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Bacteria Art Raises Money and Awareness of Cancer

WHS Lions Pride Original Story:

by Emily Yeeles for Walkersville High School Lion’s Pride

Along with an abundance of things changing in the 21st century, there is a new art that is made by cells. This idea may sound crazy, but there is a whole field that specializes in this practice.

One kind of cell that is used to create this art is cancer cells. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist, Tal Danino, and a Brazilian artist, Vik Muniz, specialize in this art. The collaborators that decided to develop this type of art are passionate about what they do. “I always loved to collaborate with scientists because Tal Danino [gave]  me an idea that we can all perhaps meet in the middle somewhere and make this perfect piece of art. It’s exactly the combination of matter and meaning,” said Muniz [2]

“Why should you use bacteria for art?” sophomore Margaret Davey asked. That’s a great question. Why should we use charcoal or paints for art? Our ancestors found mediums for art that they could use to express themselves in new ways. Bacteria is just a new medium that we can use. “I think it’s very organic,” said sophomore Patrick Huber.

The process for creating this type of art is very rigorous and systematic. In order to use the bacteria you first have to mutate them to form colonies. The colonies are moved in order to create the art. The culture/petri dish has an adhesive substance placed on it for the colonies to stick to. The culture then incubates and the colonies develop. [1] Then you can use a swab to move the bacteria around. “I think it sounds very prokaryotic,” said sophomore Jarrod McWilliams.

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The MIT scientist creates this art for money for cancer research. Bacteria art for curing cancer sounds crazy but the bacteria that is mutated is actually being developed to detect cancer. So whenever you think about art, be open minded to new forms of art such as cancer cell art and other art mediums that might be used in the future.

  1. https://youtu.be/XC5686nBOf4
  2. https://youtu.be/XC5686nBOf4

Photo created by Vik Muniz and Tal Danino, “Portrait of Tal Danino”

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