Making matter come alive

“Before life existed on Earth, there was just matter, inorganic dead “stuff.” How improbable is it that life arose? And — could it use a different type of chemistry? Using an elegant definition of life (anything that can evolve), chemist Lee Cronin is exploring this question by attempting to create a fully inorganic cell using a “Lego kit” of inorganic molecules — no carbon — that can assemble, replicate and compete.” <TED>

Craig Venter unveils “synthetic life”

“Craig Venter and team make a historic announcement: they’ve created the first fully functioning, reproducing cell controlled by synthetic DNA. He explains how they did it and why the achievement marks the beginning of a new era for science.”

May 21st 2010

Dividing Cells Up Close

“Every day, the cells in your body are dividing like crazy – sometimes too much, which is the definition of cancer. Here you can see breast cancer cells in action, multiplying into what could become a tumorous growth.

Yes, this film is dramatically speeded up – most of these cells would divide about twice in a day. The video below shows us dozens of cells undergoing normal cell division, in real time. I’m not sure why all of them are dividing at once – possibly a chemical has been used to induce it. Mitosis has never looked so much like a lava lamp.”

Reblogged from io9

nature’s artwork, made art

For my rendering this week I’ve chosen to post a couple selections from the Petri Projects of California artist Klari Reis. These images are from a photoblog called The Daily Dish which contains her catalog of 365 petri dishes. The description of the website reads, “Brilliantly colored life forms dance across the wall in these detailed images of an installation project composed of a series of hand painted plexiglass petri dishes.”

How discourse surrounding the conscious blending of techniques  and sensibilities native to both the arts and sciences have become incorporated into the to way in which these projects are publicly presented is what I found particularly interesting about this artist’s work.

The method Reis uses to render these colorful petri dishes is UV resistant reflective epoxy polymer. Epoxy is a thermosetting polymer formed from reaction of resin with hardener. This process creates unique colored smears and bumps on multiple layers which Reis describes as, “the method and language for exploring and expressing reactions that occur on a microscopic level.” There is a proposed kinship between both Reis’ physical practices and the labor that goes into making these dishes (there is an image on the website of her at work, she has protective clothing and a mask, the sort of laboratory garb a microbiologist might have to wear when interacting with dangerous microbes) and also a similarity in the sort of one-of-a-kind haphazard rules that govern the artwork’s ultimate outcome (possibly described as an ‘organic process’).

Klari Reis does not work directly with the biological (in fact, the resins she uses are lethal to most forms of life), instead she draws inspiration from various imaging technologies, such as the electron microscope, in order to depict these microscopic images in the colorful medium of epoxy. It is interesting to consider that Reis’ work, like much scientifically derived art, can almost be considered a ‘second-order rendering.’ The process of transforming electron-images (black & white) into beautiful works of art involves a concerted reconfiguring and repurposing which strips these forms from their biological context and moves them into new physical spaces.

The biological subject, and the biotech and pharmaceutical industries that capitalize upon it, are of keen interest to Reis. Her website states, “Working with biotech companies in San Francisco, Klari uses organic cellular imagery and natural reactions to explore our complex relationship with today’s biotechnological industry.” Yet it is not completely clear in what way Reis is hoping to engage the nature of this relationship. In an article Reis has said that her interest in exploring these issues artistically came about with her own struggles with Crohn’s disease. She has stated, “I’m taking a different view on pharmaceuticals. A lot of people see them as being a very big negative aspect of American culture. For me and the disease I’m dealing with, I see them as a big possibility for the future. I’ve been told by doctors this is going to be cured in the next five years. In a lot of ways it seems my future is reliant on these new pharmaceuticals coming out. It’s very personal.”

Another aspect of her work I find interesting is the way in which it has been picked up on the Internet. While searching for more information about her interest in the relationship with biotech (little in the way of expressed artistic vision unfortunately), I found some interesting comments to re-postings of her artwork. When these images are initially posted there commonly seems to be some confusion regarding their authenticity. They will sometimes be described as ‘cultures,’ implying that they are images of actual biological organisms. While some are quick to point out (even when not implied by the poster) that, given the color and patterns, they could not possibly be biological cultures, most are simply attracted to the “living-like” style that Reis beautifully captures. Issues of authenticity are moot to those who appreciate this art. The boundaries between ‘inspired’ and ‘derived’ are thin indeed. Reis’ work is compelling because of the intricate level of detail and ‘biological sensibilities’ that she infuses into each of her mimetic pieces.

alien abundance

While reading Stefan Helmreich’s Alien Ocean this week I kept thinking about the ambivalent way in which jellyfish are depicted both as alien invaders and gentle creatures of the sea. The picture I chose as a rendering questions who in this image, the human diver or the masses of Nomura’s jellyfish, should be considered the alien. Positioned amidst a silent congregation of jellyfish off the coast of Japan, who’s really the foreign intruder? To what degree are aliens unnatural?

