It's been a hectic and slightly panicky couple of weeks, and a reflective pause and mulling over of recent activities in long overdue.
Let's kick off with a couple of inspirational projects I've recently come across that are relevant to my current line of thought. I've been considering the idea of converting biological data into alternative forms, whether that is a digital code, a series of sounds, or specific taste or smell. Our senses are the primary tools for human understanding, and converting the intangibility of microbes and biological mechanics into output that can be perceived by our primal senses might help us gain a deeper understanding or connection with them.
Juliam Abraham (A.K.A. Kapitän Biopunk) is ahead of the game with his Fermentation Madness installation, that takes the simple process of yeast fermentation to alcohol and converts its vigorous microbial activity into a soundscape.
Let's kick off with a couple of inspirational projects I've recently come across that are relevant to my current line of thought. I've been considering the idea of converting biological data into alternative forms, whether that is a digital code, a series of sounds, or specific taste or smell. Our senses are the primary tools for human understanding, and converting the intangibility of microbes and biological mechanics into output that can be perceived by our primal senses might help us gain a deeper understanding or connection with them.
Juliam Abraham (A.K.A. Kapitän Biopunk) is ahead of the game with his Fermentation Madness installation, that takes the simple process of yeast fermentation to alcohol and converts its vigorous microbial activity into a soundscape.
The yeast activity is measured by the amount of carbon dioxide being released (deja vu from my ALIVE typography experiment) and converted to the corresponding sound, rendering not only a uniquely indicative tune in the process but the added sensory bonus of taste once the yeast has been fermented.
This next one of is significantly more complex, as Kaui Shen Auson took advantage of the social organisation in ant colonies to produce sound. You can watch the video to get a more comprehensive understanding but the basic gist of the installation is that the activities and pheromone release of the ants trigger the scratchings of vinyl records on a turntable, effectively turning the ants into unwitting DJs.
This type of data conversion is something that has been implicitly nagging at the back of my mind ever since I read about Craig Venter's forrays into DNA-to-digital conversion; but stepping back I realise it's always been a kind of implicit factor in my project focus. My recent experiments will clarify this a bit more, but the last couple of weeks has been more about distancing myself from vague, grandiose terms like "synthetic biology" and "science and design interplay" and honing in on a more intimate level of focus. I'd been spending too much time toying with abstract concepts that were leading to massive, open-ended questions and experiment proposals that were just too far out of my reach.
So here we are, the final draft of my territories map; a more specified by even still slightly vague map of where my project lies:
After a chat with my newly appointed mentor, I then refined these bubbles into 3 avenues of exploration, within which I identified some specific research strategies that would force me to go out and start exploring. It led to some strange and slightly disgusting activities, but more on this later. For now, here's the teaser on what I've been up to lately:
On a side note, I've just finished reading Margaret Atwood's brilliant Year of the Flood. I'm still doing quite a bit of academic reading for the context report, but there's nothing like a good bit of science fiction to kickstart the imagination for this project. I'll have to start thinking about what novel to get stuck into next – it'd be quite good to maintain a good level of casual reading that aligns with my project focus throughout the year.
