LYNN CAZABON
PROFESSOR, VISUAL ARTS - PHOTOGRAPHY, UMBC

Ecobiont: Regeneration, 2021
Four-channel video
Running time 14 mins, 46 secs
(pictured in center of photo; scroll down to play video)

A modification of the word holobiont, ‘ecobiont’ describes a system that encompasses the networks of all microbes, animals, and plants, while also including human culture and technology as an aspect of evolutionary change. Ecobiont: Regeneration is one of a 9 part series of visual stories created by Cazabon, centered on the work of scientists and staff at the Aquaculture Research Center at the Institute for Marine and Environmental Technology in Baltimore. The series specifically focuses on different aspects of the sustainable land-based aquaculture system being developed and refined at IMET, which due to massive overfishing and the collapse of fish populations around the world, will likely play a large role in how humans obtain fish for food in the future. Ecobiont: Regeneration features the final part of this system, the cultivation of microorganisms to generate energy from fish waste.