Lacking central nervous systems or any familiar sensory capacities jellyfish come off as the macroscopic embodiment of Helmreich’s microbial subjects floating calmly in their oceanic milieu. Curiously absent from Alien Ocean, I’ve noticed that in the past few years jellyfish have increasingly been portrayed as malevolent, highly invasive and capable of manifesting ambitions no less grandiose than complete ocean domination. An article in the Telegraph even suggested that “tracking devices on the jellyfish in the Pacific proved that they were not drifting on the ocean currents but heading determinedly – and at the speed of an Olympic swimmer – towards the coast.” Jellyfish are not the innocent brainless blobs we believed they were, they’re coming for us. I am reminded of a scene from the 1998 sci-fi film Sphere in which a diver’s delight in being surrounded by jellyfish quickly turns to horror. Take this 2007 National Geographic video,

Trying to ground the difference between alien and native for these jellyfish is difficult. There is a strange sense in which jellyfish, as invasive species, are simultaneously given agency (and responsibility) and also portrayed as the inevitable material consequence of “a biotic world of illegitimate, inundating flows called forth by the shifting contradictory dynamics of globalizing social forces” (p.17). As opposed to species that have been introduced into an ecosystem by the direct (intentional or accidental) actions of humans, invasive species are marked as ‘unnatural’ by their formal characteristics as defined in respect to biological concepts (of robustness, fecundity). The alien invasion depicted in this video is not in opposition to concepts of ‘native’ (such as in the context of the algae in chapter four), but by the overabundance and ‘unnatural’ success of these organisms. It is specifically their ability to disrupt, both forms of life (such as recreational swimming and fishing practices) and life forms that jellyfish gain their alien invader status. To this point, Helmreich demonstrates that the uncertainties evoked by binary metataxonomies such as alien/native and nature/culture create profound confusion about whether invasion biology is a natural or a social science, or both (p.148). Indeed,

“invasive species undo our concepts of the natural itself” p.159

Despite threatening stings and overwhelming numbers there is still an aspect of deep fascination with these creatures. Something about the alien-nature of jellyfish has worked itself into the popular imagination and created a universal sense of awe at the other-worldliness that jellyfish evoke. Take the Sea Jelly Spectacular at the Hong Kong Ocean Park or the Newport Aquarium’s Jellyfish Gallery in which you will be “mesmerized and amazed,” as examples. Utilizing the “latest technology in lighting, music and multimedia special effects,” these exhibits capitalize on the unique fluorescent beauty of these creatures to extract surplus value in bringing them to life in new, wholly ‘unnatural,’ ways (which actually reminds me of a 2002 Chemical Brothers music video). It is not only their curious luminosity but their hypnotic locomotion that piques our interest. For example, the AquaJelly and AirJelly (shown below) are designed by Festo, a German industrial control and automation company, as part of a university consortium initiative. Although lacking practical purpose (proof of concept?), it is difficult to look upon these constructions without a sense of biomimetic wonder.

hybrid 2010 demo reel

Ashes and Snow

Feathers to Fire

whats next nature?

For my rendering this week I would like to highlight some of the work of a Dutch animation artist named Floris Kaayk. I came across his work on an online art/science collective website called Next Nature a few years ago. I have been looking for an opportunity to post his videos and there was a particular chapter in this week’s reading, Life as Surplus by Melinda Cooper (2008), that struck me as particularly relevant to the themes lines of questioning offered forth by Kaayk and the people at Next Nature. I would like to share two videos.

Metalosis Maligna is a documentary about a disease which affects patients with medical implants. Sourcing from such implants a wild metal growth ultimately transforms human patients into mechanical looking constructions.

Warning: This video contains graphic representations of disease.

Nature adapts, even to human actions that seem to destroy everything. The amazing power of evolution has given birth to a new species of insect. Their ideal habitats are old industrial locations. Some call them electrical insects, others simply speak of a miraculous phenomenon, or even better, a self supporting order; the Order Electrus.

