Days 8/9 (April 8th+9th)

The Zoo

Yesterday we decided to take a day out to visit the zoo to gather some inspiration for the artwork. Below are some of the photos we took, as well as captions describing some of the thoughts and ideas they gave us.

Here are some pictures of aquatic species we looked at. To the left is a bladder-tip anemone and to the bottom right are simply 'upside down jellyfish' (yes they're really called that). Both these species gave a beautiful flowing movement and colour, something that would be really nice to replicate in the sphere. The fish here is a good example of iridescence. Replicating the appearance of these scales could be an interesting idea.

These are some of the photos we took in the butterfly and bug houses. The beetle had a wonderful bright, purple colour that was very eye-catching. We also caught a photo of a locust just as it shed its skin! There is probably plenty of material that could be used to represent shed insect skins which could make an interesting piece of artwork. The butterflies also had some interesting patterns and stick insects are always fun to look at. In the bottom right is a cute photo of a couple of locusts : )

Here are a few photos of plants we saw in some of the displays. The climbers here are examples of the sort of thing we thought could potentially be coerced into coiling around the support netting for the spheres.

 

We found these lovely displays of metal dragonflies in the zoo, as well as an area on responsible waste disposal which had some artwork constructed of old rubbish. These were interesting displays of the various media with which artwork can be constructed from.

 

And here are just some cute animal photos, enjoy!

The Next Day

Today we spent most of our time finishing off our models. These pieces of work were experiments to show, in brief, what some inorganic materials could do and their potential for making structures that could represent biological ideas. All the models that we made were things where the organic equivalent could not be used, in these cases, because the real version is so tiny!

My finished beetle, top and underside

Jess's painted cocolithophore, the image below is what she used as reference

 All our models posing together! They were all painted with acrylic (mostly  metallic)  paint.

Some unintentional art here, the paint water from our models could be stirred to make very pretty moving patterns, it could be an idea to try the solar-powered motor with it if starts to work, (see below).

The solar powered motor for the moss ball tank also arrived today. Unfortunately the day was extremely overcast that the motor barely worked! We set it up but it looks like we'll have to wait for a sunnier day to see it work properly.

The solar powered motor

Jessica also spent part of today sending out emails and looking at websites for the purpose of ordering more equipment for the project and trying to arrange to see more people. She called a lady called Hilary at the Botanic garden to arrange a possible meeting with someone who could help us out with selecting a good type of climbing plant. Hilary said that if we sent her an email with all the information she would forward it to someone who would be more able to help us. Hopefully we’ll get a response soon. We did do some independent research in this area as well, looking on the internet at ivy and pea plants but we weren’t sure with our lack of knowledge in this area about what to go for. Considering our limited time, we want something that will grow as quickly as possible, just so we can experiment with how it would coil around cord.

Jessica also emailed another life-science artist called Melanie awhile back to try and arrange a meeting to discuss ideas and directions. We got a reply but unfortunately she is too busy for quite some time for an in-person conversation. On the plus side however, she did agree to have a Skype chat with us tomorrow. Jessica also briefly looked up David Glowaki, a chemist at Bristol who has also worked with science/art, but in his case, in the form of dance.

Lastly, we looked at ordering some iridescent tubes, but without much luck. In one case the company would not ship the product outside of the US or Canada, and in another the postage was about three times the price of the product itself, which we considered too expensive.

More Meetings with Annette

We finished up the day with going to visit Annette once more to take a look at our algae that we set up awhile ago. Unfortunately it hadn't particularly grown at all. The agar was still reluctant to set on the glass and any algae that had grown were in a small pool at the bottom of the flask. Annette kindly said that she would try once more to get the agar to set properly, this time using a flask that was dry on the inside, as we speculated before that it was moisture that was preventing the agar from sticking.  Annette also had a suspicion that maybe it wasn't sticking because it was glass,and that it may do on plastic. We did however think that we would have to be a bit more creative in our ideas for what would work with the algae. Even if the next test showed that the agar would stick to the outside of the flask, the practicalities of making this in large spheres and maintaining them would be difficult.

