Description of chapter

The final chapter occurred at the post-event after party at Elisava University. Futurity Systems installed an exhibition of several space-inspired beverages and the COSMOVORE ceremony which was the original inspiration for ERA’s asteroid farming theme. Read more about it below.

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Reunite your body and soul with the cosmos for the first time in billions of years.

All we are, is made from earth: the soil, the sky, and the sea are the source of every atom that will ever comprise you, via the plants and animals you eat - and to those terrestrial sources your atoms will ultimately return. 

Beyond herbivore and carnivore is geovore; or geophagy: the intentional  practice of eating earth or soil, clay, chalk, or termite mounds. It occurs in many non-human animals, has been documented in more than 100 primate species, and occurs in humans most commonly among children and pregnant women. Although its etiology remains unknown, geophagy has many potential adaptive health benefits as well as negative consequences.

But what about lunaphagy or areophagy - eating the soil (technically, regolith) of the Moon or Mars? We can imagine a future in which space explorers eat foods grown in these cosmic gardens, becoming the planet they inhabit. Maybe these rare, exotic substances would be brought back to Earth from expeditions and settlements, and served in exclusive restaurants like gold leaf is today. Diners would literally become one with these celestial bodies, reuniting their physical selves with the cosmos beyond our planet for the first time in billions of years.

In 2015, a team of scientists and philosophers envisioned astrovores - a terrifyingly plausible  form of intelligent life that eats stars. Could still larger Lovecraftian deities dine on galaxies, universes, star-spawn of Cthulhu consuming the cosmos itself?

• https://www.vice.com/en/article/vvbx4x/starivores-intelligent-life-that-could-eat-the-sun 

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu 

Art anticipated an answer: the concept of Cosmophagy occurs in Susan Sontag's 1963 essay about Sartre’s book Saint Genet saying: 

Corresponding  to  the  primitive  rite  of  anthropophagy,  the  eating  of  human  beings,  is  the  philosophical  rite  of  cosmo-phagy,  the  eating  of  the  world. 

Her essay is then redigested in the book The Scandal of Susan Sontag by Wayne Koestenbaum, in chapter 12 “Susan Sontag, Cosmophage”:

Susan Sontag, my prose’s prime mover, ate the world. Cosmophagic, Sontag  gobbled  up  sensations,  genres,  concepts.  She  swallowed  political  and  aesthetic movements. She devoured roles: diplomat, filmmaker, scourge, novelist, gadfly, essayist, night owl, bibliophile, cineaste. . . . She tried to prove how much a human life—a writer’s life—could include. 

Thus we invite you to the experience of cosmophagy, and if you choose to partake - to become one with the COSMOVORES.

• https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/53010 

• https://www.artforum.com/features/wayne-koestenbaum-2-219067/

The Menu

Neil Armstrong may have been first on the moon, but his crew members Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins should not be forgotten. We have created two memorable drinks in their names:

• Buzz Algin is a botanical gin infused with a magical flower: Brazilian jambu (acmella oleracea), also called buzz button, tingflower, and electric daisy. Unlike anything you have tasted, it resembles lightning with a hint of organic voltage and fresh-picked kilowatts. A dash of riboflavin (vitamin B2) gives it a natural neon-yellow fluorescence at emission wavelength λ at about 650nm. Served in a test tube, optionally combined with a lime peel and tonic water - the quinine in which fluoresces a butterfly blue at 461nm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acmella_oleracea  

• Michael Collins is a Tom Collins (gin, lemon juice, sugar, and carbonated water) stirred 14 times, for the number of times the astronaut orbited the moon alone, while his crew-mates walked on the surface. 

• Thanks to the miracle of science (specifically, mass spectroscopy), we can pair celestial ingredients with their terrestrial counterparts, to smell, taste, and touch stellar substances here on earth today. The moon smells like gunpowder. Saturn's moon Titan smells like gasoline. Aurora Borealis smells like sulfur. Faraway nebulae are vast clouds of gas in space; the birthplaces of stars, as well as home to many complex molecules and amino acids like glycine that form the basis of life. For example, they contain ethyl formate, an ester formed when ethanol reacts with formic acid (what ants use to sting) which is also the taste of raspberries and rum.

  • https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/apr/21/space-raspberries-amino-acids-astrobiology  

  • https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/oscillator/four-great-scents-from-outer-space/   

  • https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211001-the-people-who-claim-to-hear-the-northern-lights 

• Cosmospolitan blends ethyl formate in the form of rum and raspberries - yum!

• Vapeohol is to alcohol as vaping is to cigarettes: you can experience more of the scent and flavor, while ingesting a tiny fraction of the toxic alcohol. 

• Belter Spice is made with meteorites - rocks that landed here on earth, millions of years after ancient collisions launched them from the moon, Mars, or the asteroid belt. We shave these meteorites into small, ingestible dust particles and sprinkle them onto food or into drinks. We are currently serving Campo del Cielo - a large, metallic meteorite (93% iron, 6% nickel, 1% other metals) that was initially formed in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, about 4.5 billion years ago. It fell in Argentina about 4000 years ago, an event that was witnessed by indigenous people who named the impact area Piguem Nonralta (the “land of the sky”). Served suspended in premium vodka - Skyy of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campo_del_Cielo  

The Team

Mark Bunger

Mark is co-founder and CTO of Futurity Systems - an observatory for deeptech: science-driven technologies that will have disruptive impacts on industry, such as synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, private spaceflight, or quantum computing. He brings 30 years of international business experience as a management consultant, technology analyst, entrepreneur, and innovator from Forrester Research, Accenture, the University of California San Francisco, and several successful startups. He is based in San Francisco and Barcelona. Corporate venture capitalists, product developers, and R&D teams at Adidas, BASF, BMW, IBM, Telefonica, and more than 150 other Fortune 500 global companies have been Mark’s clients.

Magda Mojsiejuk

Magda is the Lead Artifact Designer and Creative Director at Futurity Systems, a consultancy based in Barcelona that provides Futures-as-a-Service. She creates prototypes for future products and services, and recently initiated inTENSE, the speculative lifestyle magazine from 2030 and beyond.

With a background in industrial design and set design, her work has been showcased and awarded at design festivals around the globe. In collaboration with Warsaw-based Studio Prognoza, she has also created unique food experiences aimed at democratizing conversations about our common futures of growing, preparing, and enjoying everything we eat.