The Belgian artist Wim Delvoye began working on the Cloaca project in 1992 intending to create installations that reproduced the human digestive process.

[5] The machine carefully controls the temperature of the environment and incorporates precise amounts of digestive chemicals and enzymes at different stages of the process, eventually producing faeces at an exact time advertised to visitors.

[3]: 218  Technical drawings of the installations detail to viewers how the different parts of the machine perform the various biological processes of digestion.

[2] A critic reviewing the exhibition in The Brooklyn Rail was "disgusted" by the installation and criticised its cost, reliance on gimmicks and attempt at being an "educational enterprise".

[2][12] The review negatively contrasted Cloaca to other work on faeces by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luis Buñuel, Karen Finley, Peter Saul and Joseph Beuys.

[2][12] Reviewing the same exhibition, The New York Times called the Cloaca "brainiac Conceptual Art, top-heavy with ideas", and argued that its effectiveness lies in being operational rather than just existing as a thought experiment.

[13] Writing in Frieze about Cloaca New & Improved, critic Saul Anton described the installation as "a metaphor for our culture, as art, as economics and so on - and arguably one of the most spectacular in decades.

"[14] In his review of Cloaca Original, Els Fiers wrote that gallery visitors had a "a strange look on their faces, as if they'd just paid a visit to the devil" after viewing the exhibition, and also described a school girl who began crying when looking at the installation.