Another work which  explores two current strands of interest, one new, and the other far older, and from my teenage years. The most recent theme is the concept of vitalism, a theory that held that living organisms were fundamentally different from non-living entities, in that they contained some unique non-physical element called the vital or life spark. The older strand, and I think that it’s fair to call it an obsession now, is the process of crystallisation. I can trace this back to a period of two days when my teenage mind was exposed to the wonder of J.G Ballard’s The Crystal World. So here I am many years later, adding Urea, the synthesis of which by Friedrich Wöhler led to vitalism’s demise, to a culture of my own epithelial cells. If you look closely to can see my cells with their nuclei being killed and penetrated by various types of crystallisation processes. Death by a thousand cuts!