Technology porn!

It looks remarkably like a bone, but isn't.

The more deeply scientific my work becomes in the Ossificatorium project, the more ABSTRACT it becomes. This is counter to what we might believe about science - we see science as "cold, hard fact" and as evidence-based. In fact, it is often very much the opposite: it is thoroughly esoteric half the time if you dig deeply enough into it. This might disrupt our notions of science as 'credible'.

During a recent studio visit with my peers (who came to my studio/lab), I explained to them the relevance of digital information and the use of crystals in my current project. I referenced my training in LASER safety and in understanding the mechanics of how lasers work (LASER is an acronym, which is why I have it capitalized: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation). What does LASER really mean? It means that crystals are used in the laser machinery to amplify a certain frequency of light particles (ultraviolet, infrared, etc). Photons (light particles) are made to bump up against other atoms and change the frequency level of their electrons (meaning their orbit around the nucleus of the atom), so that the electrons move, and in the process emit more photons (when electrons change frequency they naturally emit more light). Those photons are focused to create a laser beam. Lasers are the light created through the manipulation of energy via crystals (like sapphires, rubies, tourmalines and emeralds). Believe it or not, this is actually very much related to 'energy work' done by 'healers' with crystals on the body - they are simply operating within a different framework, utilizing a more intuitive versus scientific process. Somehow, we see this kind of work as infinitely less legitimate, when there is actually a scientific basis for it. But that is very new. I'll come back to healers in a moment.

In giving a research presentation to an audience that included members of the scientific community, I was engaged in an interesting discussion about the differences (and similarities) between scientific process and artistic process. As a creative researcher balancing on the edge between the two realms, this is a pertinent part of the discourse around the work that I'm doing. IN fact, the work that I'm doing is very much hovering right over that edge between what's real and what's representational, which is such a complicated position to hold - quite mind-bending, really. The work in the Ossificatorium project is both real and representational at the same time. Science works in the 'real' while art works in the 'representational', traditionally. BioArt fits much more neatly within the scientific category of 'real' than what I'm doing, even. The mock ossified objects I'm creating are all at once real biological processes while also mimicking and representing real biological processes. The difference might be that the osteogenesis I'm performing in my studio/lab is not producing living material, but then again, that depends on your definition of living! My sculptures do 'grow' on their own, according to their material nature.

A key question I ask myself lately is: Can artistic research also be credible scientific research? I'm not a scientist but I have legitimately turned my studio into a Type I biology research lab. I have biohazard training certifications all over the wall. The research I'm doing is both aesthetic as well as scientific, yet I work on a scientifically amateur level (with some very high tech equipment) while functioning as master of aesthetics. My real challenge is, of course, aestheticizing scientific research. While science comes with its own distinct aesthetic, (e.g. lab coats, nitrile gloves, beakers, etc), creating something like visual artworks from the research is a definite challenge. One can easily get lost in producing technology porn. The work needs to be more than that. It needs to actually comment on something, and be beautiful/interesting to look at.

Synchronicities continue to abound in this work for me - this morning I randomly stumbled across a marketing presentation for a Japanese high tech digital microscope manufacturer, Keyence, and so went in to the conference room (in the Engineering wing of my building) to check it out on my way to my studio/lab. The microscopes (priced at around $65,000 each) were truly impressive and I brought in some tissue samples to get some imaging done. The image at the top of the post is my favourite of all the images I was able to capture - it is a piece of dried hog gut. Here are some more of my microscopic images (speaking of technology porn):

dried hog gut, a smaller section

cat skull bone

a strand of wet hog gut lit from top and backlit (comparison image)

Sorry, but I'm keeping these images really small for dissemination on the Internet for now, until I figure out exactly how I want to use them in my work. The hog gut tissue, in the first image, really and truly resembles fabric where it is torn, which is so interesting. Our flesh is structured from fibres that form a fabric mesh around and throughout us. The strand of hog gut that is magnified and shows top and back lighting is about twice as thick as a human hair when not magnified. I was searching for neurons but I didn't find any, leading me to believe that pig intestine must not be as intelligent as human intestine. What is really synchronous about this event is that I had just finished printing some large format photographs that I'd constructed as 'fake' microscopic images from the macro shots of my pieces that I've taken. Somehow I drew the real thing to myself through this act of pretending.

Reza informed me that he would come back to meet with me privately and do some more imaging for me, that this would be good advertising for him. Win-win! I asked him if he's worked with artists before and he said no. However, he did show me a specimen he carries with him from a project he's done for archaeologists: a single human tooth from an archaeological dig, very old, that had completely crystallized into a beautiful, transparent crystal. A human tooth as a single crystal! It was one of the most beautiful objects I'd ever seen. I wish I had a photo of it but perhaps he will let me take one the next time I see him. Thank you, Reza! Now imagine the entire skeleton as a crystal.

