Garden spider caught in flash.

Yesterday Dr. Janet Smith split a culture of C2C12 (mouse myoblast cell line) for seeding onto spider silk on square coverslips. She suggested trying various concentrations of cell density and demonstated the cell counting and diluting methodology and the tissue culturing.

As important as the hands on stuff is for me, it was incredibly informative to observe Janet work. With experience and consistant working with these cultures and their variants and close and distant relations, a sensitivity and accumulation of knowledge informs and pentrates the actions and decisions made in the hood. To split the cells they were washed with PBS (warmed to a soothing 37 degrees) twice as I would of done but the trypsin stage was done without incubating.

The trypsin had been thawed in the water bath so was also 37 degrees when applied. She held the flask and moved it so as to see witih the eye the gradual dissaggregation of cells from their dense and confluent colonies, sight and experience being the deciding factors for when to disinhibite the disassociation of trypsins enzyamatic action by adding media with foetal calf serum.

The cells were diluted into their varying densities and then Janet pipetted them in delicate drops onto the cover slips, refering with the microscope to what was happening during the proceedure. It was remarkably more careful and precise than the work I have done thus far.

The silk began to come away from the slips pretty rapidly on contact with the media - which is a problem. The cover slips also move about quite abit in the dish wells. She suggested I use much smaller, circular cover slips which have been treated to optimise tissue culture.

Today there apprear to be some possibilities of cell attachment, nothing too conclusive as yet and I am feeling somewhat crazy and demented following this particular thread of enquiry. However the craziness and dementia are pretty much symptomatic of my all makings and processes. Severe learning curves and long hours in the studio tredding onto unknown territory are familiar albeit uncomfortable and challenging.

More than anything I wonder about the forms and grounds these processes are leading to as I find myself writting more and moving in and out of language.

3T3 cultures on spider silk:

On one coverslip there is still a distinct area of silk which has definate attachment, the 3T3’s have flattened entirely and are growing non-uniformly.

The other shows no silk whatsoever but the coverslip under low magnification (x5) shows distinct tracks that the cells won’t grow on that appear to be where the silk lay on the glass.

Curious and curiouser. Getting them to a microscope with a camera at the right time is not so straightforward.

I’ve put several more coverslips with webs into the oven to be sterilised and cultured onto next week, with mouse muscle cells.

Metal webs:

Two coverslips with web were put into a solution with palladium and hydrogen passed thoguth to enable possible attachemtn of pallaidum to the silk, this was successful, the threads are delicately coated with aggregates of palladium.

Another attempt was made with gold but so far there has been no attachement whatsoever.

Bacteria webs:

I gathered several webs onto a short glass rod,

coiling it around and placing it into a tube

which was then positioned at the output of the serratia fermenter.

It was positioned in the apparatus for about 24 hours and then removed as the fermenter was coming to the end of it’s run. There is a distinct biofilm on the spider silk - it didn’t dissolve as we’d feared. It will remain in the serratia solution over the weekend in the hope that it might develop a more substantial biofilm.

The artists featured in this greenmuseum.org Aer project look critically at the issue of air quality and use various methods to raise awareness of the issue among the public. Because air is invisible, artists are faced with the challenge of making the intangible real. Because air pollution is a silent killer, artists are challenged to give a voice to the body’s dependence on clean air. Most of the featured projects blur the line between art and activism, and all the artists are changing public understanding of the air around us, questioning accepted norms of ownership of and responsibility to the air we must breathe to live.http://www.greenmuseum.org/c/aer/The Australia artist Sarah Jane Pell recently approached me about remaking and preforming a work of hers called interdepend, see http://www.greenmuseum.org/c/aer/projects/interdepend/index.htm for details and images.Sarah has set up a site dedicated to our collaboration on this revisit to interdepend, which we aim to realise and exhibit in 2008.  Sometime ago now we discussed the myths of the selkie, the seal women who shed their seal coats and skins to walk and pass amongst human.The transmogrification between human and seal in the shallows of the seal haunted waters articulates wonderful ideas of metamorphosis that have been embedded in many cultures for centuaries and yet indicate contemporary notions of transformation and liminal embodiments, alterities and terrors via technologies and sciences. They suggest the shakey boundaries and taxonomies that our biosciences posit and action in chimerical lifes and hybrid actuations.

