Painting With E. Coli

In the expanding space of scientific methods meets artistic endeavour comes another hybrid of human creation by the name of Growing Impressions: A scientific technique used to grow art.

Blue/white screening is a technique used to seperate and identify colony's of cells who's Chromosomal DNA have or have not been modified by introduced DNA. If the bacteria remain unmodified by the introduced DNA, they will turn blue as they continue to grow, like in the following photos. However, in Growing Impressions, you wont see any white E. Coli. These Ecoli have been produced especially to produce the blue pigment.

Amy Chase Gulden | E. Coli on Agar | Copyright Amy Chase Gulden

Poetic Science makes good Scientific Poetry

This blog post contains copyrighted material. Before reproducing text or images from this blog please contact the publisher and respective poets. Thank you.



Science Made Marvellous was launched in SA on the weekend at the Royal Institute of Australia's (RiAus) Science Exchange in Adelaide.

Nestled amongst a host of speakers addressing the science art divide, a Science themed Haiku inspired competition and a presentation of science meets art creations by the students of the Australian Science and Mathematics School: this was truly an event Where Worlds Collide.

Bellow you will find the published books as a result of the Science Made Marvellous competition. A poem from each book has been reproduced in full.

Each book is downloadable at no cost by clicking on the title or cover.

Sci-ku @ Where Worlds Collide

The Royal Institute of Australia brought Adelaide yet another gem of work last weekend in the event title Where Worlds Collide.

High lights of the evening where no doubt the readings of Sci-ku and Science Made Marvellous competition winners. However, not to be out done, featured talkers Erica Jolly and Roger Reiss gave insightful and passionate accounts on the collision between science and poetry and enlightened us on how these once disparate fields can conjoin to inspire and inform.

In collaboration with the Friendly Street Poets the RiAus announced the winners of the Sci-ku competition in which entrants were to write three line science themed poems inspired by the Japanese poetry haiku - although syllables/moras were not counted. Entries were enetered in either the primary school, secondary school or open age categories.

Cara Phillips: Ultraviolet Beauties

Whilst I'm waiting on various permissions to reproduce artists work in my much anticipated poetry blogs, I stumbled accross an interesting expose of Cara Phillips and her black&white Ultraviolet Photography.

Say what?

Cara Phillips | Ultraviolite Beauties | Copywrite Cara Phillips

Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef

In my daily trawling of art and science related news I came accross an article featuring the latest exhibition from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

As usual, click on the photos to open a new tab or be redirected to the original flickr photo stream.


Smithsonian Community | Two Coral Polyps | All rights reserved by aporanee

IBM Demonstrate New Nano Patterning Tool

Nanotechnology is perhaps THE cutting edge technology of the 21st century. However, production of nano particles of all types remain fairly expensive compared to more conventional ways of using the same materials.

However thanks to IBM researchers, the status quo could be about to change for the technique of nano patterning.

IBM scientists have developed a new technique that uses a nano scale tip, that when forced to a surface and heated sufficiently is able to carve away substrate material from the surface to create 2D and 3D patterns and structures as small as 15 nanometres at greatly reduced cost and complexity.

Click on the images bellow for a thorough explanation and access to higher resolution pictures.

Image courtesy of Advanced Materials

Art and the Atom

I came across a news release recently, via Google news and discovered that in Christchurch, New Zealand, there is an interesting exhibition merging nanotechnology and art.

The exhibition is a collaboration between the University of Canterbury and the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Material and Nanotechnology that aims to bring scientists and artists together in order to communicate a brilliant 21st century technology to the public.

Nanotechnology is the engineering of materials the size of 1 billionth of a meter. When materials are built at such a small scale and of variant sizes, different properties, that which don't appear in it's chemical makeup at macro sizes spring forward, often surprising the scientists at work: Nano silver is completely anti-bacterial, carbon nano tubes are execellent conductors of electricity.

The MacDiarmid Institute donated $2000 dollars to be awarded to the best nanotechnology picture of the exhibition.

David Garret | Towers of Vertically Aligned Nano Tubes

Vogue: Water & Oil

Steven Meisel Oil & Water Vogue August 2010
The August issue of Vogue Italia features a series of images by photographer Steven Meisel showcasing the devastation and impact of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Model Kristen McMenamy plays the protagonist in Stevens work. Dressed in black feathers or slick skin attire and shot splayed over jagged rocks and chocking on black sludge, Kristen simulates the suffering of the victims of the spill, raising emotions and unsettling her audience.

