Science Gallery: Urinotron
MacFarland Court
The University of Melbourne
Are you flushing a valuable wee-source?
Urinotron is a large-scale installation that takes our organic waste (urine!) and transforms it into power for your mobile phone, before recycling it back to pure water.
Contribute your urine and then put your feet up as the salts in your liquid gold turn into sustainable pee power. Why are we flushing such a valuable resource? Urinotron combines scientific equipment, engineering skills and reems of electronic wires in an artistic equivalent of an alchemist’s workshop, producing a different kind of gold.
The first iteration of Urinotron was co-produced by Sandra Bébié-Valérian, Gaspard Bébié-Valérian and Dorian Reunkrilerk. Urinotron 2.0 is a collaboration with Professor Peter Scales.
1–18 AUGUST 2019
Open Monday to Friday 11am–6pm, Saturday 12pm–3pm, plus Sunday 18 August 10am–4pm
About the contributor(s):
Sandra and Gaspard Bébié-Valérian are artists based in France. They combine electronic, chemical and organic materials and look at the connection of energy, the environment and technology. Their work explores the dependency between the industrialised world and the living things that occupy it: humans, animals, plants and microbes.
art-act.fr/en
Professor Peter Scales is an engineer and scientist at The University of Melbourne. At his core, he is a problem solver and a maker of things. For over 28 years he has been investigating how to improve the function and filtration of complex systems. This sort of research is really helpful in many areas including: water recycling and reuse in cities and industry, and enormous batteries powered by wee.
