Days 14-15 (April 18th+19th)

Making the Flower

There’s not a lot to say about these two days accept work, work and more work! This Thursday and Friday we dedicated almost exclusively to producing the large model flower and bee for the Fascination of Plants day and Festival of Nature. Below are some photos of our work in progress.

I was tasked with making all the flower's petals which I managed to complete on the first day. Every petal had to be painstakingly cut out, machined and then hand stitched to give a ruffled effect.

Jessica made a wire frame for every petal which could be inserted inside so that they could all be internally connected and not flop. Here I'm applying some pressure to the flower’s centre to make the petals stand more firmly. We'll have to find a way to devise this look permanently when all the flower parts are finally attached together. The UV paint arrived on Friday and so we did start to use it to paint the petals, however, it was unfortunate that despite our efforts the paint did not take well to the petal’s surface. It did disappear and caused barely any change in texture which is what we wanted, but as the petal material was not at all absorbent the paint was very reluctant to stick to it, giving some very ugly paint streaks rather than a smooth covering. Furthermore, we only had a small UV torch to help us see where paint had been applied and it didn't work too well to show up the colour, therefore we were left to mostly paint away blindly. Also, we hope it’s not the same under a UV black light, but the colour seemed to be more pink than red which was a little disappointing. We decided to give this task a break to see if we could devise a more practical way of doing it later.

Jessica took on the responsibility of producing all the underlying wire structures. She also made this stand. On the left is the wire structure, the right the finished stand which is covered with felt. It's designed to be able to contain a small heater so that the flower will show on infra-red cameras as well as in ultra-violet light, again replicating a real flower.

Here I'm making the flower’s centre. First of all I sewed some of the left over white material to a wire structure made by Jessica. I then painted the surface yellow and cut in half many small polystyrene balls so that they could be stuck to the surface to mimic the bobbley appearance of a daisy's centre. Unfortunately, we grossly underestimated how many we would need, so we'll have to buy more later.

At the end of the two days this was our progress so far on the flower part of the sculpture, we will be continuing next week.

As for the bee, its fluffy body was cut out and sewn. We decided to discard the internal wire structure this time as it was becoming a bit of a hindrance, and instead decided to opt for stuffing it with the left over fabric. We also started making the legs and a band for the middle to distinguish between the bee’s abdomen and thorax.

Here is one of the bee's wings made from wire and a light, transparent fabric.

 

 

Other Events.

As well as constructing the flower, a few other things happened in the last couple of days. One was that the ants finally arrived and we put them in the farm. The instructions however did say that the ants would not start burrowing for 48hours, so we’ve yet to see any progress. We'll return to check on them next week to see how they're doing.

The ant farm empty.

The ants exploring their new home.

 The fungi in the agar plates also appeared to have started growing.

And lastly, our plant from the botanic garden seems to be stretching towards the light!

Days 12/13 (April 16th and 17th)

Day 12

First thing this morning, Jessica went to some of the departments within biology to take photos of their work. The purpose of this was to give us some further inspiration by collecting information on some of the current research. A lab Jessica visited was investigating the wheat genome and there she took photos with Mark Winfield of a next generation sequencing machine for PCR. The plating and sequencing rooms were kept separate to help ensure that there was no cross-contamination. It was an interesting insight into how technology has progressed, from once only been able to sequence 100 samples at any one time to 1500 samples. Further details of this plus the photos from all the research we've managed to get a glimpse at will be compiled in its own post.

After this Jessica went around the gardens to take pictures of different flowers, textures and colours to help us get some ideas for what type we would use for Heather's model.

 A sample of the flower photographs

In the afternoon we went for our appointment with Annette. In our absence she had produced 3 new spheres, this time ensuring they were completely dry on the inside, but she hadn't autoclaved them to save time.

One of the spheres Annette swirled agar around to try and make a pattern and then inoculated it with algae; the second, she dotted agar onto the glass and then inoculated the dots. This was practically quite difficult and many dots were missed as she simply couldn't reach them. To help solve this problem, the third flask she mixed agar with the algae before hand and dotted it onto the glass. It did however make the agar have some problems setting.