Back to healers. I must share that when I do further cell culture growth, I will be collaborating with a hypnotherapist/energy healer in growing the cell cultures. He will not be in Australia with me (should the research take place at SymbioticA) but will be collaborating distantly, sending energy from Montreal to the cell cultures, to see what effect this might have on their growth. This begins to get into quantum physics, of which I am a big believer. Our experiments will be enlightening, no doubt. I will have a control group of cell cultures that do not receive the 'psychic' energy and one group that does. I'll keep you posted on that collaboration once it begins to unfold. This collaborator, Jack Cain, is a certified hypnotherapist and a member of the Association of Registered Clinical Hypnotists, as well as a multi-linguist, professional translator and information management consultant. He is the perfect collaborator for my project, which uses haptic intelligence and energetic communication systems of the body at the cellular level as its framework.

RESOURCE: www.keyence.ca 

On Expansion: neurocognitive lessons from the elderly

Drawing by Hazel.

The intelligence of the body and the way this intelligence operates independently of our controlled, rational thinking, was shown to me clearly today. I spent my morning leading an art activity at a local nonprofit private residence for elderly women. They are in their 90s and in various stages of "neurocognitive disorder". Our activity, which was to be pinhole art, began with drawing. These ladies met the challenge of filling a blank page with a variety of responses, some heart-wrenching. Two ladies simply dozed off in their chairs, another slowly traced a piece of lace to make a pattern, and one sighed, "Oh dear, oh dear", stumped by what to possibly draw, concerning herself instead with a peeling edge on the surface of the work table, continuing to repeat, "Oh dear, oh dear" as she picked at it. Another lady sat repeating that she just wasn't good at anything. Hazel, perhaps most advanced in age and who had been an artist earlier in life, simply began and followed the green pencil movements with a detached interest, clicking her dentures together in her mouth absentmindedly. When I asked her what she was drawing, she informed me it was just what she saw. She sat off a little by herself, physically requiring more space in order to accommodate her needs and so I worked at the main table and checked in with her every five or ten minutes. The above drawing is what she produced. I noticed her looking at the cuff of her sleeve a lot as she drew.

Hazel had been somewhat cranky and demanding when she first came into the room, wanting to know what was going on. We were introduced and she sat down, mumbling with irritation, somewhat incoherent. Fifteen minutes into her drawing, Hazel transformed. I asked her if she had been drawing the pattern on the cuff of her sleeve and she said, surprised, "No!" Then she explained it.
She began to express the most eloquent thoughts to me, about how every experience is an expansion and how it took her till old age to realize that she could feel and experience multiple things at once, both physically and emotionally. When I asked her what she meant by expansion, she expanded her mouth into a wide smile and said, "Just like that." She asked me to feel her body in order to understand what her drawing meant: to run my hand along the bottom of her back to 'see' the thickening of the lines she'd drawn, to feel her hands and how they progressed from cool to colder across to her smallest finger. The lines in her drawing, changing in thickness, represented 'expansion' of experience as well as her fingers and spine. The thickest line, she told me, was her spine. She showed me how she moved her body to adjust her spine, to expand it, in order to alleviate the pain there. She spoke about how movement was expansion, and experience was expressed through movement, of her pencil, of her body, of her awareness. Hazel's lucid thinking was profound and I am not doing it justice here, because I can't put it together quite like she did. She kept telling me that this was a wonderful experience, that it was fun, but importantly, not silly, just very fun. I asked her to explain to me the difference between fun and silly, and she explained it thus: "Think of a lady getting dressed to go out. She dresses for fun. Now think of how this is different if she dresses to be silly." Point made. When Hazel finished her drawing and telling me everything she had to offer, I began to clean up the paper and pencils and other supplies. She quickly lapsed into an incoherent state, repeating as if a mantra: "mama mia mama mia mama mia", punctuated by other utterances that were not words at all, but something like grunt/screeches. I was astonished at the switch.

Here is what the woman who kept saying, "Oh dear, oh dear" eventually put down on paper as her drawing:

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? TO HISTORY?

What I witnessed with these ladies was a profound transformation from a general cognitive detachment from physical 'reality' as we understand it, to an expressive, almost automatic 'voice' that emerged when their creativity was engaged. The messages from the body and the abstract conceptualization of those messages through art moved me very deeply. Listening to Hazel's articulation of her 'movement', physically, artistically and in terms of her self-awareness and expansion, as all interconnected and multidimensional while also very simple, was like hearing the voice of a truly expanded being speaking to me from somewhere greater. It was, for me, not so much that these ladies were "neurocognitively disordered" but perhaps existing in an expanded neurocognition, one expressed best through the voice of the body and creative channels. When I told Hazel that she was speaking my language, she smiled hugely, clapped her hands and said, "Yes."

