electrochemical composition + DIY electronics

Below are two electronic devices I recently built in order to compose, record and incorporate (play back) electrochemical sound on the incubator I'm building for my biotextiles. 

Electrochemical Sound Generator (without the chemicals).

A Wave Shield for emitting the electrochemical sounds I've recorded.

The electrochemical sound idea (and the prototype for the first electronic device) came out of a workshop I attended at Eastern Bloc with Erin Sexton. Erin designed the schematic for the device and during the workshop we learned how to use our prototypes. We generated modulations (sometimes harmonious and usually cacophonous) and improvised with the sounds created when you plug that thing in to both a power source and a crystal chemical solution (magnesium sulfate, or Epsom salts). The results are a process of electrolysis that is facilitated by the current running through the solution. Below are photos of my work with hooking my permanent device up (one that I soldered together on a perma-prototype breadboard) to a converter and a recorder in order to record an improv session I did at home. What I ended up with was a sweet .wav file about 16 minutes long.

My device with the converter and recorder.

Wires from the device are dunked into the solution and moved around, or pulled out together or apart.

 We don't think of liquids and electricity mixing, but here I'm mixing them!

Concentrating very hard on the subtle variations in sound I'm able to make.

The headphones allow me to monitor the sound as its being generated.

Different wires add different variables of sound.

The Wave Shield was my most complicated electronic device to date but a great learning opportunity for practicing my soldering, wiring, and programming skills (well, there's not much to program since the code is already created by Adafruit). But, getting it to work is still an accomplishment for someone who has *never* built electronics before in her life. The Wave Shield plays .wav files and it can be plugged into either headphones, speakers, amps or a combination of those things. Below is a sample recording (not the final sounds I'll be using) of an electrochemical composition I sampled. Be prepared for pain when listening to it. The sound is analogous, in my mind, to the sound of brain cell communication, which is also done through electrochemical transmission. So, imagine, that this is the sound of cells talking.

the artist as contaminant

BioArt is still a young, and in many people's minds, highly questionable field--still new enough that the pushing, negotiating and baby step-style struggling forward remains very much a central part of this hybrid practice. BioArtists will enjoy more than a few healthy doses of academic skepticism, social wariness and plain old paralytic, bureaucratic quicksand with each new project. This is all before one considers the practical cost of working with such precious artistic materials as 'life', that have been classified as biohazardous and are therefore not only difficult to attain but also difficult to afford, ship, and store. Add to this, that arts funding bodies have yet to recognize BioArt as an actual legitimate art form (though they are starting to). Galleries may balk at the extreme ethics clearance and safety standards required to be met in order to display such works. The newest new media just doesn't have it easy by any stretch. Is this due to biology's sordid history or because you just can't trust an artist?

Artists trying to eke out creative/research space in an established scientific laboratory may find themselves embodying the social reality of 'the contaminant'. The contaminant, a foreign and unwelcome body displaying deviant functions within a highly regulated system, may notice that attempts at syncretism are suspect. In the carefully cultivated aseptic environment of the laboratory, no body is more a paradigmatic misfit than the messy, unruly, unpredictable artist.

I've experienced a small handful of different types of laboratory environments now, in my fledgling BioArt practice. I've come to realize that my research period at SymbioticA was a rare gift indeed, where scientists made themselves into indispensable allies, and where creative autonomy in the lab is a central tenet of the entire facility. I am deeply indebted to Dr Ionat Zurr and Oron Catts for fighting the good fight to have BioArt practice recognized and respected within an academic context (at UWA) so that I was able to come along and play without too much trouble on the playground. I'm also grateful beyond belief for the generosity of Dr Andrew Pelling and his team of student researchers at uOttawa who have accepted me into their milieu--in particular, Dan Modulevsky who is working with me directly to experiment with and brainstorm creative ideas around coaxing microorganisms into becoming art objects. My thesis advisor, Dr Tagny Duff has been pushing on tirelessly at Concordia the past couple of years to foster some level of comfort and acceptance within the biology department so that artists such as myself might be able to get some work done in the facilities available. I'm the first student from Fine Arts to gain access to the biology lab at Concordia, all thanks to Tagny's work towards this end, but it's been a bit of a rough start so far. Nobody wants to do any real favours to an outsider, an interloper with no discernible right to be there. My ten various biosafety training certificates don't count for a whole hell of a lot, but I AM in now nonetheless--I've broken through boundary of the protective skin around the laboratory and can begin my subcutaneous work. 