 Photo of the failed algae experiment

In our search for new ideas, Annette showed us these plates in which algae had been 'drawn' onto the agar using an inoculation loop. I immediately saw potential in this idea. Using agar on a flat service both allowed for this accurate technique of applying algae, as well as the ability to precisely swirl the agar into patterns like we initially wanted. The plates are also long lasting (the plate in the photo below had been made in October) and very easily prepared. The question is how to transfer these algae grown on flat services into spheres.

I came up with a couple of ideas of how we could get around this problem. My first thought was that we could grow patterned algae onto large, flat sheets and then suspend these sheets inside a sphere, (assuming the sphere could be pulled into two halves for them to be inserted). However, Annette told me that the agar may just slide off the sheets if they were held at an angle and visually I decided I didn’t like this idea after all.

My second idea was to perhaps have a sort of netting inside this sphere as well as outside it. In this netting, agar plates could be suspended. The agar plates could contain all different kinds of algae of different colours and patterns. This would be very easy to prepare and maintain. For a more aesthetically pleasing version, we could use very small spheres instead of plates. In little spheres, the fact that the algae  was reluctant to grow in a spherical container would probably not be so much of an issue and having spheres in a net in a sphere in a net, would probably look very interesting.

We saw this green tubing awhile ago and it gave Jessica an idea then about growing algae inside tubes. I thought that using very thin tubing filled with algae would be a pretty and fitting way to construct the net or support in which the plates or small spheres could be suspended.

The photo of the flasks is showing the importance of getting air into the tubes if we were to use this idea, and in general that there would need to be a small amount of fresh air getting into the sphere itself for the algae to grow properly. The flask on the left is where the container wasn't completely airtight. The algae grew quite happily and made a beautiful green colour. In the other case the flask was completely sealed and the algae struggled to grow, the colour been dim.

We finished off our meeting by arranging to meet next Tuesday at 2pm to try out some drawing onto the agar plates. We'll also find out then if the agar will stick at all to glass.

Days 5-7

Well I'm back and I hope everyone had a very nice Easter! Unfortunately I had to take a couple of days off so this post is a little late but I'll be posting about Jessica's solo work on Wednesday and Thursday as well as our joint work on Friday.

Meeting Tom Pitman

On Friday morning we went to see Tom Pitman in the experimental greenhouses to discuss the practicalities of growing plants in spheres. Here we were informed of some of the limitations and problems with incorporating them into an artwork. These included that first of all we'd need to avoid deciduous plants, as these would lose their leaves and wouldn't look very aesthetically pleasing over winter. We also had to consider the practicalities of watering the plants and then pruning them so that they didn't grow out of control. We concluded that this sphere would need to be low-down and easily accessible to accommodate for the essential maintenance. Our vision was that tendrils would eventually coil around the wired supports and grow beautifully out of the sphere and around the artwork. I had an idea that instead of planting in spheres, we could grow climbing plants around the bases of the wired supports and have them coil around those alone; maybe they could even climb up and coil around the banisters in time. This would probably make maintenance a lot easier, plus we could use the sphere for something else. Other factors to consider in choosing a species would be the temperature and humidity of the atrium.

 Photos from inside the greenhouses.

Suggestions for possible climbers included the black pepper, cheese plants and passion flowers. Air plants such as bromeliads and Spanish moss could also be an option. These species do not root in soil and extract their required moisture out of the atmosphere; the artist has also used them in previous work. It would however require careful moderation of the sphere’s humidity to ensure their survival. The discussion ended with a recommendation to talk to Penny Harms as she may be able to help us at the botanic garden. Tom Pitman also kindly said that he would give us a list of plants that were used on the wild walk at the harbour side to help us in our research.