A recombinant rhyme

"What's recombinant rhyme? It's like how they add a snip of the jellyfish's glow-in-the-dark gene to bunnies and make them glow green; by snipping up pieces of sound and redistributing them throughout a poem I found I could get the poem to go a little bit luminescent." -- Kay Ryan, interviewed by Sarah Fay for the Paris Review

GFP Bunny (Alba), 2010 | Eduardo Kac

Poet Kay Ryan is referring to Alba, the glowing rabbit, otherwise known as GFP Bunny, the work of bioartist Eduardo Kac, produced in collaboration with French geneticist Louis-Marie Houdebine (in fact, Kac coined the term BioArt). What really interests me about the above quote is the way that BioArt and the concept of BioArt has entered the cultural vernacular enough to become metaphor for other creative expressions, such as hybrid poetry techniques, as exemplified in the quote. BioArt, at the cutting edge of artistic practice, is already commonplace.

This past week was Open Doors | Portes Ouverts (open studio week) at Concordia University and I had a number of very interesting visitors whom I shared enlightening conversations with (meaning the dialogue with them was quite enlightening for me). One visitor, Trevour Gould, the Graduate Program Director for the MFA program, advised me to look to the advent of Land Art in the 60s and 70s as the first example of artists manipulating living organisms within their practice and hence, the first instances of critical discussion around the ethical issues arising from using 'life' as an art material.

I initiated a new part of my Ossificatorium project during open studio week: to video record my visitors (my willing visitors) speaking with me about their thoughts on BioArt, its ethical implications, the cross-overs of Art into Science, what artists might have to offer Science and methodologies in research or even systems of accountability, as well as discussing the links between Science and Religion. These are all my main areas of consideration with The Ossificatorium and so digging into the collective mind of a public in order to ascertain what perceptions and feelings are out there about the kind of work I'm doing is essential. This is, in particular, because I haven't completely sorted out for myself yet how I feel about some of the issues. Mr Gould informed me that I would need to take a position on these very issues in preparation for my thesis defence.

I will edit and compile these interviews to produce a short science mockumentary, built incorporating the conventions of the Netflix-style "science" documentaries - you know: the ones where scientific proof about alien visitations around the time the pyramids were built is presented in repeated sequences of dubious images. My point with this mockumentary? To have people question the validity of what they take for granted as scientific fact. The fact is, storytelling is a huge component of our scientific truths. Corporate-crafted narrative, misinformation distributed via Internet websites are great examples of such. How can we discern anymore who the real 'author'ity is? Peer-reviewed scientific journals? How credible are they? These are the questions I want left hanging in the minds of my audience. Scientific sensationalism has a *huge* market and journalists are all to quick to attempt to profit from it.

The rest of The Ossificatorium project is coming along smashingly well. My research continues to link concepts together that I've been working with separately, various intuitive streams that in the end, all relate to each other in mind-blowing overlaps. Since the last post, a vast amount of research has been done, a good portion of which I still haven't documented. However, the summary of what I have documented I will share here. The below slides were presented as part of a talk that I gave at Hexagram just about two weeks ago. My audience was a wonderful mix of artists, a chemical engineer, a biohacker, PhD candidates and so on. It was the first time I had the opportunity to share my research just as research (versus as aesthetic objects that stem from my research), so I was thrilled. I video-recorded the talk but alas, the sound was shoddy and so the recording is useless. I need a qualified camera person the next time.

Below, the presentation slides, with text that is as close to possible to the presentation I gave:

Hexagrad Presents: The Ossificatorium – A study of haptic intelligence in tissue engineering biomimesis through organic textile matrix construction, a talk by WhiteFeather

Tuesday, January 28 at 12:00pm | Hexagram Resource Centre EV 11.705

I must mention funding support from Hexagram | CIAM and SSHRC. Other funding sources include from Concordia's Faculty of Fine Arts as well as from the School of Graduate Studies at Concordia.

I speak about my current research project, THE OSSIFICATORIUM, within the framework of haptic intelligence, textiles, tissue engineering and biomimesis in my studio practice. Here are some basic definitions that I feel are crucial to the understanding of my subject matter: 

 

HAPTIC of course has to do with our sense of touch, or the communication between membranes (surface to surface contact), and involves our body’s sense of itself and sensing the pressure of movement. This is important for understanding the intelligence of the body and my use of the term HAPTIC INTELLIGENCE refers to this intelligence of the body, the communication systems within the body and how this relates to the hands (or the digital) and the activity of hand-making and with manipulating the architectural design of the body.

THE BIOMIMESIS I’m carrying out in the current project is, in a way, a representation of tissue engineering through the creation of art objects in my studio. In preparation for my three-month tissue engineering residency at SymbioticA, I’ve been mimicking certain parts of the process of osteogenesis in the creative construction of imitation bones.

My creative process is generative, meaning the making or doing comes first and the theory and outside validation/confirmation comes last. In working intuitively, I put things together in a way that feels “right” but I often don’t have tangible reasons for why I make the decisions I make. It’s a nonlinear process of play with arrangements and associations and juxtapositions and techniques in a mish-mash of making including making mistakes. The mistakes are also GENERATIVE and this is the way most artists work, I think.

