The Biology of . . . Disgust

A crowd has gathered at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Manhattan. Before them sits an intricate ramble of tubes, flasks, cogs, wires, and gauges 33 feet long and more than six feet high. The structure mimics all the digestive processes of the human gut. Twice daily, local chefs prepare meals that are fed to the machine, which quietly churns them through six glass vats that contain a carefully calibrated mix of enzymes, acids, bile, and bilirubin. Now the moment has arrived. As two little red-haired girls stare, bug-eyed, a long brown lump of excrement emerges silently from the end of the apparatus. It rolls a few feet along a green conveyor belt, and stops. A Japanese tourist solemnly snaps a photo.