Dr Michael Sacher, who runs the cell culture lab at Concordia, has agreed to allow me to use the upstairs lab since it was not being used much by his own graduate students--most of them work in the main cluster of labs downstairs. In fact, I was told that the space was practically abandoned. I've met the lab technician for all of his labs, who is a lovely person but also busy with her regular workload and not necessarily interested in taking on any extra tasks that may arise from the introduction of a foreigner into the environment. It's a 'don't ask for much and stay out of the way' kind of arrangement, where I'm basically lucky to be allowed access at all and I'm on my own in there. This particular contaminant is tolerated, but just barely. Interestingly, my work in the lab today was not in isolation after all--four other students floated in and out of the lab doing various quick cell culture activities, or perhaps to witness the contaminant (or both). Nobody was interested in communicating with me and certainly nobody smiled. Lab consumables that I considered common consumables, such as boxes of nitrile gloves, disappeared from sight when I was observed to be using them. I worried after that, that the paper towels on the counter might also disappear. I had flashbacks to elementary school, when I arrived to an east coast small town, fresh from a west coast big city: in the first week, my little girl shoes mysteriously disappeared from the mat outside the classroom during lunch so that I couldn't go home to eat. Today, when I asked politely if anyone knew what had happened to the box of gloves on the counter, which I needed in order to continue my task of thawing vulnerable cells and getting them situated in new nutrient media as quickly as possible, I was met with the question, "Oh, YOUR gloves?" Nope, they weren't mine, but I didn't realize they weren't everybody's.

Despite my excruciating awkwardness in this new lab environment and the slight discomfort/curiosity my presence has already caused, I did manage to thaw and plate the two osteosarcoma cell types I will be working with, and they are now incubating happily towards confluency. This accomplishment alone, in light of the bureaucracy I've waded through in the past several months, is a small miracle. I'll be back to the lab to visit them on Friday and give them more nutrient media. I'm sure that in due time, the anathema that my artistic presence is in the Concordia lab will become one of its strengths.

he said, "I've never heard of anyone so excited to find cancer cells."

The two types of tissue I'll soon be growing in the lab at Concordia are very similar: SAOS-2 and U-2 OS. It was Dr Andrew Pelling who first brought the SAOS-2 type to my attention, and Dr Michael Sacher (the director of the tissue culture lab at Concordia) who introduced me to U-2 OS.

William Gale Gedney, Two girls with dirty clothes holding hands, 1964.

SAOS-2 and U-2 OS are both osteosarcoma cells, meaning bone cancer. They have an interesting relationship to each other in that both cell lines were extracted from young Caucasian females, ages 11 and 15, respectively. Our 11-year old girl's bone cancer was sampled and stored in the lab in 1973, while the 15-year old was parted with some of hers approximately a decade earlier, in 1964. The U-2 OS came from her shinbone. There is no more personal information available about these girls, for obvious reasons of confidentiality.

Tracing the origins (and in this case, the osteobiography) of the materials used liberally in the laboratory environment might for a moment return some of the missing identity and agency to the remaining microorganisms that were once associated with these young ladies. We might experience empathy for them. In effect, I will be growing new pieces of the cellular remains of these girls. But, how much of us is actually present in our pathologies? Are we separate from them, in terms of who we really are? Is there a danger in identifying with our diseases? Should we maintain a distinct psychological separation from corporeal intruders in order to prevent them from infecting our psyches, too? If that is the case, then what of us is actually us? How much are these cells, cultured for decades, passing through their own life cycles and mitosis x a million, still connected to the humans they came from?

If I name the osteosarcoma samples by human names, since they originated in human girls, what will happen? SAOS-2 will be named Sonya and U-2 OS will be named Osanna. Sonya and Osanna most likely would never have met, yet are immortalized in relation to each other through laboratory experimentation and their tireless cellular division into infinite daughters of themselves. What is my reason for making the acquaintance of Sonya and Osanna? It is entirely practical and material: because I plan to create mineralized semi-living bone sculptures, and bone cancer is the fastest growing bone (not to mention, hardy). Normal bone takes a very, very long time.