Aside from these experiments with the flasks, Annette had very kindly prepared us 20 plates (half at a 1.2% concentration and the other half at 1.4%). With these plates we would use various tools to spread algae into artistic patterns. We used two types of algae, a red species called planktothrix and a green kind called microcystis. The microcystis is in essence a weed, a hardy species that would more a less grow on anything. Therefore the agar medium we used was suited for the fussier planktothrix.

The workspace we were provided with. Tools would be dipped into alcohol and then heated in the Bunsen flame to sterilize the equipment before use with the algae.

 

Drawing tools included glass rods and hockey sticks, as well as a metal loop. This tool was prone to tearing the agar if not used with care.

 Us posing for a photo before beginning our artworks.

Dropping algae onto the agar plates. A sterile pipette was used.

After playing around with what sort of effects and precision we could attain, we sealed all the plates and split them up to grow in two different areas. We mixed them up randomly and set half on the windowsill in the lab and the other half in the growth room in the basement. The growth room was kept at 15 degrees and was constantly lit, so the conditions were very controlled. Annette predicted that the algae would probably have started to grow by Tuesday next week, so we arranged to meet up with her at 1pm on that day to check on their progress.

Plates in their respective locations (first image in the lab, second in the growth room).

The mushroom kit also arrived today. Annette gave us some plates to test some of the mushroom spores' growth in agar, as we thought this would look more attractive in a sphere than the growth material in the kit. One of the mediums was BG11, a multi-nutrient agar. The other was Chlorella soil extract. The material in the mushroom kit itself was quite fussy in how you had to prepare it. We needes to add 3 litres of boiling water to the mushroom substrate and leave it to cool down for 8 hours before the spores could be added. We decided to do this and leave it over night for the best use of our ever dwindling time!

The mushroom growth medium. It looked like rabbit straw you'd buy from a pet shop.

We also researched and ordered some invisible UV paint for the flower model. In order to buy the paint we needed to pick a colour, and for that we had to make a final decision on what sort of flower we would try to recreate. The UV paint was advised to be used on as pale a service as possible, so we decided to choose something with white petals. The paint was also very expensive and so as to remain within budget, we wanted a flower which wouldn't be too lavish in its UV paint requirements. We eventually decided on 'Tripleurospermum maritimum' (shown below), which fulfilled our criteria very well.

 The flower we selected in visible and UV light. Image from: http://www.naturfotograf.com/UV_TRIP_MAR.html

Other errands of the day involved arranging a meeting with Penny at the botanic gardens to look at some climbing plants at 2 o clock tomorrow, and while waiting for the water to boil for the mushrooms, I started to make a little sample of modrock fish scales to use up some more of the paint and make use of the glitter we'd bought earlier. This idea was inspired by some of the fish we had seen at the zoo. There had also been much discussion about the material we would use to make the model flower. For awhile, thoughts had swayed back to using plaster as we were without adequate sewing equipment, adequate paint for use on fabric, or adequate time with which to experiment. However, we did conclude that using some sort of fabric or plastic would give the best effect and decided to meet at fabric land at 10am the next day to look at some options. 

Day 13

This morning we went to fabricland and found some very suitable material for both the flower and the bee. The material we bought for the flower was some white faux leather. It didn't give the floaty, light appearance of flower petals but we did feel it would take the UV paint well, so it was a good compromise. This did however give us the problem of where to obtain sewing equipment. Jessica luckily had some pins, needles and some thread but we were lacking any fabric scissors or a sewing machine, essential for the amount of sewing we were intending on doing. Luckily, the faux leather in any case was a material that didn't fray and responded reasonably well to the cheap scissors we had (although I am yet to see how the bee’s fur fabric will react), but we still had the problem of locating a sewing machine. After asking around, I was advised to go to the drama department as they would be the most likely place in the university to own one. I paid a visit but they were unable to help me out at all as they were quite busy, there was however a very nice girl who had a sewing machine she was willing to lend us. Thank you so much Antonia! You saved the flower making project!

