GMU:DIY Bio: doing things with biology/Sirin Unmanee

From Medien Wiki

Organic Pulse Imagery is an installation art that unites the audience with parts of the different organisms, a installation art for human to experience the different space, time and place. In this project, I will capture the electrical conductivity of the organisms for conveying the massage that there are many microorganisms everywhere around us. Then, I will send that input to Max/msp to generate a 3D/2D graphic of their electrical conductivity and project that graphic onto the wall, therefore the audiences can be participated, as well as creating an immersive space.

This idea is more likely to be an exhibition approach, which people can choose the organisms by themselves and interact with it.

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The installation includes a counter which has a projector built-in, on top of the counter is a petri dishes slots that allow the participants to choose the organisms that they're interested to interact with and place it in the isolated slot which is connected to the Arduino, moreover the slots are used as an incubator for the organisms to keep them living with the suitable temperature.

This project is related to my Max/msp project here. Link to my Max/msp Project


Capturing the electric potentials and generating the visual

To capture the electric potentials from the organism, I have to create a split petri dish with a small bridge between each slot to allow the electricity form the organism to flow, moreover, this approach will capture the electricity only from the organism, not the medium.

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The selected organism is Physarum Polycephalum. It was cultivated on the aforementioned split petri dish. After many attempts, I found out that the most important issue is the timing, the slime mold needs around two days to cross the bridge, after than that it will remain on its side, in contrast, earlier than that it does't cross the bridge.

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For capturing the electricity, I use the capacitive sensor method.

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Arduino sketch : File:sensor_reading.ino

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At the beginning, I captured the electricity form my hands for observing a number to make a differentiation between the electric potentials from human being and microorganism.

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Then, I connected the wires to the organism.

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The captured number from my hands is around 6000 - 7500, from the Physarum Polycephalum is around 10 - 21 and more stable.

Because of the significant contrast between each organism, it can be discriminated to generate the different visual. In this case, I experimented with two organism, human and Physarum.

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Max/msp patch : File:diybioproject sirin 2019012901.maxpat

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The generated visual from Physarum's electric potential.

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The generated visual from Human's electric potential.

As the images above, the shapes' density depends on the serial read number and the styles are characterized separately.

Further possibilities are to prepare more organisms and program the specific visuals for each of them, since I've worked with many organisms for this project and I noticed that they actually have slightly diverse electric potentials. Below here is the experiments that I did for this project.

The Setting

The ideal setting is not only to build the installation space, but also to produce a suitable place and environment for the organisms. The main element of the installation is the counter that has all the matter appliances built-in.

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The electrical conductivity data from the chosen organisms is going to be generated with Max/msp into a visual, then that visual will be projected onto the wall.

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Further research

References