Drink.Pee.Drink.Pee.Drink.Pee

This project, a collaboration with Rebecca Bray, was featured at MOMA (Museum of Modern Art, NY) in April 2010 among other international venues. Listen to the NPR/BBC/Public Radio International coverage of the project here. or watch the video of a gallery event here.

Come. Have a beer.

Now, please pee in a cup. Well, actually, pee in this small glass fish bowl instead. We are going to turn your urine into fertilizer you can use on your houseplants and keep your nutrients & all those drugs you’ve been taking out of the waterways.

ASS Gallery Public Reaction
Ars Electronica Public Reaction, Linz, Austria
Installation featuring a toilet and waterfountain surrounds the public reaction lab at Ars Electronica: Human Nature in Linz, Austria 2010.

While you sit on the toilet, imagine drinking from a water fountain at the same time. Your body is closing the loop. Actually, we all are, every day.

Our menopausal moms pee estrogen supplements into waterways and frogs’ mating cycles de-synchronize. Our neighborhood’s latest strain of COVID shows up in sewage samples. Our grandpas pee blood thinners into the waterways, dosing all of us. Our cocaine binges make their tiny particulate way into school water fountains. Water treatment plants don’t treat for these particles of ours.

There is no flushing our pee away.

Artists Britta Riley (seated at toilet) and Rebecca Bray (standing) give a media interview before their Public Reaction series begins at Ars Electronica: Human Nature.
Feature Image from ArtNews article, Earth Works. Partial view of Drink.Pee.Drink.Pee.Drink.Pee Installation at Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology as part of the FEEDBACK exhibition. Photo credit:
Drink.Pee.Drink.Pee.Drink.Pee Logo Lady

Now, dip a pH strip into the pee. Don’t worry. It’s sterile right when it comes out of your body. Go ahead, take a whiff. What do you note?

Hmm, agreed. His does smell like wet leather and horsehair. Now, add a pinch of this soil enzyme, place it in the ice bucket, take off your gloves, and go dance and socialize for fifteen minutes.

Test the pH again. Note the smell. Ew. Yeah, it’s ready.

Participants record their pee smells, PH at Ars Electronica/
A participant smells his pee at Terence Koh's Asia Song Society (Ass) Gallery as part of their EXPEL series
Someone's pee analysis at the Ars Electronica Public Reaction.
Participants at Ars Electronica
Testing PH at ASS Gallery.
Recording results at ASS gallery.

Take it to the station outside. Pour in the minerals. Stir. It gets hot and fizzes. Clumps form. These clumps are kidney stones (thankfully forming outside your body!), but they capture most of your pollutants as well as the rich nutrients in your pee.

Put the filter on. Dump out the now relatively harmless liquid. That will go down the toilet.

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As Public Radio International records their experience of the Ars Electronica Public Reaction, this participant watches clumps of fertilizer (struvite) accumulate in his pee.
A participant at ASS Gallery contributes her hydrolyzed urine to the collective tank.
A participant at Ars Electronica prepares to extract her body's fertilizer.

Gather up the filter into a baggie. That’s your fertilizer! Your house plants will love it. They can metabolize your pollution. Now, you are in a symbiotic relationship with your favorite Swedish ivy plant.

You can take this home this DIY Kit and do yourself in the privacy of your bathroom.

Drink.Pee.Drink.Pee.Drink.Pee DIY kits were featured at MOMA and the 11th Venice Biennale of Architecture and many more venues. Limited edition runs were sold at The New Museum Store, Eyebeam, Columbia College's A+D gallery.
Participants at ASS Gallery took home a pack of white struvite fertilizer powder made from their own bodies. They mixed it with water and used it to feed houseplants keeping any drugs or other harmful metabolites out of the waterways.

On a cold February evening, 70 New Yorkers turn their pee into fertilizer for their houseplants at CYWTS gallery, Brooklyn, NY.

This project, a collaboration with Rebecca Bray, was featured at MOMA (Museum of Modern Art, NY) in April 2010 among other international venues.

Listen to the NPR/BBC/Public Radio International coverage of the project here.

Or, watch video of a gallery event here.

Listen to the story as PRX reporter Cyrus Farviar and his radio team turn their pee into fertilizer for their houseplants with artists Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray. This Drink.Pee.Drin.Pee.Dr atat Ars Electronica: Human Nature in Linz, Austria 2009.