The Future of Portugal as explained by Microorganisms –  Clara Rodríguez Fernández – Labiotech

Microbiology makes its mark at the first edition of the London Design Biennale taking place in Somerset House. Portugal’s exhibition by Marta de Menezes uses bacteria and viruses to create changing art that represents the future direction of the country. With the common topic “Design by Utopia“, 30 nations have interpreted utopic and dystopic futures using art to make us think about where we’re headed. Portuguese artist Marta de Menezes decided to use microbiology to represent the changing nature of her nation

Decon by artist Marta de Menezes recreates Mondriaan paintings by colored media with bacteria.

Fungi Mutarium: Growing Food on Toxic Waste – Livin Studio

Livin Studio has, in collaboration with Utrecht University, developed a novel fungi food product grown on (plastic) waste, a prototype to grow it and culinary tools to eat it. (…)

Fungi Mutarium is a prototype that grows edible fungal biomass, mainly the mycelium, as a novel food product. Fungi is cultivated on specifically designed agar shapes that the designers called “FU”. Agar is a seaweed based gelatin substitute and acts, mixed with starch and sugar, as a nutrient base for the fungi. The “FUs” are filled with plastics. The fungi is then inserted, it digests the plastic and overgrows the whole substrate.

Decon by artist Marta de Menezes recreates Mondriaan paintings by colored media with bacteria.

Lecturer uses art to explain science – Derek Clayton – Iowa State Daily

More than 240 students and staff were greeted Monday by the sight of letter-shaped bacteria exploding out of petri dishes at Ahna Skop’s lecture titled “Too Creative for Science?” The petri dishes with bacteria letters were among the many pieces of art the associate professor of genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison used to wow the audience during her lecture. (…) Skop uses artwork to make it easier to understand complicated scientific concepts. From displaying bacterial worms to DNA helixes, she believes adding a visual aspect to science is absolutely vital in understanding it.

Ahna Skop, credit: University of Wisconsin-Madison

Microbe Mouth

Mouths & their Microbiomes Grow in this London Bioart Exhibit – Art by Anna Dumitriu – Labiotech
Microbe Mouth by Melissa Grant, Rachel Sammons, and Anna Dumitriu – London Science Gallery

More work from the great Anna Dumitriu, who often uses the human microbiome as the inspiration or even material for her art. For this new exhibition, Anna worked together with a biochemist and a microbiologist to coat ceramic teeth with different bacteria.

“Microbe Mouth” by Melissa Grant, Rachel Sammons, and Anna Dumitriu

The Routledge Companion to Biology in Art and Architecture – Charissa N. Terranova and Meredith Tromble – Google Books

A new book, not yet released, and it will cost a whopping $240, but you can preview some of the pages on Google Books.

“The Routledge Companion to Biology in Art and Architecture collects thirty essays from a transdisciplinary array of experts on biology in art and architecture. The book presents a diversity of hybrid art-and-science thinking, revealing how science and culture are interwoven. The book situates bioart and bioarchitecture within an expanded field of biology in art, architecture, and design. It proposes an emergent field of biocreativity and outlines its historical and theoretical foundations from the perspective of artists, architects, designers, scientists, historians, and theoreticians. Includes over 150 black and white images.”

Book cover, detail

Students being taught New STEAM concept which mixes science and maths with art – Patrice Dougan – NZ Herald

STEAM, the acronym for  science, technology, engineering, art, and maths, is a program that hopes to break down gender barriers in the field. Microbiologist Dr Siouxsie Wiles and nanomechanical engineer Dr Michelle Dickinson are enthusiastic advocates for the program.

“Lots of people didn’t think I was a scientist because I didn’t look or behave like they expected me to behave. And I spend a lot of time going into schools and sort of saying, ‘I’m a scientist’, and showing pictures of scientists being creative and they’re playing in bands and all that kind of stuff,” she said.

Dr. Siouxsie Wiles, microbiologist

Artist’s 46-year-old loo paper to be studied – Jamie Morton – NZ Herald

When artist Billy Apple opened his exhibition Body Activities at the Serpentine Gallery in London, in 1974, authorities were shocked. The art featured tissues soiled by the artist with …. “bodily excrements”. Apple had to take the exhibition down. Fortunately, he kept all the tissues, including the ones with his stool samples. These old artefacts now provide a unique opportunity to study how the human gut microbiome changes over 50 years. Mr. Apple is now working together with Dr Justin O’Sullivan of the Liggins Institute at Auckland University in New Zealand. The lab will compare Mr. Apple’s old stool samples to his current samples, to see if his gut microbiome has changed a lot over the years.

“This project provides us with a new avenue through which we can expose a different audience to the scientific advances that are changing our understanding of ourselves – as walking, talking ecosystems.

Culture Report: The Beauty of Bacteria – Kinsee Morlan – Voice of San Diego

(I)t wasn’t the rising international excitement over the microbiome that got San Diego artist Sara Parent-Ramos interested in the subject, nor was it the fact that both her parents are microbiologists. What finally made the artist and new mom really start to think about the microbiome was her own breast milk and all the beneficial bacterium swimming in it.

Breaking The Molds: See Microbes As Art – Susan Karlin – FastCoCreate

For most folks, microbes and mold conjure unsavory images of outbreaks and dirty bathrooms. But two Southern California exhibits are proving that one person’s contagion is another one’s canvas.Taking Art to the Cellular Level features 20 enlarged microscopic visuals from Southern California research. Breaking the Molds: TTOZOI in Evolution is a kind of painting by organic mold.

Works of art made of… microbes!