There are a number of themes in Melinda Cooper’s book that touch on the sort of commentary that is suggested in these video renderings of life as it is reconfigured by the “unnatural” encounter of living bodies and (re)productive technology. However, it is the issue of surplus productivity that has most structured my framing of these fictitious, and somewhat disturbing, renderings.

It was in the fourth chapter, Contortions, that we are given one of the most succinct articulations of the sorts of biological anxieties captured in the short films above. The inner contradiction of capitalism, re-enacted in the bioeconomy, is that the creation of value from life itself requires a ‘corresponding move to devalue life’ (through imposed limitations). The need to limit the self-regenerative nature of living systems (in order to extract the surplus value) and the continual vigilance needed to guard against the threat of overproduction and excess promise are primarily addressed in terms of the mechanics of the neoliberal shaping of the bioeconomy since the 1980s. However, it is in this chapter that Cooper brings these latent dangers to bear in a more tangible manner in relation to the “extreme mutability, unexpected recalcitrances, and peculiar generativity” (p.124) inherent in the topological models developed by biologists working in tissue engineering.

These bioengineers, Cooper points out, must contend with the challenge of having their tissue constructs adhere to the specifications of the federal regulatory agencies’ definition of “medical device” (which necessarily implies “some degree of stability, reproducibility, and standardized form” p. 124) while acknowledging the reality that products in the regenerative medicine industry, by their very nature, continue to grow and respond to their bodily surroundings well after implantation. As Cooper points out, “Its productivity is dependent on its continued ability to self-transform, to grow, to morph, in ways that are not easily predicted” (p.125). While the problem here seems merely semantic, the sustained threat emphasized in her book is that these extremely plastic , mutable cells should proliferate too well and in the process give rise to potentially lethal cancerous growths.

The videos above go further in developing the notion of emergent ‘biospheric threat’ (p.81). Using techniques of film that have become characteristic of medical/nature documentaries to lure us into a state of comfort and familiarity, Floris Kaayk’s videos offer startling scenarios in which the fundamentally wild, unpredictable, and self-regenerating nature of life itself is brought to the fore. The first film offers a vision of uncontrained growth, contortion and bodily transformation (while curiously avoiding any mention of the threat to the lives of the infected) and, in contrast, the second film puts forward a narrative of abundance, renewal, and vitality. Each explores the possible consequence of surplus life from a different perspective.

In chapter three, Preempting Emergence, Cooper explores how public health and infectious disease came to be understood as an emerging unstable/unpredictable threat in the context of bio-warfare discourse and militarization. She explains how mobilization to preempt potential fallout in the wake of (bio)catastrophe, and the potential to generate capital along the way, takes precedence over the interruption of innovation and scientific development (the ‘precautionary principle’) that may prevent these events from occurring in the first place. True to the inner contradiction of neoliberal capitalism, there is little room for discussion around the potential danger inherent to the biotechnological creation of life itself as a biospheric threat even when it is suggested that “war is no longer waged in the defense of the state or even human life, but rather in the name of life” (p. 98).

Certainly the point of a so-called “catastrophe event” is that they are necessarily unpredictable, but nonetheless, I am left wondering how strategies of full-spectrum dominance, counterproliferation, or even preemption mobilization, could possible prepare us for the sort of ‘next nature’ presented in the videos (as fictitious as they are) when the limits imposed on life are shaped exclusively by neoliberal capitalist interests directed by particular ideas of speculative futures? But, perhaps, that is not ultimately their aim? 

Playboy ultrasound

The Case: A 35-year-old, otherwise healthy woman arrived with complaints of shortness of breath and abdominal pain. Results of a physical examination, electro- and echocardiography, and chest radiography were all normal. An ultrasound scan of the liver was done.

The Diagnosis: The ultrasound scan showed a rabbit-shaped image caused by the confluence of the middle and right hepatic veins. The strongly suggestive image, also known as Mumoli’s sign (named after the senior author), shows the hepatic veins joining together into the inferior vena cava. It is highly reproducible with a transverse subcostal view in deep inspiration during ultrasound scanning of the normal liver.

We were unable to find any previous report describing a rabbit-like sign.

The patient was given assurance that she had no physical abnormality and was discharged with a diagnosis of anxiety. Indeed, the woman returned immediately to her work as a waitress in a nightclub.