What happens when human cancer is played with in an artistic context? Does this trivialize the enormous human emotional impact of the devastation of cancer on families? While that is certainly not my intention, I can understand where some feeling of outrage might emerge from this. We have shared social codes around death and loss and mourning. Humans maintain stringent ritual requirements for preserving the dignity of the deceased. And, culturally, cancer is still a terrifying, nightmarish beast.

What if artworks around or with beastly cancer humanizes what is otherwise a terror in the collective cultural imagination? Or, what if creative experimentation leads to a helpful discovery about the nature of these particular cancer cells, one that ordinary scientific protocols might otherwise overlook? What contribution might an artist make to the understanding of cancer?

I take a minor risk in exposing myself to these cell types when I work with them. However, to shed some light on laboratory work with human matter, it's important to understand and acknowledge that the first tissue culture ever achieved in a laboratory was done using human female cervical cancer cells (HeLa) and that they are still used, decades later, in most laboratory tissue culture experiments around the world. My colleague and artist friend, Tristan Matheson, has worked throughout his graduate degree on HeLa cells, the culture of cancer and its affects, meaning, implications. This work will be shown during our collaborative exhibition in November.

Henrietta Lacks.

Henrietta Lacks (HeLa) unwittingly donated a malignant cervical tumor tissue sample on her deathbed, without having ever given consent. It was simply taken, probed, used. Given the gendered and sexual nature of the specimen, would this incident qualify as a form of medical rape? Or does the good that came from the use of her stolen cells, for arguably all of humanity, justify the means? Henrietta's family fought for generations to have the erasure of her identity and unethical sourcing of her materia brought to light, and to have her recognized for her many silent contributions to science. Did factors such as race, economic status and gender contribute to the desire for the erasure (and scientific encoding) of her identity? For more information on the story of HeLa cells, check out this link and this link. There's also now an entire book written about it.

I will be working with the SAOS-2 and U-2 OS cell lines from the frozen stock in Dr Sacher's lab beginning as early as next week, if my specialized nutrient media arrives from the supplier by then. The downside to working with these cells? Sonya and Osanna are hungrier and more robust than most cell lines, meaning I might have to spend much more time and money keeping them fed while they grow into the carefully designed, beautiful bio-art objects I envision them becoming.

apparatus hack + the materiality of the lab

exhibit a.

The first image here shows one of the first experiments (and new processes I learned) at the Pelling Lab - one of many laboratory hacks that Pelling Lab members have developed. 

This is a live cell imaging hack, meaning a less sophisticated but equally effective way of capturing time lapse video of live cells in culture, doing their thing (mainly mitosis, or cell division, leading to the growth of the culture).

What you see in this image (exhibit a.) is one part of the hacked apparatus. Typically, imaging live cells requires very specialized equipment, including a high end microscope with a digital camera built in, within a compartment that regulates temperature and CO2 in order to keep the cells alive (essentially, an incubator). While I was working in the labs at the University of Western Australia, specifically CELLCentral with Guy Ben-Ary to image my live cell cultures, we used this specialized, very expensive instrument. At the Pelling Lab, however, value is placed on DIY technique, innovation and making science more accessible, so there is a roughly built but functional live cell imaging apparatus (see exhibit b. below). 

exhibit b.

First, one must prepare the cells for their long overnight journey in the imaging unit. Exhibit a. shows this very messy preparation: two small petri dishes containing live cells are turned into hermetically-sealed containers in order to capture enough CO2 to sustain the specific pH required to stabilize cellular 'life'. This is because the imaging unit (exhibit b.), while set up to maintain body temperature for the cells, cannot regulate CO2. The dishes are sealed by applying a thick, gooey layer of vacuum grease to the entire inside edge of the lid of the dish, before the lid is then smushed on and the cells are sealed in. This process is of course done inside a sterile laminar flow hood to prevent contamination. My messiness with this process was exceptional. The sterility of the vacuum grease is, well, virtually nonexistent. I worried for my cells - that they would quickly become contaminated or at least poisoned. Neither of those things happened. 

