GMU:Artistic research in Experimental Biology/Dominik Lehmann

Dominik Lehmann Master Media Arts and Design / 3. Semester

Project - Bioluminescent Bacteria as Water Tester

The bacteria react to the pollution level in water by reducing their light intensity/ growth of bacteria

Bacterium: 1. Vibrio phosphoreum / 2. Vibrio fischeri

The project is a follow up on already done experiments by e.g

[1]

The goal is to cultivate own bacteria and find a working/ user friendly design for the water tester and bring it to the test. Weimar has around five different water sources, depending where you live in the city, water quality (may) differ. We find out. Secondary goal is to produce them en mass/ amounts large enough to do some large scale funky lightshow. Scientifically speaking. In doing so I would pick up the status of above mentioned project (link) and experiment with storing and reviving the bacteria.

Cultivation No.1

As the title indicates this one didn`t work as planned.

First, I follwed one coocking recipe for agar and got all the needed stuff either online or on the streets. In my case it was:

   Pancreatin -Kreon 150mg ca.         10€
   Skim/Lowfat milk 7g                    0,20€
   100ml Distilled water                   1,50€
   Aquarium salt(Artemia Salt) 3g     2,50€
   Agar-Agar seaweed powder 2g     1,80€

I got some glas petri dishes as well and worked with a pressure coocker

I finished everything before the course start and went to my local fish dealer to bring along some squid. For a day i stored it in a salt water solution in a plastic bag. Nonetheless the smell got intense suprisingly quick. As i learned from Julian Chollet a easy way to check if there are v.fisheri on the subject is to just go into a complete dark room - or in my case a storage wardrobe. To my utter ustonishment that smelly bastard really had some fisheri living on him, which i tried to extract the next day and put it on my home made agar. As foreshadowed nothing than mold came out of it. But it was a first.

Second/ Third attempt in Dezember

With a kitchen coocked agar out of TSA and Salt i tried several times to grow a culture. I tries different fish dealers - where it is to say that suprisingly with squid from more luxuries shops i didn`t find any fisheri at all. For now i needed to give in after contamination had my plates blossom into a colorfull mold bouquet - christmas time.

Next approach will be a switch in fish: hering. First, cooking time tough.

In artistic research in experimental biology i focused my work on v.fischeri. In order to give them a adequat artistic plattform i worked on the possibilities of agaragar in the follow up course: Goals/Questions: -What shape and sizes one can design agaragars?(Agar contents) -What other organisms are suitable? -How to display/exhibit?

First try: Greasy strangler