Building bacterial in Second Life.

Read the entire post here.

Short video clip here.

For the most part I am  continuing to practice my aseptic technique, culturing the muscle cell line PD50A and splitting the cultures into smaller groups when they begin to carpet the flask. Allot of plastic is used in tissue culture, numerous pipettes are used once to minimise risk of contamination form bacteria or yeast. I made some false economies in trying to use less and one of my flasks displayed contamination, lots of dead cells, contracted into spheres and floating in the media rather than adhereing to the bottom and extending.

Here’s an image of a myoblast grabbed online, so not precisely the same but very similar.

I use Janet Smith’s tissue culture room. It has no natural light source and is quiet and conducive to quiet contemplative work - and to looking. A black photograph studio curtain blocks the doors glass panel and black out blind blocks the window. The curtain reminds me that St. Veronica is the patron saint of photography, she who held her veil out to clean Christ’s bloodied face and obtained a print of his face.

Of course science is full of readings of impressions, representations, ocular gazes and mediatations to render that which tips over the edge of sight, visible. In the lab I am surrounded by numerous processes are engaged with  measure, assess, ascertain the movement of discrete molecules.

An ongoing and very welcome aspect are the informal and ongoing conversations in and around the lab, usually in the tea room, with bioscience researchers. Converstation themes move between debating whether my activities really are art? Do science and art practices fundamentally diverge? Linear and lateral working processes, the rationality and the happy accident. And various highly valuable input, for example discussion of 3D and 4D imaging techniques for pretty much anything including cells cultures. In terms of the serndipitous and unexpected insight, today Victor Mikhailov gave the example of the discovery of the C60 molecule structure when the investigators were addressing solving an entirely other problem. We were discussing the painstaking and often repetitive nature of our respective processes, in his case analysing protein structures using mass spectometry techniques.I mentioned Marta de Menezes and her Proteic Potrait, inwhich she used her Portugese name as a sequence for building a protein. See http://www.martademenezes.com/

Scattershot reading actions from:

Ann Veronica, H.G. Wells.

Don Quixote, Kathy Acker.

Spider silk fibres in artificial nerve constructs promote peripheral nerve regeneration , C. Allmeling*, A. Jokuszies*, K. Reimers*, S. Kall*, C. Y. Choi*, G. Brandes†, C. Kasper‡, T. Scheper‡, M. Guggenheim§ and P. M. Vogt*

15 - 30 November o8.

See here

and here:

and here.

The new research at the school of Biosciences commenced this week with very gradual effort on my part to reacquaint myself with the lab. Janet (Dr. Smith, my collaborator) left me some cells to practice basic tissue culture on. They are are cell line called PD50A cells. They are muscle cells “mdx-derived skeletal muscle cell line labeled with a retrovirus conferring beta-galactosidase activity and G418 resistance (PD50A)” cited from here. Curiously, PD50A is also the number of a plasma TV model.

I’ve just taken a good long look at them and sub cultured them.

Looking at cells is part of my learning. Cell culture is similar to gardening in that it is proactive and responsive. Initiating situations and then responding to them as they develop - cultivation. I’m curious about the cells morphology and how this might suggest when to feed them (change their nutriant media) and when to sub culture them. Sub culturing is dividing a population of cells into smaller amounts.  Normally it is done when cells are confluent, or “carpeting” the bottom of the tissue culture flask.  My cells are slow growers, they’d made a 60% effort, so I split them anyway, into different population densities to see what they’ll do.

1:10, 3:10, 5:10

(Perhaps I should of gone for a Fibonacci sequence.)

This kind of information is possibly useful to me even at the crude level I am  working at, as I get to manouver around the lab, refresh my aseptic technique and to ponder. Also I hope I acquire some working and thinking knowlege towards what kinds of cell populations might like to grow on spider silk structures. What kind of environments and conditions might encourage such a situation?

Interestingly and wonderfully, a group in Hanouver have made studies towards using spider silk for nerve regeneration purposes. See the abstract here.

Looking down the microscope also reminds me that I want to use drawing as a method of thinking. Janet and I discussed constructing a camera lucida as a way to both study cells and to generate drawing practices. There is a particular kind of thinking that occurs withing the space of drawing when drawing is being made as an investigatory, research practice.

Finally, after some considerable time not posting (the longer I leave it the harder it gets), here’s some news.

Biocrafts and Edge Practices is the working title for a phase of work I’ll be embarking on with Janet Smith at the School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham. It continues the interest in tissue culturing onto spider silk identified when I was artist in resident at the school last year. We’ve been awarded an Arts Award by Wellcome Trust.

It will have it’s own blog and site but in the meantime in order to give an overview of the project,  here’s some excerpts from the application:

Artist Kira O’Reilly and scientist Dr Janet Smith will collaborate on interdisciplinary laboratory based activities of tissue culturing cells onto spider silk. These investigations of biomaterials and biocraft will generate a series of exchanges, materials and writings to form a book publication.

The book will be an art object. The design of the spider’s web will inform its structure, materials and the complexities of its writings. It will reflect the crossing of boundaries between biosciences, arts, craft and technology. The book itself will be a ‘wandering’ book, moving across categories of knowledge in academic libraries, art bookshop and art/science spaces.

Aim
To conduct an extended period of collaborative and interdisciplinary research in which they will grow muscle, nerve and bone stem cells onto spider silk and into 3-dimensionl structures; the conversations from which will generate dialogues and writings that then feed back into the laboratory activities. The writings will form a book that will allow for many modes of writings to articulate the full spectrum of activities.

Objectives

• Developing a biocraft. To develop convincing methods of growing cells onto spider silk; establish muscle, bone and nerve muscle cell co-cultures and provoke an exchange of ideas. To extensively document the work in progress using video, photography and writing. Cell lines and primary cells will be used but no animal will be directly sacrificed for the research.

• Bioarchitectures. To create three dimensional structures with these biomaterials in combination with found and manufactured spider-silks. To use the events and experiences in the laboratory as provocations for dialogues, writings and on-line blog that reflect on and further propel the laboratory activities.

• The Book. To expand the laboratory activities into dialogue that discusses the wider implications and meanings of science and art practice. It will interweave ideas and practices from endurance sport, gardening, textiles, craft and architecture with those of biotechnology, techné and feminism. To create a holistic, limited edition artists book that uses the spider web architecture as its structuring device.

• Location. To categorise and locate the publication in academic libraries and art book shops as a provocative agent that will cross disciplinary fields, accumulating the attendant readerships.

• Audiences. The book will cross category boundaries within different science, arts and humanities disciplines to attract an eclectic range of academic and non-academic audiences