I did not draw inspiration for the above piece, entitled Devour, from looking at anything or doing research. It was a blind, intuitive process, with the thought of devouring as a general concept I had in mind due to what the materials and shapes made me feel, something akin to flies on a corpse. I (much later) came across the image of the bubonic plague bacteria, sent to me by my studio and research assistant, Carlos Jabbour. It bore a striking resemblance to the devour piece, and the image shows the bacteria, Yersinia pestis (the tiny dark pairs of ovals), which kill the host by cutting off the communication between cells, shutting down signaling and gaining cell entry to essentially devour the cells. This piece was a precursor to any of the work I’m doing now with tissue engineering and biomimesis but totally encapsulates the concepts I’m now interested in.

Here (above slide) we have a microscopic image of healthy bone structure on the top left which shows an organic, lace-like web of tissue. The disease, osteoporosis, causes porosity and brittleness of the bone due to the excessive loss of protein, mineral content and calcium, meaning the breakdown of tissue structure. The image on the right (top image) shows that loss of protein (which is its collagen webbing) and minerals and in particular, calcium crystals. 

Healthy bones continuously remake (or reknit) their structure. The cycle consists of bone resorption followed by bone formation. During bone resorption, the bone cell types known as osteoclasts chew up bone material, causing bone loss, and then "commit suicide". Cell types know as osteoblasts then lay down bone material required for bone formation. This communicative, symbiotic process works to ensure that bone architecture (the scaffolding) can be adjusted in order to accommodate mechanical needs of the body as well as repair damages in the bone matrix. 

Some doctors and researchers, such as Dr Rex Newnham, have attributed the malfunction in this process, the miscommunication (which leads to osteoporosis) to a Boron deficiency. He explains that Boron is a naturally-occurring trace mineral that is found in the common household cleaning agent known as Borax. Chemical fertilizers in the soil inhibit the ability of plants to uptake boron from the soil, leading to reduced amounts of boron in the human diet, and thus, deficiency which can lead to osteoporosis. 

Bones are primarily structured from a collagen matrix populated with hydroxyapatite crystals (which are a form of calcium). Hydroxyapatite makes up 70% of bone. Without Boron, some researchers such as Newnham believe that the hydroxyapatite crystals leave the bone matrix and deposit themselves elsewhere, such as in the joints, causing osteoarthritis. 

The image (2) of the actual lace on the bottom right is a lace fragment that was unearthed from a grassy mound in Oklahoma, one of the ten Spiro Mounds, a place that is known to contain a number of indigenous artifacts. The Spiro Mounds were a ceremonial and burial site used by the Spiro peoples between 800-1450 AD and are collectively known as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, a natural architecture utilized for community activities, trading and ritual meant to strengthen and maintain the social fabric of the culture. Interestingly, the lace was partially preserved underground because of its proximity to copper plates, the metallic properties of the copper working to prevent its complete deterioration by inhibiting the growth of bacterial organisms. As an interesting side note, copper is used today as a pesticide and is known to cause death to organisms by rupturing the cell membrane. I’ll come back to the use of copper in my work further in the presentation.  

Kader Attia, The Repair from Occident to Extra-occidental Cultures, slide projection still, 2012.

IN TERMS OF bone formation and its endless repair function, the activity of the cells and how this relates to the activity of human culture, I want to bring in the idea of “the reparative” as a cultural impulse. The work of artist Kader Attia, who was featured in Documenta 13, looks at reparation as not only an individual material or biological action, but also a collective means of societal restructuring. In the essay on Attia's work, “The Repair from Occident to Extra-occidental Cultures”, Serge Gruzinski states, “A modest operation, often erased from the sources, and, in theory, made to remain invisible, reparation, on reflection, soon appears to be ubiquitous. By dint of listing its uses, we soon realize that it appears as a major and constant reconstruction process or simply one of cultures and societies construction. In history, absolute innovations as far as total destructions remain the exception since we wouldn’t know how to start from scratch and there will always be remnants to fix or things to redo. Thus we spend our social and intimate existence repairing; a wound that heals is a tissue that is being repaired and cell biology teaches us that eukaryotic cells are able to repair damages caused to their DNA. We repair our machines. … reparation has become a lietmotif of Western and Asian science fiction. The Repaired is opposed to the in tact, just as the hybrid is opposed to the authentic. Consequently, neither the repaired nor the hybrid have their place in museums… To repair is also to ‘connect’ – times, people, things, and that’s why any global history must pay a profound attention to this gesture, seemingly simple and commonplace, which often consists of inventing a way to insert one world into another.” 

 

SLIDE IMAGE - Kader Attia, The Repair from Occident to Extra-Occidental Cultures, 2012. – Images of repaired African mask, and facial reconstruction surgery after the ravages of war.