Yesterday I visited moving image artist Anna Lucas who recently began a drawing residency at Somerville College, University of Oxford. The pilot residency is connected to the University’s Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. One of Anna’s activities whilst there is repeated drawings of Werner Herzog’s 1971 documentary Land of Silence and Darkness, including the entire film, and individual scenes. She is located in the the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics where she uses the lecture theater to perform the watchings and drawings. We stood outside the building last night, discussing the structural and semantic implications of the arrangements and triangulations of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics and pondered what the physiology, anatomy and genetics of a film might be.

I looked at some of the drawings made so far, traces of events, eventful traces, recapitulations of time, drawing time quite literally near and far into and out of the meta time established by the frame works of Herzog’s documentary and the complex unfoldings of events in the bioscience world that envelopes her activities.

We talked alot about time, or perhaps I ranted about time and cascades of events - borrowing heavily from the molecular biological phrasings I hear tendrils of around me. Cascades suggestings structures and narrative - sequential. Anna is performing some kind of crumpling perhaps, of gestrure, refigurations, through hand and eye in a large dark room structured towards other hierachies and diseminations of knowings and knowledges.

I mentioned the flattened space I once heard Parveen Adams refer to in a talk on Cronenburg’s adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s Crash. She borrowed flat space (I hope I’ve recalled that wording correctly) from architectural theory and posited it as a refusal of the scopic peeping Tom mechanism that pervades cinema. I don’t know that necessarily relates to Herzog but it does relate to the relational structures Anna is navigating as she moves between looking and action, between scopic space and flattened drawing ground, blinding herself to what marks she is making.

Perhaps the webs can be viewed as drawings. There is some more investigation to be done there. I collect them onto coverslips by scooping the slip several times throught one web to maximise the number of catches of silk onto such a small surface so the web design becomes more complex and less logical.

We talked as well about the usefulness of allowing one activity to co-exist along side other non related activites, and the delft hookings and crossings of associate and implied meanings that can then evolve. Reminds me of the literal hookings of a crochet hook or the radial junctions of web that create the tensile structures. The women I learnt lacemaking from in Australia had a bodily working knowledge of engineering, their fingers testing and seemingly intuiting the torchons of their stitching and cross stitchings in making bobbin lace.

The molecular biologists insist it’s magic and that there are faeries in the lab.

Adding colourless liquids to other colourless liquids, putting it into the magic box,running it thorugh a gel, and celebrating a miraculous manifestation of a band - or instense worry and speculation when there isn’t one.

This is a persistant claim that is reiterated in the lab tea room with unerring passion. Possibily due to a slight hysteria brought on by an increased consumption of sugar via the inpormtu cake festival that is into it’s second day now. I insist that the biosciences runs on sugar. It was mufin Monday in UWA, Perth, here it’s daily confectionary mayhem.

This and intense discussion of ‘what superpower would you have’ whilst in tissue culture has assured me onec again I am in the right environment for an art interface with metaphysics via a biotechnical vector.

The magical and the magikal collide into supermesh was my thought as I speculated a mutant spider woman with metallic conducting silken fibres.

Came in Monday having left silk on coverslips and 3T3s to get up close and personal over the weekend. Either the 3T3’s ate the silk, dissolved it with some sneakly enzyme or it just plain slunk off because there are alot of cells looking content and virtually no silk. Mystery.

PMT kicks in and I decide to give up and get a proper job doing something that might actually earn some money and give me some instant gratification. I vaguely recall that for some reason way back when (weirdly whilst at SymbioticA - working with the intergral body seems to compliment working with the disaggregated and proliferated body) I deciced to train as a yoga teacher and I now have my final assessment in 10 days. Lack of adequate preperation and actually doing enough yoga convinces me to stick with the art lark for a while longer. Passing the assessment and qualifying as a yoga teacher is by no means a foregone conclusion. But who knows. Allot of seeds got planted in the Western edges of Australia that continue to bear all kinds of fruit. And that is what is so remarkable about a residency, it provides a crucible of kinds inwhich to throw all manner of ingrediants, thoughts, proceeses and compulsions, and the fruit evolve often well beyond the actual time frame of the residency.

