Alien Agency: Experimental Encounters with Art in the Making (MIT Press) by Chris Salter;Andrew Pickering

Author:Chris Salter;Andrew Pickering [Неизвестный]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-04-10T00:20:00+00:00

Figure 2.15

SymbioticA laboratory fridge. May 2012. Photo by Chris Salter.

In the supply room on the second floor, Ionat is interrupted (as is the usual case) by Stuart Hodgetts, a microbiologist and SymbioticA supporter and collaborator who begins discussing the regulatory requirements of a new lab in Helsinki that is going to be set up by Oron and Ionat. Not to lose the opportunity, Ionat asks Hodgetts if there is a supply of type 1 collagen-the material we want to experiment with alongside PDMS as a substrate.

"Well, there is a method you can use for getting it from rat tails."

"Yeah, but that will take a lot of time to find the rat tails."

"We don't have any... perhaps the guys in nanotechnology..."

This brief conversation seems just odd enough to add to the general surreal quality of the morning, moving from frozen serum to procedures for chopping up rat tails in order to create a surface that we can pour our watery cells over. I begin to pepper Ionat with questions in order to learn as she re-explains and demonstrates various routines.

Preparing to unthaw the cells, we fish out the tissue flasks, pipettes, and other paraphernalia from the drawers, placing them in what appears to be some unknown but somehow logical semblance of order next to the hood. In donning the white lab coats ("the coat"), specifically, the two SymbioticA ones with phrases on the back that spell out "life is biodegradable art," I feel we are marked as outsiders and interlopers among the "real" biology researchers who rarely appear in the lab except for a few minutes to peer into the incubators and check the status of their own cells (figure 2.16, top left and right).

After firing up the hood, spraying it down and setting out the various bottles and flasks, we again engage in measurement speak as we prepare a tube of media mixed with serum. "We want to make enough media that will fit into that tube. Umm... for the T75 I put 15 mL into each. It will probably be 10." Ionat catches herself. "For 20%, 20%? No... sorry, did I say 10%? Muscle as opposed to other tissues need 20 percent. It has 20 percent and then when we start the process of myotubes we use horse serum as opposed to bovine serum because it is less quality. You want to starve it... so 20% for 50 mL is 10. So I have to put 10 mL."

Mixing several batches of medium/serum, Ionat scrutinizes my every move, never failing to point out contamination-prevention techniques and other forbidden actions: wipe the flasks coming out of the bath; toss pipettes away immediately that have even as much as touched the edges of other flasks and vials; never have pipettes collide with the vials; never keep things far away in the hood so as not to carelessly bump against them; never allow the fluid in the pipette to go above the top marked line, otherwise the filter will be ruined (figure 2.16, second row right).

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