2012 - 2013 / HackerSpace Seoul Project

Funded by KOFAC (Korean Foundation for the Advancement of Science & Creativity)
Science team: S. Yoon (Head Researcher), D. Mikesell (Hacker-in-Chief & Director), Z. Fraser (Structural Engineer)
Arts team: S. Jang (Prototyping & Production), M. Kim (Design), J. Song (Coordination)

The Living Photograph Project is a bio art and technology experiment that uses light-sensitive bacteria like a photographic film to create bacterial imagery. For this purpose, we use a BL21 bacteria strain transformed with plasmid DNA (Kaede protein), which hacks the bacterial cells to produce a pigment when exposed to UV light (350-400 nm). When exposed to light with this wavelength, the Kaede protein exhibits a red fluorescence that is much brighter, more intense and longer lasting than other proteins. Before it is photo activated, the protein emits a low green fluorescence. Using an exposure technique similar to traditional black and white photography, we put a film with a high-contrast stencil design on top of the petri dish, and breed the bacteria in an incubator under UV light to imprint the image onto the bacteria. The exposed parts of the petri dish gradually exhibit a different color, which is how a living photograph is created.

Our ultimate goal was to create a visually rich series of living photographs on an unprecedented scale by growing transformed bacteria on giant custom-made LB agar plates in a huge incubator specially made for this purpose.

Zack and I were in charge of building the custom agar plate and special incubator with optimized temperature control to store the plate and actuate its photo conversion process. Once we developed a functional incubator, we ran numerous trials and experiments on a smaller scale under Dan's guidance and with the help of our resident biologist to enhance our process and achieve a high-quality outcome.