Had a cry. In Dr. Neil Hotchin’s office - embarrasing but I just couldn’t hep it. A very useful discussion insued however, including the time factor of how steep the learning curves are, how long it takes to fully identify meaningful projects and how outcomes are a canny and cunning thing - elusive. Science is so outcome orientated and of course the remit of my residency, as according to teh Arts Council is very open and process based.

I repeated seeding more spider silk on cover slips with 3T3s, in petri dishes. decided I wanted to see how the cells behave and what happens an hour after seeding, two hours, three hours etc. to get a picture. I went to a seminar on cancerous cell motility which I understood until they got to the molecular signalling stuff about signalling and then I had beautiful semi waking dreams - no doubt inspired by the speakers terrrific talk. So the looking after one hour got forgotten and the two hour look got skewed to 2 1/2 hours but what i did see was the the silk has pretty much lifted in parts and many 3T3s, still unflattened had attached, perhaps with random devil may careness but nonetheless contact was made. (They go round when chemically seperated by trypsins enzymatic action, otherwise they look like they are tying to be star fish and reach out in spindles - there are some PhD candidates around here who will perform excellent impressions of them during tea break).

My attempts to collect more webs have been disasterous. The damp air and layering of spindles ontop of one another collapsing the silk into mush. Actually fascinating to handle the disassembly of structured polymer into an amazingly strong mucus like substance. I really need to sort this collection scenario out.

Dr. Janet Smith handily showed up and offered to have a look, thought there was something convincing there and that it might be worth repeating with more interesting cells - like muscle cells. So it looks like there will be some C2 cultures (a mouse myoblast cell line) on Friday.

I’ve copied this verbatim from the most recent Critical Art Ensemble Press Release. It makes chilling reading for art, science and hybrid act/science practitioners.

DOJ PROSECUTION FORCE SCIENTIST TO PLEAD IN PRECEDENT-SETTING CASE

Scientist’s Wife and Daughter Comment on Case

Buffalo, NY - Today in Federal District Court, Dr. Robert Ferrell,
Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, under tremendous pressure, pled guilty to lesser charges rather than facing a prolonged trial for federal charges of “mail fraud” and “wire fraud” in a surreal post-PATRIOT Act legal case that has attracted worldwide attention.

“From the beginning, this has been a persecution, not a prosecution. Although I have not seen the final agreement, the initial versions contained incorrect and irrelevant information,” said Dr. Dianne Raeke Ferrell, Dr. Ferrell’s wife and an Associate Professor of Special Education and Clinical Services at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. “Bob is a 27 year survivor of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma which has reoccurred numerous times. He has also had malignant melanoma. Since this whole nightmare began, Bob has had two minor strokes and a major stroke which required months of rehabilitation.”

Dr. Ferrell added that her husband was indicted just as he was
preparing to undergo a painful and dangerous autologous stem cell transplant, the second in 7 years.

The Ferrells’ daughter, Gentry Chandler Ferrell, added: “Our family has struggled with an intense uncertainty about physical, emotional and financial health for a long time. Agreeing to a plea deal is a small way for dad to try to eliminate one of those uncertainties and hold on a little longer to the career he worked so hard to develop… Sadly, while institutions merely are tarnished from needless litigation, individuals are torn apart. I remain unable to wrap my mind around the absurdity of the government’s pursuit of this case and I am saddened that it has been dragged out to the point where my dad opted to settle from pure exhaustion.” (To read Gentry Ferrell’s full statement, please visit:
http://caedefensefund.org/press/ferrellplea.html)

Dr. Ferrell’s colleague Dr. Steven Kurtz, founder of the
internationally acclaimed art and theater group Critical Art
Ensemble, was illegally detained and accused of “bioterrorism” by the U.S. government in 2004 stemming from his acquisition from Dr. Ferrell of harmless bacteria used in several of Critical Art Ensemble’s educational art projects [bacillus globigii, serratia marcenscens and e.coli]. After a costly investigation lasting several months and failing to provide any evidence of “bioterrorism,” the Department of Justice instead brought charges of “mail fraud” and “wire fraud” against Kurtz and Ferrell. Under the USA PATRIOT Act, the maximum penalty for these charges has increased from 5 years to 20. (For more information about the case, please see “Background to the Case” below or http://caedefensefund.org)

JURIDICAL ART CRITICISM?