Another example of a work that I completed in 2012 is the image on the left, which is a 200ft roll of No Name waxed paper, which I ran through a smocking machine, causing it to be folded into tiny pleats which shortened the final length of the paper to 21ft. That was then re-rolled and created this shape. Creating this was simply a matter of playing with a new technique and material. Later, as I began my research into bone structure, I discovered the image on the right, which is a cluster of calcium crystals, specifically calcium orthophosphate, a self-setting calcium used in bone repair. The calcium orthophosphate provides structural support through the density of the compacted crystal formation. 

Further research revealed to me that the OSTEON, which is the hard outer part of bone (versus the spongey inner part), is structurally very similar to the piece I created, a structure that resists bending. The resemblance of textile-based structures to in vivo, microscopic architecture is a primary area of interest for me. What I’m also interested in is the possibility of introducing new architectures to the body through textile-based manipulation to improve the human condition, for example: in order to increase structural integrity where it is needed (as in the case of bone loss, flexibility or inflexibility). I am NOT a scientist and don’t pretend to be a scientist, but the sensibility that I can bring to scientific exploration through my knowledge of fibres and textile structure has the potential to be an important contribution. 

This video still was captured from a video on YouTube. My apologies that I have lost the link - however, there are SO MANY interesting YouTube videos on osteogenesis and bone structure. Go searching!

I briefly spoke about my experiences with learning the craft of tissue engineering at the Pelling Laboratory for Biophysical Manipulation, at the University of Ottawa this past summer. This was a three-day workshop in wet biology practices towards the goal of creating semi-living three-dimensional sculptural forms and was led by Oron Catts, the co-founder and director of SymbioticA International Centre for Excellence in Biological Arts and Andrew Pelling, the Canada Research Chair in Experimental Cell Mechanics. 

Image 1 is a piece of tissue that I prepared for the process of decellularization. Decellularization is basically submerging tissue in a chemical solution in a magnetic stirrer for about 24 hours until all of the cells have been removed from the matrix.

Image 2 shows a decellularized piece of tissue, so that you can see that transparent webbing, which is the actual collagen matrix. This naked matrix is then used to enculturate with any cell culture you choose. 

Image 3 shows one of the cell cultures that I successfully grew in the Pelling Lab. This sample is C2C12s, which are mouse muscle tissue cells. You can see that these cells are suspended in hydrogel. Hydrogel, which is what contact lenses are made of, and what is put into baby diapers to absorb and solidify urine, is also a friendly place for cells to proliferate. It’s solid, so cells can, instead of just growing in a single layer on the bottom of a pitredish, grow into whatever shape you pour the hydrogel into.

Image 4 is me in the Pelling Lab inspecting various cell cultures, including HeLa cells, or cervical cancer cells through a microscope to make sure they’re happily growing and are well fed. 

Image 5 is a 3D print of two human vertebrae, printed from a digital file with a cellulose polymer. Cellulose, being friendly to cells, creates a perfect 3-D structure which can then be seeded with a cell culture. This is the third way to build a scaffolding in order to grow a semi-living 3-D form. 

Image 6 is an image of research done by researchers at the Pelling Lab, a decellularized apple on the left, leaving only the cellulose scaffolding of the apple form, and on the right, a decellularized apple scaffolding that has been repopulated with mouse muscle tissue cells, effectively producing a mouse muscle apple which when stimulated with an electric charge, might twitch. 

*(This information will be a repeat to followers of this blog, but was new information to my audience at Hexagram). 

With my introduction to tissue engineering and thinking about producing semi-living sculptural forms, thinking about strand-based structure, which is my area of expertise, I began to conceptualize ways of further manipulating an organic tissue matrix using textile strategies and patterning to see what kind of growth might be intentionally designed. My experiments with biomimesis have included a number of stages, the first being to experiment with manipulating animal tissue (specifically, hog gut which is readily accessible at your local butcher) with textile structures of different densities and strengths. The image on the left is hog gut that has been corked, which is a process of looping in a spiral using a cylinder with pegs at the top, to produce a knit tube structure. This tube structure was then suspended in a saturated solution of magnesium sulfate while still wet. The image on the left is a tightly knit swatch of hog gut, which was then dried and similarly suspended in a saturated solution of magnesium sulfate. Magnesium sulfate is commonly known as Epsom salts, which grow long crystals that resemble quartz points. 

Here (above) is the knitted hog gut piece a few months later and after crystals formed on the surface of the structure. Magnesium sulfate, as a mineral, has an interesting relationship to bone structure in that typically we think of Magnesium as essential to bone health, taken to help the body absorb calcium, and is promoted by natural health advocates as a preventative to osteoporosis. However, too much of it can cause hypocalcemia, meaning a calcium deficiency in the blood which can lead to skeletal demineralization, meaning it causes hydroxyapatite crystals to leave the bone matrix and thus weakens the bones. This is mainly true for fetal bones. The image on the right shows a label I produced as part of the visual representation of my research.

This next piece (above) is a tapestry woven hog gut form (dried) with copper sulfate crystals grown on it. Hog gut was then stretched over the matrix and crystals to give an outer membrane. Again, the vessel with the copper sulfate chemicals bears a label I created, again as a way to make visual objects out of my research.