I believe the use of Kristen is important, because it connects us to the images more successfully. As a species, we're inclined to view one of our own kind in distress as being more devastating than that of another species and so the use of Kristen is used to drive home the emotion behind the images and adds to the success of Stevens work.

Khemia: Living Alchemy Exhibition & Workshops - Part 2 - Exhibition Run Down

The artists featured in this article were profiled in Khemia: Living Alchemy Exhibition & Workshops - Part I - Artists Introduction

Enter the world of Khemia, where separate and disparate things fuse to make the new and art and science are not as seperate as you might think.

Three artists: Niki Sperou, Angela Valamanesh & John Willanski.

Chimera - Niki Sperou
The centre piece of the exhibition, Chimera aims to drive a merger of biotechnology, material manipulations and ancient Greek cultural paradigms, using art as it's vehicle.

Niki Sperou | Chimera | Wall Mounted Photos

Projecting the future

New Scientist brings us stories and videos from the 37th SIGGRAPH International Conference & Exhibition of Computer Graphics and Interactive Technology.

I call it, technoart!

A Cookie with Seven differen tastes
Got a taste for Augmented reality? Then we have 7 different flavours!

Caleb Charland

A quick blog about something I found today.

What happens when you have someone who is curious about how things work and they also happen to be a kick arse photographer? You get these...

Caleb Charland | Light Sphere with My Right Arm and Cigarette Lighter

Dr Dre Instrumental

Finally I get to blog about something other than that which is visual, although this is a small blog.

Yet again from one of my favourite sites, New Scientist, comes a piece on Dr Dre.... I never thought I'd see that!



Dr Dre's threatnin' to mix science with art in a new instrumental album that has been inspired by the solar system.

"An instrumental album is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. I have the ideas for it. I want to call it The Planets."

Dre explains he's been studying the planets in his spare time over the past two years which has allowed him to learn the personalities of the planets and thus give the planets their own sound.

"It’s just my interpretation of what each planet sounds like. I’m gonna go off on that. Just all instrumental."

"I wanna do it in surround sound. It'll have to be in surround sound for Saturn to work."

I welcome this advance. Any way in which we can help make science a little more cool, I am happy with.

You can see a snippet of the original interview, concerning Dr Dre's upcoming album Detox at Vibe Magazine.

Khemia: Living Alchemy Exhibition & Workshops - Part I - Artists Introduction

Khemia is an exhibition celebrating the nexus of science and art through the talents of some of South Australia's established and up and coming artists.

Angela Valamanesh
Angela is a well known South Australian arist known for her striking yet simple and inspiring work with ceramics. Graduating from the University of SA in 1993 before continuing her studies in the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland, curtosy of the Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship, Angela has since been established herself as an expert in her field.

Angela's work fits right in with theme of the exhibition, that being biological life forms as a lot of Angela's previous work has focussed on exactly that.

BioArt - An Evolution In Art

On Thursday the 5th of August I will be spending some time at the Royal Institute of Australia aka Science Exchange, getting acquainted with BioArt up close and personnel.

However, I have not, until recently heard about BioArt. So I introduced myself and decided to show you what I found.

BioArt grows, invents or transforms living organisms through various approaches using biotechnology. It is undertaken both by scientists and artists or a collaboration between the two.

Eduardo Kac, no doubt the most well known bioartist, who coined the term 'BioArt', praised the distinct form of art for filling a need to branch out of the bordering confines dictated by traditional arts.

However the ground ahead is laden with ethical land minds. BioArt forces us to consider our roles in the evolution of species on this planet and forces us to consider deep often religious and philosophical questions as well as showcasing the advances and usefulness of biotechnology. Critiques claim that it is yet another example of humans using animals for their own personal gain, and further endangering their well being.

Ethical issues aside, BioArt generates discussion, displays the sheer beauty and elegance of nature and is pushing the boundaries of thoughts and the sciences, which is exactly what art has done for centuries.

Screen Printing with Blood ReBlog

I swore not to blog whilst at work today, but this caught my eye and i thought i just had to reblog it.

I don't know a lot about screen printing, but i believe it's not normal when one uses their own blood as paint.

Check out these pics on how to drain your body of vital fluids in the name of art:

Draining the vein