 

Black pepper plant and Spanish moss

Original links from: http://hawaiiplantdisease.net/ and http://commons.wikimedia.org

Model Making Continued

Later on in the day we spent the a few hours working on our models. Jessica had made great progress with hers during my absence, finishing both a radiolarian and a clump of cocolithophores. In our time today she got ahead with painting them, experimenting with a black and silver colour scheme for the radiolarian. I still had a lot of modrock to apply on my beetle and spent till near 3 o clock completing it to hopefully begin painting on Monday. Below are some photos of our progress.

Jessica's radiolarian and cocolithophores modrocked

 

 Jessica's radiolarian being painted

A comparison of my beetle after and before been modrocked.

Research and Orders

I got a reply to my email to the sphere making company, giving us a quote for the price of their products. They could make us a 200mm diameter sphere, 3mm thick with a removable cap of clear polycarbonate for £43 (excluding VAT and delivery) or a 300mm diameter for £54. The company could unfortunately not give us a guarantee that the product would survive the autoclaving procedure however, just thoughts that it likely would. Feeling that these prices were a little steep, especially with no guarantee of the product’s hardiness, we decided to investigate the glass workshop attached to the university. Unfortunately their glass blower was off sick this day but we had a chat with someone else none the less to discuss options and will return sometime next week for further enquiries. Getting the spheres from the university definitely has a positive in that they'll know a lot more about autoclaving and could likely tell us for certain how the material would behave under such conditions. The company’s product however does seem very much what we do need and it would certainly be worth considering for experiments where autoclaving was not an essential or needed at all, (if the university workshop couldn't produce a similar product for cheaper).

Images of the spheres that http://www.fibresports-acrylic.co.uk/spheres-hemispheres/ would produce for us.

Further developments over the last few days have also included quite a few orders and more research for possible products we could obtain. Jessica ordered for us a mushroom growing kit, to the left is an image of the type of mushrooms it grows. The type we bought are perhaps not the most interesting variety, however other species were both more expensive and had to be ordered from abroad which drastically increased the delivery time. We found out after ordering our beetle shells that they likely wouldn’t arrive until mid-May, so we decided for the mushrooms to order something that would arrive quickly so we could start growing as soon as possible.

We were also looking at ordering some iridescent tubing for experimenting with the spheres' wired support. It's not a bad price of around $7 and looks to give a very nice effect. For the moment however we did purchase some thick, silvery cord from a local art shop.

The moss balls have been a popular idea. Not only do they look great but they are also beneficial for keeping water free of algae by outcompeting them for nutrients. The first stand out problem as I mentioned in my last post, was that while they look great when moving around, when they come to a standstill in the water they don’t look quite so striking. This problem will hopefully be fixed by Jessica's great idea to order a solar powered motor to keep the water a little turbulent. We will be very much looking forward to it arriving so we can try it out!

Day 3/4

During day 3 we started to gather materials for testing out more of the art side of the project. We went out to buy various materials from simple pencils and paper to metallic paint, wire and modrock. We are hoping to experiment with creating several sculptures that could be inserted into spheres or merely be used to decorate the net from the outside.

Amongst some of our ideas is to create models of microbes. We are particularly interested in trying out diatoms and radiolarians. Radiolarians in particular have a very interesting honeycomb-like structure which we are also thinking we could connect with bees and create a sort of two in one sculpture.

 Image of a radiolarian from http://www.morphographic.com/Gallery/GalleryRadiolarian.htm

Here are a few speed sketches of ideas of how I'd go about making a model. In the first one of the diatom structure, I'm considering putting a hollow tube through it so that a cord of some kind can be inserted and therefore it can be hung up, or suspended in a sphere. Putting the cord through the centre would evenly distribute the stress of its weight so it hopefully wouldn't break. I'm thinking of trying out the idea with a simple cardboard and paper base that’s then covered with modrock and metallic paint.

