Last week an undergraduate student in my laboratory had to throw out a stack of Petri dishes because they had been contaminated and some mould was growing on them. One of the moulds was a large, black six sided and quite frightening looking structure. This led me to think about the recent popularity of microbiological art. It is common in laboratories to grow cultures of bacteria on some kind of gel containing nutrients, this can have the potential to be used to make beautifully images in a wonderful combination of art and science. The picture above shows bacteria that have florescent properties, this has been quite skilfully been used to make a beach scene.
The site “Microbial Art” is dedicated to this subject and has a lot of information on the artists and scientists involved in these kind of projects.
“Cooked brains” also has a feature on the work of an Israeli scientist, one of my favourites is shown bellow.
Also I recommend an article on the subject by the Society For General Microbiology entitled “The Aesthetic Microbe”.
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