Before the lids can be greased and smushed on, however, they must be prepared as well. Small holes were hand-drilled into the plastic lids by rotating the tip of an Exacto knife against the lid until a circle is cut about the size of a pencil eraser (or a bit smaller). Then the lid is cleaned with 70% ethanol and all plastic debris wiped away with Kimwipes, "delicate task wipers". Again, so messy. You'd think these cells wouldn't stand a chance. Alas! Once the holes are drilled, the lid cleaned, the cells plated (pipetted into the dish bottom), the vacuum grease applied, and the lid smushed on, then the dishes are incubated for 5-10 minutes to allow the inside of the dish to fill with CO2 from the incubator. After this period in the incubator, the dishes are removed and aluminum foil tape is applied to one hole to seal it, before putting the dishes back in the incubator for another few minutes. Then, out they come and the second hole is likewise sealed with aluminum foil tape. Why aluminum foil tape? Well, for one, it's silver and looks futuristic, and it's quite malleable. I'm not sure why else that tape is used specifically. What you see in the image, exhibit a., is only one hole sealed before the second trip into the incubator.

The resulting videos that I went in to see the next morning were fairly exciting. The cell types are 3T3s (connective tissue cells), and they were quite active overnight. I observed the individual cells of course dividing, but also I witnessed them using their cytoplasm as a vehicle, to flatten and extend their cell bodies out to pull themselves along the surface of the dish (cell motility). A great first experiment. I will post video once I've gotten it off the lab's hard drive. For now, this is the image (exhibit c.) on one of the screens when the experiment first began (there are actually two handbuilt imaging units, hence the two dishes and two videos I was able to capture). 

exhibit c.

I have to thank my trusty friend and fellow BioArtist, Tristan Matheson for showing me this whole trick. Tristan and I will be showing together at the FOFA Gallery this coming November, and he was the first artist to take up residence at the Pelling Lab for developing his own work last year.

The next experiment I managed to do on my last visit to the lab was to introduce an old and somewhat obsolete art material to the lab as a feasible (and much cheaper) material for use in cell culturing. Tissue engineering, the creation of new forms of constructing a piece of viable flesh and/or bone, requires attempting to reproduce the conditions in which tissue grows in, in vivo, or in a body. Of course, it is nothing like a body, but certain elements are added to a culture dish (such as chemicals, antibiotics, serum, etc) that recreate a system of feeding, protecting and communicating behavioral suggestions to the cells. Certain elements are also added to the scaffolds that the cells grow on, such as parts of the extracellular matrix. For my entire project, my scaffolds are textile-related - miniature hand-weavings, crocheted forms, and miniature textile-based tools (see exhibit d.). 

exhibit d. - a 3D printed miniature frame loom, printed on a MakerBot at the Pelling Lab for me by Daniel Modulesky.

Sometimes coating agents are added to scaffolds (or even dishes themselves) to assist the cells in adhering to the forms and colonizing. One of those substances is collagen, a sticky, elastic substance that is extracted -usually- from rat tails. Most researchers don't do this themselves, but simply order liquid collagen from a lab supplier. One exception, however is artist Boo Chapple, who went through the process of extracting it herself. My method is infinitely simpler, though Chapple's work was of course concerned with animal use in the laboratory research process, where "rats have become abstracted from their animal being and reconstituted as a research tool" and thus one could argue, imperative for her to get her hands wet in order to fully appreciate the impact of the technique. 

My discovery of an old-school art material that is purified collagen was an intuitive discovery, which I really can't explain. It just happened. The material: rabbit skin glue (exhibit e.). Traditionally, rabbit skin glue has been used as a sizing for canvas, before applying oil paint to tighten the canvas and protect it. I researched the glue and discovered its potential for lab use. This was part of the research that I did at SymbioticA, though I didn't have enough time to fully explore its properties and potential--so, I picked up this research at Pelling Lab just now. 

exhibit e. soaked pellets of rabbit skin glue, in a beaker on a hot plate

Rabbit skin glue comes in crystallized pellet form. I prepared it in the lab in exactly the same way one would prepare it as canvas sizing - soak it in water at a ratio of 10:1 water to pellets, overnight till the pellets soften and expand (I used purified water and kept it in the lab fridge overnight). Then heat and stir until it completely liquifies. One of my new friends at the Pelling Lab, Daniel Modulesky, brought it to my attention that the heating process in mixing the glue will also serve to sterilize it. So, heat at 70˚C for 30 minutes, and not only do you have liquid collagen to use, but it is also sterile. Purchasing rabbit skin glue is infinitely more economical than purchasing lab grade liquid collagen.

Rabbit skin glue preparation for use in tissue culture at the Pelling Lab.

