Week One

May 15th
This was the day we officially started working on our iGEM 2009 project.

This week was solely reserved for introducing us to the unfamiliar territory of what we were getting into.

We discussed two 'Claire Pentacost' Readings-

Beyond Face:

Beyond Face

Critical Inventory of BioArt:

Critical Inventory of BioArt.

The gist of these readings:

Artists work with the symbolic.The artist's consent to work and learn in public is important.

We discussed the political and cultural implications of Scientific Authority. We also looked at Tuur Van Balen's :

The Urban Geography Project:

Urban Geography project

Most of the ideas today, dealt with the use of bacteria as:

a) A sensor or Reactor - (to inputs,emotions,light etc)

b) A Producer (of energy, proteins etc)

c) A Material

-Is there any way in which we can look at bacteria from a purely non-symbiotic / non-anthropomorphic viewpoint?

-Can we use our technological "progress" to give a non-selfish gift back to our ecological siblings?

-Can we replace financial transactions with Bacteria?

May 16th
We asked ourselves to think of our own theoritical bacteria and represent it on paper.

Here are some creatures we created using techno-scientific jargon and aesthetics:

Today's Readings:

Speculative Fabulations for Technoculture's Generation:

Speculative Fabulations for Technoculture's Generation

-The article is primarily a review of the Australian artist Patricia Piccinini's work and a recapitulation of Haraway's philosophies.

-One of the things enduring about the reading was her appeal to "love" our creations, not in a techno- phillic sense but in a more nurturing and caring way.

May 17th
We looked up some hybrid creatures from mythology to expand the scope of our imagination.

Hybrid Creatures From Mythology: Gallery

Notes From NCBS:


 * The May 17th Notebook

May 19th
We spent the day in NCBS picking up some standard biological techniques such as 'Gel Electrophoresis' and looking at some of the microscopy equipment at NCBS.


 * Mukund's Brief Overview on Synthetic Biology Basics


 * Gel Electrophorosis


 * (Click here to discuss)


 * Streaking and Spreading to obtain bacterial colonies


 * Imaging


 * Discussion over Lunch

Some Images Of Our Day

Non-categorised images here

May 21st
We put down all the information that we had about learnt about geosmin. We then put down the various paths we could take in order to produce the results we wanted. This gave us a dummy model of how we could achieve the final result.

We divided ourselves into two groups and came up with two distinct approaches of representing the same model.This exercise cleared certain doubts we had, but also raised a lot of questions.

First Prototype of the Bacteria