bio.display

This morning we had a meeting with Mark Fluttert, responsible for lab safety at the Gorleaus Lab. The topic was how to make the final installation safe and legal. After all, we’re planning to show and move around genetically modified organisms in public space.

It turns out that to be able to do that, one has to designate the area as level ML 1 – whatever that means. Well, among others it has to be certified by municipality officials as such. It has to have a water sink to wash hands. And there has to be a way to disinfect the area if there’s some spillage of material.

As for the idea to hand out the pictures made by the visitors via the installation – pictures made by fluorescent bacteria in fact – the sad news is that they have to be killed before handed out. So somehow we have to have the bacteria create the picture, and then killed. Of course, the fluorescent protein would remain there, so the image would still be visible.

Talk about abusing living creatures for our own wanton purposes…