Once the collagen was prepared, I coated one side of a glass petri dish with it, and incubated it to bring it to the right temperature for cells. Then I used a pipette to suction out some of the excess fluid before I plated 3T3s onto it. I was met with some skepticism from one of my biologist friends but my goal was simply to see if the collagen would a) act as a coating agent and cause cells to stick to it, and b) prove to not be cytotoxic. I plated the cells, put the dish in the incubator and left Ottawa to return to Montreal after my friend promised to report back to me on what exactly happened in the dish after 48 hours. The cells could all be dead by then, or maybe nothing would happen at all. 

My experiment was a success! Not only did the rabbit skin glue NOT kill the cells within the 48 hours, but they did appear to adhere to it, growing in a strange pattern on the dish that my biologist friend didn't understand. The pattern? It was simply lines that were created in the thin collagen layer when I sucked out excess fluid with a skinny pipette tip. Essentially I left a drawing in the collagen with the pipette, and the cells grew in the pattern of the drawing. More experiments will follow, to test longer-term exposure to the material and its effect on the cells, as well as doing comparative experiments to really prove that the cells prefer to stick to it. Those experiments may fail, BUT so many laboratory experiments fail miserably, that each small success feels huge. If my following experiments prove successful as well, then I'll use this collagen to coat my weavings to help the cells stick more thickly to them, and better/faster grow tissue on them. My next weaving material will be some beautiful horse hair (exhibit f.) that Andrew Pelling brought for me from his violin-maker wife (thank you - I don't know your name yet). I think the white horse hair will be stunning on the black 3D printed looms, and maybe, just maybe, with a little help from my rabbit skin glue, tissue will grow on it. 

exhibit f.

Another current research experiment on the go, but from home, is an attempt at sericulture. I've got pretty unruly silkworms crawling in a box at home, and periodically escaping it. Living with and overcoming my revulsion towards these fat silk moth larvae is part of my wanting to have a deeper relationship with the materials that I use in creating my artworks. Many of my weavings for tissue culture have been and will continue to be with silk, because silk contains natural indicators for osteoblasts (essentially, silk fibroin communicates with bone builder cells to tell them to build, build, build) - kind of miraculous. Silk is just newly being used in bone grafts for this very reason. I'll use it for my bone sculpture purposes. So, for now, I'm hanging out with a horde of silkworms, feeding and trying hard to keep them alive, so that I can experience the process of silk production from the source (see exhibit g.). 

exhibit g. silkworm in my kitchen - and a very ancient, wise looking one at that

Living with these creatures allows me to cultivate some appreciation for the nonhuman agents that contribute to my work. They will eventually spin cocoons, metamorphose, and chew their way out as moths, to lay eggs and quickly die as per their usual life cycle. They are completely domesticated and cannot live in the wild, living entirely in service to the human textile industry. I have been keeping them on my kitchen table and I have to admit, it stifles the appetite. Silkworms, however, have a voracious appetite and feed nonstop, like any larvae. They are extremely delicate creatures, susceptible to contamination from mold, and die easily if any moisture or bacteria come into contact with their bodies (even from human hands). In this way, they remind me very much of cells in culture - they can only eat one particular food (mulberry leaves), must be kept in a bacteria-free environment and can only really be handled with very clean or gloved hands. I'm growing emotionally attached to them and have begun to talk to them, despite my lingering revulsion.

Finally, also on the go is DIY electronics. I'm building my own incubator for mammalian tissue culture, following this prototype developed by Andrew Pelling during his residency at SymbioticA. I'm planning to bling up his design, to include an audio output, pulsing LEDs and even a cellular shield to live tweet readings from the CO2 sensor. That's a lot of work, but I have all of the electronic components and am learning basic Arduino skills at Eastern Bloc. Plus, I have Andrew as a resource during my residency at the Pelling Lab, to help me see this project build through.

The audio shield for Arduino, which will play electrochemical noise that I'm recording, from the incubator.

Musings on Agential Propriety

If human agency can be defined as "the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power", what or whom might we be using to increase the power or significance of our actions? Identifying or even categorizing every possible contributor to human agency is likely an impossible task when one begins to consider the microorganisms that live within, upon and around us. Yet, understanding that there are a multitude of contributors and that an individual is not ever acting alone is perhaps crucial to cultivating a sense of empathy with 'otherness'. Might this empathy foster ethical behavior in our actions in the world? If it is truly possible to act ethically in this particular sense, what might that look like?