As I mentioned, copper sulfate (also known as cupric sulfate), causes cell death and necrosis of the flesh by rupturing the cell membrane. When I stretched the hog gut over the copper sulfate crystals, it turned the flesh green and dark brown, imitating something like gangrene. I worked this aspect of the chemical reaction into the narrative around this particular piece of fake bone, called Osteonecrosis, which I’ll come back to. The other interesting thing about copper sulfate crystals is that they are paramagnetic, meaning they are attracted to a magnetic charge, and in particular a positive magnetic charge, or produce a positive magnetic charge. Dr Becker describes in his book, The Body Electric, that a positive charge is the “current of injury”. Interesting to note as well that electromagnetic radiation releases positive ions into the air, which are linked to all sorts of health problems.  

These next two images (above, left and right) are a looped hog gut structure which was dried and then soaked in a saturated solution of monosodium glutamate and sea salt. Interesting salt crystal shelves formed over the MSG, which remained like a hard, glossy candy. This was not what I consider a successful experiment, but is beautiful nonetheless. The next images (below) show what I consider to be the most successful fake bone I’ve grown so far, which is a loosely knit hog gut structure with Borax crystals grown onto it, and then an external membrane of hog gut wrapped over.

Those first experiments with establishing structure and crystal growth led me next to thinking about how to more consciously redesign an actual bone structure in the body that may have some superior qualities to existing bone structures. I thought about my own bone weaknesses, namely in my spine, with my crushed vertebrae due to a car accident. The design I came up with is a marriage of a well-known textile structure and a lesser known historical architectural structure, in what I call the HYPERBOLIC SPINE.

The hyperbolic spine is a continuous spiral curve around a central cord, constructed to give better flexibility and tensile strength to the spinal column. It is a new body architecture that has the fantasy of being superior to the original human spine. I’ll talk about the structure of the hyperbolic spine in a couple of stages. Hyperbolic form is a geometric form in which curves are prominent, and those curves allow a certain linear flexibility that is seemingly nonlinear. I have a limited understanding of hyperbolic form and space, because I am not a mathematician, but this is what I understand so far. 

Based on my understanding, the first image on the left is a drawing/painting of what I imagined the Hyperbolic Spine would look like using a knit structure. Typically we crochet a corkscrew shape, but since this needed to attach to a central cord, I decided to knit the structure beginning from the central cord. The central cord is the place for nerves and major arteries that nourish the spiraling bone structure. This flexible structure is capable of bending in every direction with ease. Essentially, we could all be contortionists with this spine. The image on the right is the knit hog gut suspended in a magnesium sulfate and sodium tetraborate solution – already the top of the hyperbolic spine has begun to appear to calcify in my studio as the water evaporates and the mineral deposits harden and preserve the tissue in its designed form. 

At this point, I want to reference the research findings of medical scientists in Xi’an, China, published by the British Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons. What these scientists discovered through their laboratory testing was that it is possible to successfully implant sea coral in vivo and grow bone in the shape of the coral. In the abstract of the published article, they state, “The shape of the new bone was the same as that of the coral, and there was no significant inflammatory reaction. Part of the coral in the composite was absorbed. Bone was not formed in any of the control sites. Coral and type 1 collagen are effective as a carrier to prefabricate vascular osteomuscular autografts with designed shape.” Hyperbolic growth is extremely common in many types of sea coral, and a spiraling growth common in types of seashells, meaning that my Hyperbolic Spine is possibly a feasible design for living bone tissue.  

* A referential link to the article online is given in the last slide of the presentation.

 

Lastly, I imagine the supporting musculature for the Hyperbolic Spine to resemble THIS image of the world’s first hyperboloid architectural design built by Russian engineer Vladimir Shukhov in 1896. You’ll notice the interior spiral staircase and its outer hyperboloid structure, long beams that appear to curve round but are actually straight. Hyperboloid geometry’s structural strength is typically used to support tall structures (such as a spine), and can support a great deal of weight at the top (as with a skull). The hyperbolic spine is a design in process and hopes to someday be trademarked as the spine of the future.

NEXT I’m going to jump into my work with polyhedrons, which are forms I’ve been constructing out of plexiglass, with the help of a Concordia Applied Mathematics grad student, Alexandra Lemus Rodriguez and with technical support from Antoliano Nieto, affectionately known as Tony, in the maquette lab. These polyhedrons are complex geometric forms that are found in nature everywhere, but mainly I was inspired to research and use these shapes after digging in to the world of mineral crystals and their formation. 

The image on the left is a watercolour drawing of a triangular dipyramid with all of the mathematical specs necessary to construct it. What Alexandra is helping me with is figuring out the dihedral angles, or the interior angles between each plane, so that I can divide those angles to determine the angle of bevel I need to cut the plexi edges at in order to fit the forms together. Crazy math. The image on the right is an image of a potassium aluminum sulfate crystal (or Alum), which is similar in structure except that it has four sides to its pyramids instead of three like mine. ALUM crystals are next on my list of crystals to grow and experiment with.  