Our relationship with microbes and viruses is in a state of change. (…) Concordia University communications researcher Tagny Duff is exploring this relationship with BioreMEDIAtion, a research-creation project that lies at the intersection of art and the life sciences and seeks to expand our relationship with the microscopic living world through art.

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Bacteria Genome Dresses and Judgmental Robots Probe Tech Boundaries – Kevin Holmes – The Creators Project

Virtual reality, biofeedback devices, and artificial intelligence: all rapidly developing industries and areas that involve a human-computer relationship. How that relationship will evolve is an intriguing question that’s currently being played out at the hands of big tech firms and startups. It’s also the focus of an exhibition, The Games Europe Plays, currently on at the Stephen Lawrence Gallery at the University of Greenwich, London. The show has been curated by Ghislaine Boddington, creative director of body>data>space, and a Reader in Digital Immersion at the uni.

Not really microbial but sort of (because CRISPR): Who Is Afraid of CRISPR Art?  –  Eben Kirksey – Anthropology and Environment Society

A crowd-sourced Indiegogo funding campaign that raised over $45,000 for do-it-yourself gene editing kits in December, asks: “If you had access to modern synthetic biology tools, what would you create?” This campaign, which aims to democratize science “so everyone has access,” was launched by Josiah Zayner, who earned a PhD in Molecular Biophysics from the University of Chicago.

ASM Agar Art Calendar 2016/2017 – American Society for Microbiology (Unfortunately already sold out).

Featuring the winners of the 2015 Agar Art Contest, along with People’s Choice winners, the Agar Art Calendar is a first of its kind.

Take a Peek at the Artistic Sides of Mosquitoes, Bacteria, and Scientific Processes – Francesca Capossela – Vice

In online exhibition, Science of the Unseen, scientists, artists, and researchers share their approaches to study. The show depicts a varied range of scientific and artistic investigations—from a piece exploring how bacteria microbiota grows on a body, to an examination of mosquito patterns, to another piece documenting the internal viewing dialogue of computers “watching” movies. (…) Science of the Unseen is put on by ACM SIGGRAPH, an international community of various professionals, including artists, filmmakers, scientists, and researchers. The community is united by an interest in computer graphics and interactive techniques.

Hyper Nebulas by Dan Tapper: movements of sand crabs

Bioart and Bacteria:Super-organism Series – The Artwork of Anna Dumitriu

Anna Dumitriu is a British artist whose work fuses craft, technology and bioscience to explore our relationship to the microbial world, biomedicine and technology. She has an international exhibition profile, having exhibited at venues including The Picasso Museum in Barcelona, The Science Gallery in Dublin, The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Taipei, and The V & A Museum in London. Super-organism is an ongoing series of artworks investigating the human microbiome by Anna Dumitriu and Alex May. It currently comprises a full body interactive installation and participatory workshop commissioned by Cinekid Festival in Amsterdam, and a video installation “Super-organism: The Living Microbiome” commissioned by The Wellcome Collection for The Evening Standard “1000” award ceremony at The Francis Crick Institute and “The Human Super-organism” commssioned by Eden Project focussing on the bacteria from the hands as part of their permanent exhibition “Invisible You: The Human Microbiome”.

Microbiomes: To See the Unseen

Seeking: multi-media artwork that makes connections between the science of microbiology — how microorganisms are at the foundation of life — for an art+science collaboration between OSU’s Department of Microbiology and The Arts Center (Corvallis). The art exhibitions is scheduled for spring of 2017. Deadline: December 1, 2016. This exhibition asks both artists and researchers, How Can We See the Unseen? Microbiology tries to measure, visualize and understand complex microscopic systems in the same way artists seek understanding for life’s many questions. Past The Arts Center arts, science and technology collaborations have proven beneficial for artists, scientists and non-scientists alike.

Science Communication Through Art: Objectives, Challenges, and Outcomes – Amy E. Lesen – Trends in Ecology & Evolution ($37.95)

The arts are becoming a favored medium for conveying science to the public. Tracking trending approaches, such as community-engaged learning, alongside challenges and goals can help establish metrics to achieve more impactful outcomes, and to determine the effectiveness of arts-based science communication for raising awareness or shaping public policy.

These Beautiful Planets Are Actually Bacteria From Public Places – Photographs by Marco Castelli – Veriy

“Most of the photographs of microbes and bacteria” says Caterina Pacenti, project curator “have a scientific nature, adapted to detect and to emphasize the unique geometries that these are able to form. This time, however, the interest is not to show the invisible or what is hardly visible to the naked eye, but to use the natural shape of bacterial colonies to enlarge and project them into another dimension, reversing all logic and report between big and small, thus loading the planets, the universe and all the work of symbolic values.

Cat

Churchstep

Winners of the 2016 agar art competition – in Pictures – The Guardian Continue reading →

Two recent articles with work from artists using microbes.

BioArt : Nurit Bar-Shai’s ‘Chemical Tweets’ and the Social Life of Bacteria – LaBiotech

Nurit Bar-Shai is an artist and co-founder of bio-hacking lab Genspace. She is showing how bacteria communicate and socialize – and shaping it with sound (…) The bacteria was cultured in agar, where the bacteria grows in colonies, creating beautiful and intriguing images.

Art and natural world collide at Open Space gallery – Adrian Chamberlain – Times Colonist

And there’s the Algae Organ, a working organ equipped with an algae incubator, soon to be bicycled around the streets of Victoria. It’s all part of Natural Science, a new exhibition at Open Space gallery. Jennifer Willet, a visual arts professor at the University of Windsor, is the artist responsible for these whimsical creations. Willet specializes in bioart, art that incorporates living organisms, such as bacteria.