In the preface to the first edition of his Principles of Internal Medicine, Tinsley R. Harrison stated that physicians need “technical skill, scientific knowledge, and human understanding … courage, humility, and wisdom.” Although these words have proven true many times, we believe that a little bit of curiosity and humour can help physicians to face their heavy duty to serve the suffering human being.

And sometimes, upon receiving the results of an imaging scan, one simply has to do a double-take.

From “Clinical Vistas: ‘Playboy Rabbit’ sign: What’s your diagnosis?” by Nicola Mumoli and Marco Cei. Published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) • December 6, 2005; 173 (12). Link.

fold.it.together

“Ideas spreading from Xerox PARC and Atari, through the Apple MacIntosh and the Commodore Amiga, will reach molecular graphics during 1986: pop-up windows, pull-down menus, more than one thing going on at a time. During the next 5 years, users and builders will make molecular systems more like video games, with mice and trackballs, some joysticks that are specialized by function, and the working system easier to use and more fun.”       –M.E. Pique in “The Human Interface” (1986)

For my rendering this week I am sharing a protein folding game developed by researchers at the University of Washington. Foldit was released in May 2008 as an experimental video game that allows players to manipulate three-dimensional representations of actual proteins in order to solve puzzles of varying complexity with the aid of a computerized toolset. A score is earned based on the way in which the structure is modified by the player. A more well-folded protein gains a higher score which are then stored and publicly displayed on online leaderboards. The project is geared around the concept of community and a mix of cooperation and competition. Foldit players are encouraged to create and join groups, participate in discussion on the forum and wiki, and share puzzle solutions, manipulation strategies, and ‘recipes’ with each other.

The process by which living beings create the primary structures of proteins is reasonably well understood by scientists, determining how the protein turns into a functioning three-dimensional structure is a much more time-consuming task (partly because predicting protein structures is simply so computationally demanding). Foldit is part of an effort to address this problem by leveraging the technique of distributed computing. Although similar to past projects, such as Folding@home (which sought to recruit the participation of the public by harnessing the latent processing power of home electronics) Foldit provides its users with a unique interactive engagement with the art and practice of protein folding.

The website describes this game as an attempt to apply the human brain’s natural three-dimensional pattern-recognition and puzzle-solving abilities to the problem of efficient protein folding tasks. What struck me as particularly interesting about this project is that the ‘human brain’ in question here is not that of the highly trained structural biologist but the subvisibly-inexperienced gaming public. Although we are clearly being invited to manipulate and “solve” these proteins, rather than the meticulous task of actually building them up with computer modeling, there is a distinct sense in which the our intuitions regarding the functions and actions (i.e., folding) of the protein are being being actively reworked with each successful puzzle completion. Even though players are constrained by the parameters of the game mechanics, limitations that are non-existent to the protein modeler, I get the impression that, in a similar fashion as the experiments described by Karen Barad (2007), the configuration of the game embodies a specific mode of inquiry that makes some phenomena matter (the process of folding proteins) while ignoring others (the rendering of these protein “puzzles”). To me, this suggests an aspect of intra-active play between the gamer (subject) and her environment (object) such that each come to constitute each other through the interaction.

Indeed, it is only through multiple encounters with puzzles of increasing complexity and difficulty that players are able to entrain new perceptions, sensibilities, and kinesthetic dexterities (similar to that of protein modelers themselves) which come to bear directly on the sorts of manipulations available to the player. Without necessarily developing the accompanying semiotic and affective dexterities of the structural biologists who build the models on which the puzzles are based, we must ask to what extent do high-ranking Foldit players compare to the tacitly acquired embodied intuitions of the modeler? This question is important because the researchers behind Foldit have explicitly expressed an interest in analyzing the data from these game experiments to capture and apply the ways in which humans (trained and untrained alike) intuitively approach these puzzles which hopes to ultimately improve the algorithms employed by existing predictive protein-folding software. Can this intuitive capacity really be abstracted and separated from the intimate understanding of proteins as “breathing entities” described by crystallographers? If these knowledges come to be embedded in the computer algorithms themselves, as Myers points out, they become “black boxed” (Latour, 1987) and can no longer play an explicit pedagogical role in training future crystallographers (p.75).

However, in elaborating the ambitions of Foldit, the website explains that protein design is ultimately the “more interesting goal.” There are few automated approaches available for protein engineering thus “Foldit’s human folders will have less competition from the machines.” Hooray!