Returning to the mushroom growing solution of yesterday, the water could now be removed from the straw bag. Holes were made in the bottom of the bag and the water was allowed to drain for half an hour. After this, the spore mixture was crumbled and then mixed thoroughly through the substrate. Six holes were cut in each side of the bag for the mushrooms to grow out of and then it was all packed back into its box to keep the environment dark and the inner bag lining moist. Spores were also added to the agar plates and also put into the box.

The bag of spores.

Prepared agar plates

 I also finished the quick little fish scale model I was making. I simply painted it with metallic paint and then poured on glitter, shaking of the excess.

After lunch, Jessica went up to the botanic gardens to meet Penny where she was taken around the greenhouses. Many of the viewed plants were not suitable for growth in the spheres as they required a very humid environment. There were however some possible candidate species in the temperate greenhouse as these grew at more suitable temperatures.

We were given two cuttings of a plant called Tradescantia. This is a very fast growing plant that we hear likes to climb around anything and everything. We hope to see the cuttings grow relatively quickly in the lab.

Our cuttings.

Meanwhile back at the lab, I was working on experimenting with how to make hte flower petals. I hand sewed a petal and put in some ruffles to try and mimic as much as possible the appearance of the flower in the photograph. The material is very unsuitable for putting in ruffles, but as i mentioned before, it was a comprimise for what material would best take the UV paint we had ordered.

Sewing the petals.

Finished test petal.

The petal turned out reasonably good, though i thought for the next time I'd make the pieces bigger, particually in the width as this would allow for more ruffles. We finished up the day with general model making and plans for how we would set about constructing the flower and bee properly which will start tommorow.

Days 10/11

Day 10

Today was a pretty quiet day as we're still waiting on a lot of orders, but we did get a few things done. Below are some sketches of concept designs for how i thought the algae idea could work. I drew images of plates in a sphere as well as a smaller image of using little spheres. The internal tubing could be filled with algae or simply coloured or just some cord. Each plate or small sphere could harbour a different sort of algae giving a variety in colour. These designs however may look too cluttered in practice. 

Jessica also made a mobile-type structure for how she envisioned the algae Petri dishes could appear in the sphere.

The ant equipment also arrived. It contained a gel which would provide the ants with all the nutrients they would need to survive. The idea was that the ants would burrow tunnels through the gel and that their creation could be used as an art piece. To obtain some ants we decided to contact Nigel Franks by email. He did get back to us but said that unfortunately they only used one type of ant in the lab here and that they would be useless for what we wanted them to do. He did say he could tell us how to dig up some ants (which the product itself recommended) but that it would be a laborious process which would take days and days. I assume that this would be the case as it’s currently wet and cold and we're not aware of where there are any ant colonies, as well as perhaps needing a particular type. I know that if it was summer and I was back home it would be very easy to obtain some ants as I have a very large colony under my back garden patio! We did however decide to take his advice and order some from the internet which we hope to arrive soon.

 Image of the ant colony product.

We took some photos of  the winogradsky columns today as well to see how they've changed in the last couple of weeks.

We went to Wilkinsons to see if they sold any climbing plants which we could buy today and set up. Unfortunately they didn't have any but we discovered a garden centre on the internet that isn't too far away. We are planning to take a visit there next week hopefully to see if we can find anything.

Finally we arranged to speak with Melanie, a life science artist recommended to us by Heather, at 10:00am tomorrow. We’ll be speaking with her on the phone rather than Skype because she’s on the move and unavailable for a Skype conversation.

