Something festive. A deconstructed Bacterial Christmas Tree. The green foliage, is encapsulated Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and the red baubles the blood bacillus, Serratia marscens. Both are potentially pathogenic, so in the lab it must remain.
The bacteria have added their own character to the work, as their activity has dissolved the gelling agent, distorting the intended neat Christmas tree design. Thus the living bacteria, that were initially used for their colourful pigments, have also contributed to the work. For me this is a vital aspect of the art piece.
For many years now, scientists at C-MOULD have explored the use of naturally pigmented bacteria (see the image above) to generate living inks and textile dyes. In 2015 we will explore another sense through which we can engage with, and perhaps even be manipulated by, the bacterial world. Rather than vision, this sense is smell.
Smell can evoke the richest of memories, and through this sense our most intimate and affecting moments can be reached more readily than through any other channel. The project is inspired by my own experiences in medical microbiology, and how we were taught to presumtively identify bacterial pathogens on the basis of the aroma that they generate. To this day I can still remember the moment, when in an undergraduate microbiology lab class, the late Joyce Fraser told me that Haemophilus influenza when grown on blood agar smells of semen! She was of course quite correct. In the same manner nurses working in Burns Wards can smell via its grape like odour whether a patient has been infected with Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
Here are some other bacterial aroma notes:
Eikenella corrodens: bleach
Staphyloccocus aureus: skin-like smell with a secondary smell of bread.
Pseudomonas aeruginosa: initial smell of grapes with a secondary smell of tortillas
Group F Beta Hemolytic Streptococcus: strong buttery smell
Stenotrophomonas: ammonia
Staphylococcus epidermidis: body odour
Streptococcus intermedius: butterscotch
Proteus vulgaris: burnt chocolate
Flavobacterium odoratum and Alcaligenes faecalis (formerly Alcaligenes odorans) freshly cut apple
The iron oxidising bacterium Leptothrix discophora forms beautiful, fragile and iridescent oil-like films on the surfaces of natural waters rich in iron. Often mistaken for pollution and oil spills, these films are an entirely natural phenomenon. I decided to try my hand at growing this bacteria at home, and simply threw a handful of iron nails into a bucket of collected rain water. Just over a month later, and I have a thriving and iridescent surface community of Leptothrix discophora. I simply provided an appropriate niche, which the bacteria found an exploited. How did they find it? Were they wind blown or were they present in the rain itself?
A brief microgeographical journey, connecting micro and macrocosm.
A damp concrete wall supports a green photosynthetic ecology. Within the algal continuum there are white circular zones of inhibition where the underlying concrete has been revealed and I’m guessing that this is caused by a fungus producing a metabolite that is killing the algae. Perhaps this could be explored as a natural herbicide.
The video shows the same ecology at 1000x magnification, revealing a thriving community of algae and bacteria.
Some years ago now we visited Roger Hiorn’s work Seizure in London. The Turner Prize nominated artist had turned the inside of an old council flat into a wondrous crystal grotto using copper sulphate. A deep blue crystal had broken off the work and on the floor. Isolated from the main body of crystallization, it was noticed and pocketed by an attentive and small child (Joe my son). Apparently lifeless, I started to think that the shard retained a stilled and latent energy, and that like a biological spore, it harbored a set virus-like instructions, derived from artist’s initial vision, that would lead to the birth of a new and unique art form. At home, I nurtured the deep blue spore and carefully encouraged it to germinate and so that it grew into its own unique, yet related ecology. Primed by its inherent chemistry and potential, it is Hiorn’s “Seizure”, and an unexpected extension of it, but also it is not, having emerged into, and representing, its own unique context.
The Blue Chemical Ecosystem appears to change constantly in response to its environment, first emerging as tall and thin spikes, but later into other wonderful and unexpected forms. For example, it would appear that at the bottom the competition for space and “nutrition” is intense. In response, a new species has emerged, the surface dweller, which has evolved its own air bladders, allowing it to live on the air/liquid interface and thus toexploit this hitherto unoccupied domain.
The Pale Blue Dot, is a photograph (inspired by Carl Sagan) of planet Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 space probe from a distance of about 6 billion kilometers from Earth. In the photograph, Earth’s apparent size is less than a pixel and the planet appears as a tiny dot against the vastness of space.
The “Pale Blue Dots” in this work are my own cells, as imaged at 1000x magnification. They are the minutest divisible living part of me, and too appear as tiny dots against the relative vastness of my body. In the background are even smaller bacterial cells, and the modern understanding of these lifeforms suggests that these too are also part of me. At this extreme scale, I have difficulties imagining where I begin and end.
A simple idea and a quick test to determine the carriage of microorganisms on money. A five pound note was introduced onto the surface of a micorbiological medium and the microbes present on it allowed to grow in situ.
Pigmented bacteria converted into a glass-like film for projection and stained-glass.
The first use of a chromogen in bacterial art
The use of encapsulated bacteria to generate living colours/living pixels
Bacterial pointillism
The use of encapsulated bacteria to generate living colours/living pixels
Serratia marcescens and Bacillus mycoides. An antagonistic red, paint
The use of encapsulated bacteria to generate living colours/living pixels
Bacillus mycoides and food colours
Bacillus mycoides and food colours
Droplets of Bacillus mycoides, with outgrowth.
An early Ophelia
Bacterial pointillism, Ophelia
Various
The use of encapsulated bacteria to generate living colours/living pixels
The use of encapsulated bacteria to generate living colours/living pixels. Also we developed a mirror-like black agar.
The use of encapsulated bacteria to generate living colours/living pixels
The living palette of pigmented bacteria
An early bacterial Ophelia
Pigmented bacteria converted into a glass-like film for projection and stained-glass.
An early bacterial Ophelia
An early bacterial Ophelia
The use of encapsulated bacteria to generate living colours/living pixels
Bacterial pointillism
A very old and dying bacterial Ophelia.
Bacillus mycoides and food colours
The use of encapsulated bacteria to generate living colours/living pixels
In 2006 artist, JoWonder and myself were awarded a grant from the Wellcome Trust to make an interpretation of John Millias’s painting Ophelia. We were not the first to paint with bacteria, and in fact Alexander Fleming was one of the first to explore the use of naturally pigmented bacteria in art, by creating his “germ paintings”. Our project was though the most in depth (and still is) investigation into bacteria and colour, and along the way Jo and I developed, much accidental beauty in our test runs, and in our invention of many new procesess. These include a unique and consistent palette of living bacterial bacterial colours, ways to make glass-like films from coloured bacteria, the use of chromogens in bacterial art, and methods to encapsulate bacteria so that they might form living and coloured pixels. As a new generation of artists becomes interested in bacteria and colour, I hope that our ground-breaking work is not forgotten and that our processes can be adopted and taken up to explore this wonderful aspect of microbiology.
Tired of all those brash and energy gobbling Christmas lights, then try these unique Christmas BioBaubles. Powered by nothing more than seawater, a drop of glycerol, and the naturally bioluminescent bacterium Photobacterium phosphoreum. Prepared for Thames Valley Branch’s Cafe Scientific event this evening.
