection of human-ness onto the non-human world. As the SCOBY logbook reveals: we need more data.



A person holds a phone in their left hand that's connected by wires to a jard of kombucha SCOBY, in their right hand they hold a pencil and are starting to record their conversation with the SCOBY in the logbook SCOBY logbook for 1-800-SCOBY detailing the chronicles of creating the SCOBY communication device and prompting others to record their findings A jar of kombucha sits with a well developed pellicle SCOBY with two lights that resemble eyes in the jar and three sensors plugged into the SCOBY with one taped to the outside of the jar. Jar of Kombucha SCOBY with wires coming out of the top which are connected to sensors in the SCOBY and connected a phone, allowing for interspecies communication. Log book recording conversations sits to the right of the phone.

1-800-SCOBY
Collaboration with Gabe Farley
2025
Kombucha SCOBY, jar, tyvek, custom plastic lid, hacked telephone, speaker, three probes, various cables, LED lights, journal, and pencil
Variable dimensions, approximately 18” x 12” x 8”