Peering through a feminist lens towards bioethics and artistic ethics, I find it imperative to consider the ethics surrounding human actions on a body or bodies. Whose body are we talking about, or imperatively, who owns it? How do we define bodies? As discrete units? Jane Bennett, in a lecture entitled, Artistry and Agency in a World of Vibrant Matter at the New School in New York explains, "It's in the nature of bodies to be susceptible to infusion, invasion, collaboration, by or with other bodies. Any extant contour or boundary of entity-hood is always subject to change. Bodies are essentially intercorporeal." This measure of exchange begs consideration of the question: who is acting on whom? *The concept of the politicized body is not exclusive to feminism, yet questions of power, control and ownership resonate deeply with feminist concerns, with regards to the social treatment of body/ identity. 

If the sense of identity is removed from the body as a discrete unit, it becomes no longer a subject and no longer a person or a creature, but a fuzzy material, a 'thing' without true boundaries (Bennett argues that things do have power despite our inability or refusal to recognize it). Ownership then becomes transferable. What then, might the ethical considerations be when using body as material in an artistic practice, or in a research practice, or in a political practice? Is it mine to use?

The above micrographic image is a dried cochineal beetle, whose body is picked from the prickly pear cactus (whose body it feeds upon like a parasite), dried and then crushed with mortar and pestle to create a fine, deep red powder. This crushed-bug-body powder is then boiled in water to extract an alarming and delightful vibrant red dye. It is the most potent red possible within the spectrum of natural dyes. This tiny body, full of carmine (the chemical that produces the red colour), becomes a contributor to human agency toward acts of human creation. It is used to create all of the red (or pink) things that humans like and that make us who we are: lipstick and other cosmetics, candy, food, clothing, etc. Our identities are built (as bodies, as discrete units) on the erasure of the identity of the cochineal beetle. She is simply encoded E120, or more romantically for art uses as, "crimson lake." *It is only the female cochineal beetle that is used to make dye powder, as the males fly off after mating and do not dig in to the prickly pear for feeding.

Red is the colour of power--of vitality, blood, life, passion, action, even aggression. Carminic acid is produced as a deterrent to other predatory insects, yet carmine is consumed as colouring in many foods. The cochineal (or more correctly, the chemical housed in her scaly exoskeleton) is used to make people food more fun and appetizing, though for some, the thought of literally ingesting an insect might work as an appetite suppressant. This miniscule beetle has become a huge political flashpoint, as vegetarians, vegans and animal rights activists take on multinational corporations for their use of (unwilling) corporeal materials. The cochineal body, the size of a buckwheat kernel, is politicized to the point of weakening the massively larger corp-oration. A body, no matter how small, becomes a signifier for individual power (life) when viewed as a discrete unit. When it can't speak, others assume to speak for it, to assert some measure of anthropomorphized individual will. Is this empathy?
Which body is more powerful, has more agency? Interestingly, a resurgence in the use of cochineal occurred as a response to demand by consumers for less artificial food dyes. Our female cochineal body is "natural red 4." Is it the responsibility of bodies with greater agency to defend or protect those with less? Does that lead to greater agency for all?

When a body as a discrete unit becomes a collection of parts, when those parts become disembodied, such as when hair falls out or skin flakes off, fluids ooze out or blood escapes the barrier of the skin, bodies then slide into the realm of the abject. The realm of the abject is a site of rejection, of refusal to identify, a place of cognitive dissonance whereby the materiality of the body overcomes its aliveness. The human instinct towards this abject materiality is repulsion, where fears of contagion, disease and death cause bodily material to be perceived as utterly untouchable. The desire for asepsis is born. Is, then, the dried and distorted cochineal beetle exoskeleton, as ground powder and/or E120, in part distasteful due to its abject qualities? How much does the influence of abjection affect our perception of ethics and vice versa? We consider a human body, when reduced to its parts, to be dehumanized. Does this material categorization extend to nonhumans, then--can insects be dehumanized? Can microorganisms be effectively dehumanized, too? Once a body is dehumanized, who then retains ownership? 

Say it 3x.

__I'll end here for now with these questions, but will continue the discussion on bioethics, feminism, materiality and the abject in later posts. I'll also be covering the specific lab work I'm doing. 

--> You can see more of my micrographs, captured with a DIY microscope that I built for my iPhone, on my website, here.

Another book I'd like to read: A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire