The first of a collection of brain harvesting devices and organisms made during lockdown(s). This is the lovely Brain Eating Amoeba, aka the Naegleria fowleri. It lives in warm water and, if inhaled into the nasal cavity during swimming, it’ll start nestling itself in the brain. Outside the human brain it eats bacteria, but inside it consumes our neurons, effectively living off of our brain activity.
As I was reading Capital is Dead by McKenzie Wark during lockdown making these brain harvesting devices became a way to play around with some of the ideas in it.
“Industrial capitalism was not terribly interested in workers who think and feel. It wanted hands. It wanted muscle. It was a flesh-eating machine. Whatever disgusting and terrifying power lurks in these more recent stories does not so much eat bodies as brains. This combinatory works two ways: either your mind is erased and your body is another mind's vehicle; or your mind is subordinated to the will of another power.”