The government is vigorously attempting to prosecute two defendants in a case where no one has been injured, and no one has been defrauded. The materials found in Dr. Kurtz’s house were obtained legally and used safely by the artist. After three and a half years of investigation and prosecution, the case still revolves around $256 worth of common science research materials that were used in art works by a highly visible and respected group of artists. These art works were commissioned and hosted by cultural institutions worldwide where they had been safely displayed in museums and galleries with absolutely no risk to the public.

The Government has consistently framed this case as an issue of public safety, but the materials used by Critical Art Ensemble are widely available, can be purchased by anyone from High School science supply catalogues, and are regularly mailed.

PROFESSORS OF ART & SCIENCE EXPRESS ALARM

“The government’s prosecution is an ill-conceived and misguided
attack on the scientific and artistic communities,” said Dr. Richard Gronostajski, Professor of Biochemistry at SUNY Buffalo, where Professor Kurtz also teaches. “It could have a chilling effect on future scientific research collaborations, and harm teaching efforts and interactions between scientists, educators and artists.”

“It’s deeply alarming that the government could pressure someone of Dr. Ferrell’s stature into agreeing to something like this. The case threatens all Americans’ Constitutionally guaranteed right to question the actions of their government,” said Igor Vamos, Professor of Integrated Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

PLEA COMES AMIDST OVERWHELMING PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR DEFENDANTS

The plea bargain agreement comes at a time of overwhelming public support for the two defendants. A film about the case, Strange Culture - directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson and featuring Tilda Swinton (Chronicles of Narnia, Michael Clayton), Thomas Jay Ryan (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), and Peter Coyote (E.T., Erin Brockovich) - has drawn widespread critical praise and publicinterest, with screenings in dozens of U.S. cities after its selection to open both the 2007 Human Rights Watch International Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival documentary section. An October 1 screening of the film at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City drew a crowd of 400 who stayed for an hour afterward for a discussion with Professor Kurtz, director Hershman
Leeson, and actress Tilda Swinton. Special benefit screenings of the film in numerous cities have raised thousands of dollars to offset the two defendants’ escalating legal costs.

BACKGROUND TO THE CASE

The legal nightmare of renowned scientist Dr. Robert Ferrell and
artist and professor Dr. Steven Kurtz began in May 2004. Professor Kurtz and his late wife Hope were founding members of the internationally exhibited art and theater collective Critical Art Ensemble. Over the past decade cultural institutions worldwide have commissioned and hosted Critical Art Ensemble’s participatory theater projects that help the general public understand biotechnology and the many issues surrounding it. In May 2004 the Kurtzes were preparing a project examining genetically modified agriculture for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, when Hope Kurtz died of heart failure. Detectives who responded to Professor Kurtz’s 911 call deemed the couple’s art suspicious, and called the FBI. Within hours the artist was illegally detained as a suspected “bioterrorist” as dozens of federal agents in Hazmat suits sifted through his work and impounded his computers, manuscripts, books, his cat, and even his wife’s body.

CASE DEPLETES PUBLIC AND PRIVATE RESOURCES

The government has pursued this case relentlessly for three and a half years, spending enormous amounts of public resources. Most significantly, the legal battle has exhausted the financial,
emotional, and physical resources of Ferrell and Kurtz; as well as their families and supporters. The professional and personal lives of both defendants have suffered tremendously. A trial date has not yet been established.

For more information about the case, including extensive
documentation, please visit http://caedefensefund.org

October 11, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACTS:
Email: mailto:media@caedefensefund.org
Claire Pentecost: 773-383-9771
Gregory Sholette: 212-865-3076
Edmund Cardoni: 716-854-1694
Igor Vamos: 917-209-3282
Lucia Sommer: 716-359-3061
Dianne Raeke Ferrell: 412-352-2704

I met with some of Prof. Lynne Mackaskie’s group to follow up the discussions I’d had with Dr. Rachel Sammons at the Dental Hospital. I met with Dr. Marion Peterson-Beedle, Dr Iryna Mikheenko and Dr Ping Yong over a cup of green tea and we discussed options for what we could do with the spider silk.