For the radiolarian I'm considering using a balloon that will afterward be popped to create the hollow interior, there could be several ways of creating the honeycomb structure, including papier macheing the whole structure and then cutting out holes, or overlying some string, hardening them with modrock and then popping the balloon. It would need some experimentation.

 Jessica with her wire radiolarian

 Making a papier mache beetle. This will be covered in modrock and then painted.

Jessica papier macheing a wire mesh

Here are some moss balls. When first added to the water they moved around quite a lot which looked very appealing and interesting. Unfortunatly they did at last come to a standstill. In a sphere perhaps some movement could be applied somehow to keep the balls moving. I think these would look great in an aquatic sphere.

Due to some technical difficulties a lot of the other photos of our work in progress can not be currently uploaded. As I'm going on a trip over Easter I will also be unable to update untill I get back and so the blog will be on hiatus for a week. Look forward to the next post, happy Easter everyone! : )

Day 2

 Meeting with Annette

To start off our day we first had a meeting with Annette who works with algae. We wanted to find a type that could be suitable for growing in spheres both aesthetically and practically and we were shown several different algal species of varying colours and consistences. 

Many different types of algae in tubes for us to select

A few possible contenders

This algae was strongly considered for its colour, however, it had a very clumpy nature which we thought be unsuitable for our work

These were our final selections for the algae. The red was the brightest and the most eye catching of the red and brown types that we could find. The lime and dark green we thought were definitely the best of the selection we were presented with in terms of their colour and the consistencies of all the species seemed to be smooth, nicely distributed and suitable for our purposes.

 

We also had a look at these ‘blue’ algae down in the cellar. Unfortunately it wasn't growing very well and the colour was poor so it wasn't that much of an option. We also saw an orange flask which contained algae that had been treated with pesticide (below). Unfortunately these were not only a nice colour, but also dead, so these would be completely unusable!

Pesticide treated algae

We also enquired about the possibility of using bio-luminescent algae which could give some fantastic night-time displays. Unfortunately though, the department didn't possess any of these species and we were informed that they were difficult to grow. Also, despite having lit up spheres sounding like a very nice idea, in reality the display would probably not be viewed in the dark that often.

Another option would be to use halobacteria. Once again the department was currently not in possession of any, also they grow in highly saline conditions which would be unsuitable for any companion species. However, the salt would produce some nice looking crystals for display and a nice pink colour. This could definitely be an idea for use in the future, perhaps when spheres are been maintained and replaced at a later date.

Our ideas for the algae involved making patterns inside the glass spheres. Agrose gel could be swirled around and then algae would be grown on this gel to make the pattern colourfully come alive. People could watch the algae grow over time and the spheres could potentially last for several months before needing to be maintained. During this maintenance period, the old sphere could be taken down and replaced immediately with a new, already prepared sphere of a differing design. The old sphere would then be cleaned out and prepared for future displays. We would use agrose opposed to agar because even though it is a little more expensive, it is also clearer and probably more suitable for an artistic piece.

We started our experiments of this today (or yesterday by the time this post gets published!). First we had six spherical flasks sterilized and we would be experimenting with swirling agar over them that afternoon. Agar is cheaper than agrose, so as these would only be experiments, we would use this material instead. The three algae that we chose would ideally grow in two different environments, however, the darker green one is apparently quite resilient and would grow on the media of the other two selected species. The algae is rather slow growing and we’ll have to wait quite some time to see results. Hopefully we’ll be taking pictures of their growth process.

Our meeting with Annette also gave us some important information regarding the technicalities of the spheres themselves. The spheres used for the final artwork need to be autoclaved for the algae to grow in them. This process involves heating the material to 121°C and a pressure of 1 bar for 20 minutes, for the purpose of sterilization. There is also a question hanging over how the spheres will be internally accessed. After this meeting I sent an email to the company who we will probably order the test spheres from, to ask both these questions and also ask about the prices for small 25cm diameter spheres for tests and also the possibility of obtaining free samples. If the spheres themselves can not be autoclaved, another possibility is to put the small spherical flasks inside the sphere to create a sort of bunch of grapes type image.