This form is one of the most complex I’ve done so far, a square trapezohedron, which has eight sides of four-sided kite shapes. In this image, I’ve just finished dissolving the sides together with a solvent and am testing the form to see if it’s waterproof. THE NEXT IMAGE shows the completed form with the osteonecrotic object embedded in a gel wax medium.

 

With regard to the function of these forms, the polyhedrons are meant to be utilized as vessels for the mock ossified objects – intended to simultaneously suggest both myth-generating reliquaries and incubators for artificial life, lending both a religious and scientific sanctity to them. Reliquaries are usual religious containers for relics, or bones with some special healing or regenerative power due to the spiritual purity of the saint. In this way, they are objects that manipulate and transform the physical wellbeing of the believer who makes contact with them. The artificial womb or incubator likewise is a container for miraculous physical transformation, one of technologically-assisted life generation. In this way, science and religion, instead of being positioned as dichotomous, merge.

The above image is taken from this article on the artificial womb.

 

Behold! The magical healing bone relic of Mary Magdalene in its plexiglass reliquary.

 

THIS IMAGE is the reliquary of Mary Magdalene, encased in plexiglass, with a dubious looking bone fragment inside. Who is to say this mythological artifact wasn’t created by a well-intentioned or not-so-well-intentioned artist? Who is to say that it’s really her bone? What do you believe?

Speaking of the sacred and geometric forms, I’m going to segue now into sacred geometry. Sacred geometry is the geometry used in the planning and construction of religious architectures, sacred spaces and the creation of religious art. In sacred geometry, symbolic and esoteric meanings are ascribed to certain geometric shapes and their proportions. The below diagram shows Metatron’s cube, named after the archangel Metatron, believed to be second only to God. Metatron’s cube contains basic crystalline forms found in nature.

Sacred geometries reflective of natural mineral structural forms are seen in decorative, ritualized sacred spaces throughout the world, places of pilgrimage, of movement towards the divine embodied in architecture. Studying the sacred geometries is said to lead to enlightenment, to the secrets and truths of the meaning of life, to communication with divine realms. 

Several examples of geometrical patterning at sites of sacred communion. I was inspired to further investigate this patterning after a studio visit with Surabhi Ghosh, who validated for me the importance and relevance of the decorative.

This patterning style bears a striking resemblance to textile patterning, such as with knit lace. Of course, both have a strict mathematical basis. They also bear a striking resemblance to the Kabbalah Tree of Life, which is said to be the path to enlightenment. 

An image of decorative patterning used in Islamic architecture, with a knit lace pattern overlaid, overlaid with the Kabbalah Tree of Life.

This leads to the next component of my project, which is the decorative patterning component. On the left (image below) is an image of a knit swatch of a knitting pattern called ‘fish bone’. I felt that this pattern very closely resembled the microscopic bone structure (that I showed in a previous slide) and so I adapted this particular pattern into a pattern that I laser etched onto the interior of two of the the faces of my plexi triangular dipyramid. My use of the decorative elements in my work and their relationship to both the project as a whole as well as to textile practices and human psychology is concerned with the interdependent relationship of macro and microcosmic culture.

Pattern recognition is a basic human psychological trait. The function of pattern recognition is to recognize STIMULI, or, energy patterns that are registered by the senses. This ties in to sacred geometry but also, in stimulus response theory, a stimulus informs behavior. We can think about this on the macrocosmic level of human behavior (in terms of culture formation) but we can also think about this on the microscopic level of cell behavior within a cell culture.

The use of pattern in textile construction is concerned with establishing structural integrity. Textile patterns can be reduced mathematically to a sequence of 1s and 0s, in the knit or purl, in the lifting or lowering of a harness on loom when weaving cloth. This basic off-on patterning is directly translatable to computation and electronics, and the communication of information as we know it now in the digital world. We first learn to count with our fingers. Getting back to the Digital Age, the first computer was designed after a jacquard loom. 

In Becker’s book, The Body Electric, he speaks of the ability of bone to understand which direction to grow based on electric impulses, positive or negative, 0 or 1, left or right. This electronic patterning transmitted by the body knits the structure of the bone. The osteoblasts might receive this communication through the piezoelectric quality of the collagen matrix, in combination with the conductive power of the hydroxyapatite crystals. That’s my theory based on my research thus far, but I need to follow this up with more conclusive research and conversations with osteopaths and biologists. Piezoelecticity, which was discovered in 1880, is a charge that accumulates in materials such as crystals, bone, and as we now know: collagen and thus the whole body system. 

My laser-etched triangular dipyramid.