Day 11

Call with Melanie

We spoke with Melanie in the morning to discuss any ideas and suggestions that she may have for the project and ask for any advice she could give us in regards of using living material in an art piece. Like Tomas, she said that she liked the idea of running experiments in the spheres, as this would be more interesting and engaging for the public. She felt that having models and structures in particular would perhaps not be showing off what the department was all about in such an engaging way. Unfortunately we feel as we did before that this is simply not scientifically practical but I did think of a compromise solution. When we were at the zoo, animals and plants were kept in their displays and then there was an accompanying board outside to describe a little bit about it. I thought that having displays in the sphere to represent the research going on in the department, with a similar style board to explain its representation for those who were interested, would be a nice idea. We also had the idea from the start about having a changeable, experimental display sphere in which people could display their work from time to time.

Melanie also suggested the possibility of doing something a bit more related to biochemistry, rather than growing things. Biochemical reactions may create a range of interesting colours. Perhaps the spheres within spheres idea I had for the algae would be suitable for this. Each small sphere could contain a different coloured solution, representing different biochemical experiments. This would probably be easy to maintain and produce.

She also pointed out to us what we'd been thinking for quite awhile about the timescale in which the art piece would be on display. This would be very reflective of what could be used, as maintaining living things would be quite costly over a long time period.

After the conversation, we thought that to be able to better represent the departments, it would be a good idea to go and visit them and take photos of the research that was going on. Also, for things like more chemical based reactions, we would be mostly unable to replicate those ourselves and it would be a much better use of time to simply go to the relevant department and take pictures for Tomas of what we could find. Jessica spent the afternoon today sending emails to every department to request permission to go and take photos of current research. 

Moss Balls

With a lamp and a bit of sunlight, we finally got the solar power pump to work a little. We tried the motor on its side in the original container but it didn't work very well as it just pushed all the balls into one area where they clumped and stopped moving. Here we set up a system of the pump pushing upwards, causing the moss balls to rise and fall if the correct level of power was used.

 Meeting with Heather



Today we also had a catch up with Heather to discuss our progress and where to go next. She requested that we could also construct a large model flower and bee for a display for public engagement, including the Fascination of Plants day and the Festival of Nature.(Websites linked below).


http://www.bnhc.org.uk/home/festival.html

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/botanic-garden/events/2013/84.html

I had an idea that we could paint the flower in UV paint to illustrate how a bee would see it. The idea seemed to be quite popular. Heather showed us this website http://www.naturfotograf.com/UV_flowers_list.html which had many images of flowers under UV and would certainly be a great help in selecting one to base our model on. I've been running through ideas in my head of how best to construct the flower. Initially we were thinking plaster. I didn't like the idea of using modrock however because it doesn’t give a smooth finish due to the fibres in it. Pure plaster on the other can be sanded down to be made smooth and doesn’t have the lumps and bumps from the structural material to begin with. However I thought that this media would be a bit heavy, stiff and chunky for a giant flower. It would be a flower ornament and wouldn’t have the realism in texture and weight.

I thought the best material to use would be some sort of fabric. Fake, fabric flowers are commonly made and I thought this was probably an idea worth playing with. The main issue would be stiffening the structure in a giant flower so that it didn't droop. I thought using interfacing or an internal wire structure may work for this, while still preserving petal flexibility, which plaster wouldn't do. The right sort of fabric would also give a closer representation of a petals true sheen and hopefully a light, delicate look. There are many online tutorials about how to make fabric flowers. This is an example of one I looked at

http://www.simplyvintagegirl.com/blog/index.php/2010/05/29/tutorial-how-to-make-lovely-fabric-flowers/.

How to get the UV colour is a bit more complicated. While getting UV paint and even UV fabric paint isn't difficult, to get both a material and a paint or dye that will produce a decent finish could be more complex. From my experience, fabric paint can make a material stiff, rough and hard and isn’t at all suitable for painting the entire surface. It can look very obviously painted. The range of quality in fabric paint obviously varies and apparently there are some types which exist which don't look or feel much more different than if the material was dyed.

UV fabric dye would certainly be preferable. With dye we could look at applying the colour with tie-dye which when applied well can get very specific patterns. Some of the UV patterns on the flowers seem to be very much made for tie dye.