Rachel’s idea had been to pass serratia bacteria through the spider silk to see if it grew on it, if it does then the production of hydooxlyapatite is perhaps possible. So I met with Marion and her collegue to discuss giving that a go. Ping has just set up a fermenter that passes the serratia through a variety of materials - it looks really quite stunning, a collection of tubes, flasks, stands and clamps. Marion suggested I gather a ball of web which can be placed at the outflow point.

Iryna showed me her work with bacterial cultures that aggregate metals as biomechanisms, the uniqueness of the metal crystal formations render them unique for potential fuel purposes. Ping has been using the hydrogen outputs from this work, converting it into electricity. It’s profoundly elegant stuff.

They also work with recycling food waste into hydrogen with bacteria towards yeilding electricity. Other work, using bacteria to create gold aggregates from gold solutions reminding me of some ideas I’d had about covering spider silk with gold. Marion and Iryna suggested that there were a whole host of metals that could be investigated in this way, so we’re going to do some small experiments in this area next week.

1. Amass a ball of spider silk to position in the fermenter output, pass serratia though it.
Does it grow on it?
Does it break down the spider silk protein polymer?

2. Collect more cover slips of spider silk for culturing with bacteria towards metal coatings.

3. Collect a spider web onto bacteria dish and culture to observe which bacteria cultures will grow. Also collect an air sample to compare.

Meanwhile I’ve put 3T3 cells onto two cover slips with spider silk in a bacteria dish, and onto human hair also in a bacteria dish. The silk was steralised by baking in the hope it will stick to the glass more firmly. The hair was autoclaved.

Meanwhile I’m reading Strange Germs and Hopeful Monsters: Alexander Laing’s 1930s American Biotechnology Tales by Lisa Lynch, a discussion of the exploration of the anxiaties provoked when biotechnology was an emerging and radical new field.

Collected fresh spider silk this morning, passing delicate squares of coverslips through fresh gossamer, catching meshes between fingers and watching it stick and stretch before catching on glass.

Spiders consume their webs and recyle them into new ones, so my stealing of their structures must be creating some kind of a stress for them and their production. I’m counting on there being a hell of alot of them.

The Latest lot of 3T3 spider silk cultures are terrible. Lots of cells but not enough silk to see what’s happening - if anything. I’m making another attempt, this time baking the silk onto the glass - which should also steralise it - we put an indicator into the dish to confirm that. I’m also going to try growing 3t3s onto some hair. Hmmm.

The difficulty with this residency is that all my tinkering is so slight and literally gossamar like. It’s hard to get any sense of substance, development or progression. I had a useful discussion with Dr. Janet Smith trying to define the areas and references I’m gravitating towards and that provide a loose orientation for the doing and the conceptualising.

It remains an uncertain anxious territory of embodiment and incredible tenderness.

Uncertain and anxious indicating a deferal of anything fixed, resolved or finite. Unfoldings and cascadings of processes and events thereby acknowledging time, non linear time wrapping linear time, skewed temporalities catching oneanother like web structures into meshes and matrix of associations; complex stories and hypertextual eventfullness played out in bodies. What kind of bodies? Many kinds.

I still find myself talking of Cronenburg, Ballard, Burroughs and Acker, Bourgoise . . . bioart cut ups.

Rain has dimantled the webs I was set to collect today. I need a spider house. Mel, my Brum landlady has pointed out that there is a mother spider sitting on a nest above her back door. My reticence to dislodge the arachnid domestic set up changed when Mel mentioned her mother would remmove it anyway.

Going to visit stores in the basement of the Biosiences building. Stores is next to the workshop (another must visit) and the post room. The descent to the basement is to a place of wonder. I never really know what the extent of the store’s repository is, I kind of figure it’s the place to begin the spider house hunt tho’. That if they don’t have a suitable solution, they’ll know a man that will. Really I want to design something and have the workshop people make it, they make everything, I am in awe.

So the plan is to get a load more silk onto coverslips and try some other cells on them. Perhaps some primary.