Art/science collaboration - summary of some past work

I just completed another collaborative research proposal with some really smart colleagues. The application includes a novel art/science collaboration to help promote scientific literacy. Let's hope it gets funded!

While digging through the blogosphere to prepare my cv for the application, I came across a wonderful post that summarized a past project with New Zealand artist Claire Beynon. Its various pieces and the people it involved reminded me of the tiny threads of cytoplasm (i.e., pseudopods) that foraminifera use to go about their business.



The Antarctic foram Astrammina rara with its cytoplasmic network extended on a glass dish. The ramifying pseudopods are likened to an art/science collaboration, with the body of creative work encased by an elegant shell.

 

Daydreaming about the trajectories of its individual components (i.e., the many poems, musical pieces, and artworks that were generated) drew imagined parallels to organelles saltating within these pseudopods. And looking at this body of work as a whole, packaged within its posted "shell" - well, it really seemed to be no less than a live foram!

One thing is for sure: art/science collaboration is an effective way to ignite the imagination ...

Updated Cereal Killer

"Art is never finished, only abandoned." This quote is credited to Leonardo da Vinci and it appears he's right. At the last minute I flipped all the metazoan prey upside down so they looked dead at the hands (er, arms) of Notodendrodes. The piece was gifted to the staff of Health Research, Inc. after giving a talk about our research projects. They are displaying it in their lunch room, which seems fitting. 


Cereal Killer as it appears on display at Health Research, Inc.

 I don't want to abandon "Cereal Killer" until it's in a better frame. And then there's "Cereal Killer II" to work on, now that I've figured out how to make these things ...

Spitball Testate Amoebas





Award-winning amoeba art!

  

Floridaminifera

Although regarded as marine creatures, Foraminifera (forams) are found just about everywhere it's moist ... or at least their genetic signatures can be found in DNA samples obtained  from moist places, like river edges and other freshwater habitats. But the sea pulls at us, and its rich abundance of forams visible to the naked eye titillate interest. Even outside Antarctica, I've been very curious to learn why certain species are abundant in "peculiar" oceanic places.

One foram that lives in a truly odd place is Shepheardella. It makes a living in the Florida Keys snaking in and out of the flesh of solitary fan seaweed.

Dried specimen of a fan seaweed, probably Avrainvillea nigricans

"Snaking" is an appropriate verb to describe Shepheardella's motion, because it is shaped like a snake. A tiny red snake.

Shepheardella snaking in and out of a piece cut from fan seaweed.

Here is what it looks like stretching out on a glass Petri dish, the way scientists usually study such specimens.

The scanning electron microscope gives us some idea of what its world really looks like, snaking through thickets of algal flesh.

I think Shepheardella is telling scientists that we spend too much time in vitro and not enough time in vivo.

Foram food

A final thought for 2008 ... and a bold prediction:  I'll think more about this topic in 2009!

A tasty foraminiferan protist?

I work with many clever people. One measure of "cleverness" is the capacity to make quick connections between disparate concepts. Check out Claire Beynon's post at Ice Lines for a good example.

(I wonder if I've been clever enough to figure out what Claire was thinking of ...)