 

 Flower in UV: Image from: http://www.naturfotograf.com/UV_CALT_PAL.html

Tie-dye example from: http://whosjack.wpengine.com/tie-dye-high-five/

Unfortunately however, such a product simply seems very difficult to obtain. It does exist but it either seems very expensive, very specific for certain types of material, or just very limited in terms of its use and colour. I did read about Remazol Fluorescent Yellow FL, a dye made by a German company called Dystar. This is a true dye which binds irreversibly with fabric, it also seems to be flexible in the sort of fabrics it will bind to and is truly fluorescent. However, apparently you can only buy it in quantities of 5 kilos or more which is, I’ve read, very expensive. How expensive though I just don’t know as there seems to be nowhere to buy it! There is a lot of talk on the internet about it but it seems to be impossible to obtain. I went to the Dystar website but it doesn't give me prices for any of its products and wants me to make an account to buy anything. It seems to be rather secretive about its business. Dylon apparently also used to make some sort of UV fabric dye as well, but once again I can't find anywhere to purchase it, plus even if I could purchase it, apparantly it works better on silk than cotton and doesn't work on synthetic materials at all. Buying the necessary quantity of silk would probably cost an arm and a leg. The material is wonderful to use but it’s just too expensive. We will most likely end up using some sort of synthetic material, possibly a type of satin, simply for the sake of the budget.

Other ways of getting UV onto the material would be fabric paint, or possibly spray paint may give a nice look, but this couldn't be applied with tie-dye and probably wouldn't have the same nice finish. Furthermore, while it seems easy enough to get invisible UV paint and visible UV fabric paint, it seems to be hard to locate invisible UV fabric paint, which is what we want. My searches also showed that such paints made the fabric stiff and hard.

I'm going home this weekend and do have a range of material scraps, some fabric paint and fabric dyes, so I intend to have an experiment with what sort of material takes best to dyes and fabrics. There is also a possibility of using fabric pens/markers. I'm very puzzled about the difficulty of finding UV fabric dye; it doesn't feel like it should be such a rare product. I'm quite sure UV hair dye is common enough so maybe I'm just not looking in the right places.

I find it quite amusing that I can obtain UV water dye http://www.glowshop.com/product-p/uvwd50.htm but not fabric dye. If only we could make a flower ice sculpture haha. The best UV product I could find today was this:

http://www.uvpaint.co.uk/paint-usage-UVR.htm?gclid=CKmAx9TbwrYCFQrJtAodeXoAUQ 

This paint came in a range of colours and dried clear in normal light. I assume this implies that it could be overlaid onto another painted surface without affecting the original colour, although the website stated that it worked best on a light background. We could compensate for this by using a white or yellow flower. There is however a problem in that using fabric would be difficult. The point of the fabric was that it would give a weight and texture similar to a real flower, the moment paint is applied it would lose these qualities. Unfortunately I think we may have to look for some other sort of material to use. I had a thought of using some sort of light, flexible plastic to cover the petals. This would have the light, flexible nature of the fabric without the fibres.

 Clear, flexible, plastic material from: http://www.fabricuk.com/fabrics/358-clear-transparent-pvc.html

Applying paint on it however could mean that if the petals were moved the paint may crack. This would particularly be an issue if a preliminary paint layer was placed underneath the UV for the visible light colour. Although moving the petals would not be a particular feature of the model, the fact it may have flexible petals makes it a potential problem worth considering. Ways to get around this could be to use material that was already coloured and then use invisible UV spray paint if we could get it. This should make the model much less prone to cracking and remove any general appearance of paint strokes.

Despite the flower having lots of potential complications, the bee seems to be quite easy in theory to construct. Jessica has already started to create the underlying wire structure for the model. The furry parts of the body should be easily replicable by using black and yellow fur fabric which is quite easy to buy.  

 

                                                                  The wire structure for the bee abdomen and thorax.