Piezoelectricity is electricity produced through the application of pressure or mechanical stress. Pressure can be created through the use of a magnetic polarity, positive or negative. Think of the resistance you feel when you try to push together two negative poles of a magnet. That resistance is pressure, that when in contact with a piezoelectric material, creates an electric charge. In terms of bone formation, bones increase in structural density as a response to mechanical stress and pressure applied through use. Compressed bone produces a negative charge, which is the current of growth, causing more bone to grow in that area, the structure to become more dense. The intelligence of the body is exemplified in bone’s ability to respond and communicate with itself about how to support THE PATTERNS your individual physical behaviors, rebuilt into the patterning and structural basis for your physical being.  

This leads to the third part of my project, which is the building of DIY GPS units for the objects. Again I’ve had to recruit some technical help, since I know nothing about electronics. So, I ordered the basic electronic components from a company called SparkFun, and worked with Erin Gee, also a grad student here at Concordia, who soldered the components together for me and helped me to begin setting up the coding for the unit. I'm now working with a coding expert, Addie Mersereau, to finish setting up the unit. This part of the project is still very much in process. 

The next image is taken from a book called Energy Medicine by James Oschman, a text that looks at the electrical conductivity of the body and how it functions. These images show the ‘circuitry of the body’ in the pattern of crystal arrangements that conduct charges throughout the tissues, including collagen. These microscopic arrangements bear a striking resemblance to our “invented” technological circuitry, or did we already know all of this intuitively through the intelligence of the body? 

The purpose of the GPS units is to install some of them in the polyhedron reliquaries before I abandon them in choice locations around the city. The architectures I choose as sites for the abandonment will directly reference the contents and/or shapes of the reliquaries. I’ll track the movements of the objects as they are found, moved, relocated or whatever else happens to them. This electronic communication system will send me data about the movement of bodies, the reception of the objects by the bodies, as well as a narrative that may develop around these objects and their meaning. Some of the polyhedrons are laser etched with a QR code that leads to a website I created (and is still in progress) where I’ve employed the concept of the "mutated narrative" introduced by bioartist Catherine Fargher, in the development of an organic narrative based on chance, architectural function, bones - all part science, part science fiction, part urban mythology. 

1501 McGill College, Montreal

I’m not the first to think of these correlations between crystals, textile structure, bone intelligence and electricity, and the biological and energetic applications in the world through scientific research and creative investigation. Current research is underway to grow artificial bone on a woven cloth structure by researchers in Granada. 

The above (left) image shows a microscopic photograph of the mineralization of the extracellular matrix, meaning they’ve successfully grown the calcium crystals necessary for bone formation on the woven cloth. Below on the right is the activated carbon cloth that functions as the scaffolding for bone cells. The announcement of this advance in technology has given no indication of what the cloth is made of, but it doesn’t appear to be made of collagen and the structure is a very basic weave structure, meaning it doesn’t seem that they’ve experimented with the basic structural integrity itself in their research. 

*Link to this research is provided in the last slide of the presentation.

Other researchers, such as Keith Savino at the University of Rochester’s Department of Chemical Engineering, are currently growing hydroxyapatite crystals in an investigation of the "Microstructural Engineering of Hydroxyapatite Membranes for Fuel Cell Applications". Savino explains that hydroxyapatite is a material that conducts protons and could be used in the production of an intermediate fuel cell. The image below is a micrograph of a layer of hydroxyapatite crystals grown on porous stainless steel (provided on Savino's site - link provided in last slide).  

Note how much this crystal growth resembles the image of bone cancer I provided in an earlier blog post.

So in conclusion, HAPTIC INTELLIGENCE – THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE BODY, COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS AND ELECTROMAGNETIC CAUSE AND EFFECT, CULTURE FORMATION AND BEHAVIORS, PATHWAYS, PILGRIMAGES AND THE SECRETS OF LIFE are just some of the big ideas I’m tackling with this work. It would seem that Religion and Science are not dichotomous, body and spirit one and the same in a whole system of being, that math and art are married in the creative process. 

The work that I undertake at SymbioticA will follow on the research I’ve presented and continue to push forward. In order to imagine the creative possibilities of tissue engineering with textiles and bone, I’ve had to pull from the disciplines of biology, medicine, nutrition, engineering, architecture, anthropology, sociology, mathematics and electronics. I am not an expert or even a novice, in any of these fields, but I am fluent in the language of design and creation. Bio art and tissue engineering in particular, present artists such as myself with the opportunity to imagine, collaborate and experiment in exciting new ways with many different types of thinkers, but this is also fraught with ethical dilemmas. 

It is those dilemmas especially that pique my greatest interest. For example, to view the socially-sanctified realm of science with a critical eye, to be given access to the deep institutional recesses of scientific research labs as an artist and a cultural critic is key. Key, I feel, to reinforcing systems of accountability outside of the profitable, profit-driven corporate funded research that defines our healthcare system and more importantly, writes our social mythologies and establishes our cultural beliefs around the care and maintenance of the body, and its place in the world. It is in this way that the promises of retrofuturism are revisited and questioned: Do new technologies empower us or alienate us from ourselves and each other? Can we trust it? Can we trust ourselves?