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Stress-o-stat is a living artwork...
...that visually captures stress in bacteria as light.
The life size installation...
...combines scientific instruments, methods and aesthethics...
...to produce a real and speculative device.
The work explores convergence between life and machine...
...where the machine becomes life-like...
...and the bacteria, engineered through synthetic biology, machine-like.
So, the work involved locating a special genetic switch...
...involved in stress response...
...and combining this into a genetic construct...
...so that when the switch goes 'on'...
...it expresses fluorescent proteins.
The switch was located using bio-informatics...
...and extracted from the bacteria genome.
Using synthetic biology standards...
...a library of of genetic parts was available...
...and a fluorescent expression construct...
...was combined with the switch to complete the genetic construct.
Once implemented in bacteria...
...fluorescent proteins were expressed during oxidative stress...
...producing a yellow-green colour in response to blue light.
Synthetic biology tends to apply a sort of...
...machine-like language onto the living.
But, paradoxically it is sort of the opposite of the digital...
...instead of the machine becoming life-like...
...life becoming machine-like.
To control stress parameters as light...
...the work employs a fermentation setup called a 'chemostat'.
It consists of tubes...
...vessles...
...monitoring parts...
...all connected in a functional manner...
...to maintain homeostasis in the cell population.
The machine is both hosting and feeding the bacteria...
...and draws analogies with artifical organs and life-like machines.
A condenser placed outside the device acts as a window...
...by having cells pumped from the inside of the reactor vessel.
The installation creates a stress-sensing device both functionally and as an experimental aesthetics of scientific parts.
The device probes into invisible processes on a genetic level...
...and bring these into view by allowing stress to be read as light.
With changing parameters, stress is visualised as a fluctuating light.
The blue light is blocked using polarised glasses...
...leaving us only with the light emitted by the proteins.
Stress-o-stat playfully associates itself with domestic devices...
...such as thermometers and barometers used to extend our senses and reading of our own environment.
But rather than being a guide to our own world...
...Stress-o-stat deliberates ideas...
...of using our senses to explore other worlds.