Potential problems with this experiment is that the algae may dry out and if the container was sealed, the algae may not have enough air before they need to be changed. However, having access to the outside may cause problems with fungi and bacteria but a filter could possibly be used.

We will be testing out the spherical glasses this afternoon so read on to see how we did! 

Meeting with Stewart Casson

Our next task of the day was to meet with Stewart Casson to find out about the possibility of growing a plant called selaginella in the spheres. We went down into the basement of the department to take photos of some of the plant which had already been grown in sealed containers for over a year with no maintenance at all. This evidently could be a very interesting possibility of something that could work for us.

 Plants kept in the basement

When looking at the plants, although alive, many of them looked ill, droopy and not very artistic. Condensation had collected on the inside of the containers as well, which detracted from the appearance, although we speculated that inside a sphere the water would probably be more likely to drip down to the bottom. Further problems included that parts of the plants would naturally die back in any case and some of the tests had become covered in algae. The spheres would be a lot bigger than the tiny containers we saw, however, the amount of selaginella inside it would also need to be proportionally bigger to work as an artistic piece. Although very interesting, this idea doesn’t seem too plausible for a work of art. 

Top-right was more a less dead; bottom-right was infected with algae. The other two were yellowing in places and there was a lot of condensation inside the containers.

The Day's Research

This is a hall from Belgium where the ceiling is decorated with beautifully iridescent beetle shells.

 http://www.instructables.com/community/Ceiling-art-made-from-beetle-shells/

Initially our research for purchasing some materials online didn’t go brilliantly. We wanted to obtain some iridescent beetle shells, however it proved very difficult to find suppliers just for the shells. However, we did eventually find this website http://www.insect-sale.com/ which stocked the whole (dead) insects. We looked through the list and picked out several possible that were reasonably priced.

A possible alternative to using beetle shells, as well as an idea in its own right, would be to use iridescent seashells.

Left, a possible contender for usable beetles.

Other research included having a look at the possibility of growing fungi in the spheres. This website http://www.fungiphoto.com/  had some wonderful pictures, (a few inserted below) and definitley made us think of the possibility of obtaining some fungi growing kits.

We finished our research by sending of emails to various members of staff to arrange more meetings.

Testing with Annette at 3pm

The six spherical flasks that we had left with Annette earlier had all been autoclaved, along with bottles, pipettes and six lots of agar jelly (2x 1.4% 1.2% and 1%) that we would be using. Before we could use the agar jelly medium, two other components also needed to be added to it. These components didn’t work well if they were autoclaved already mixed and so were added afterwards. These components were NaCO­₃ and FeEDTA. Once added, the medium would contain all the necessary nutrients for the algae to survive.

 Next we tested the different concentrations of agar, there seemed to be little difference in how they set. When we pipetted the agar into the flasks, the agar was very reluctant to stick. We speculated that this was because the insides of the flasks were wet. Next time it would be important to ensure that the glass interior was dry. To get the agar to set/stick better, we inferred that the larger the temperature difference, the better. We acted on this by putting the flasks into an ice bucket to cool them down, both before and after the agar was dripped inside. Also, from our experimenting we think that the agar jelly would be most workable just on the point of setting, just before clumps begin to develop.

Getting specific patterns of agar was in fact quite difficult. The damp flask interior certainly didn’t help and getting the precise looking swirls we originally intended was proving to be impossible and quite fruitless. However, we found that shaking the sphere was the best way to get the agar to stick to the sides. It actually made an organic, mosaic-like pattern which we thought could actually be quite beautiful if the algae grew well on it. Deciding to go with what we had, we inoculated our two best flasks with the hardy, dark green Microcystis alga. This species is known to be good at growing in variable conditions and we thought this one would have the best chance of growing in our flasks.

We put the flasks into an incubator and we will photograph them as they develop over the next few weeks.