Dazzling timelapse shows how microbes spoil our food – and sometimes enrich it

Warning: this film features rapidly flashing images that can be distressing to photosensitive viewers.

While the very word ‘rot’ might give rise to revulsion – perhaps the memory of a mildewed fruit or the pungent stench of a past-its-prime cut of fish – the processes it describes often yield delicious results. Indeed, many of the world’s most popular foods, from beer and bread to kimchi and cheese, are born of chemical conversions that would, in other contexts, constitute a food ‘going bad’. With their short film Wrought (2022), the Canadian filmmakers Joel Penner and Anna Sigrithur deploy a dazzling series of timelapse sequences to render the often hidden work of microbes as a visual feast. In doing so, the duo invite us to consider how organic transformation can cause us to smell and taste with delight, or turn away in disgust.