Eleanor, Fiber, 2025
Project Overview
I used stencil bacterial printing with white E.Coli (HB101 + pBRKan + pDGSpt – LacZ) to create an ASCII image of two hands playing string games. We used CRISPR to modify the LacZ protein to produce white cell colonies. I then translated an image into an ASCII text sequence and translated it once more to the stencil on agar. The result was a low legibility of this string of translations. I was thinking about Donna Haraway’s Staying with the trouble, chapter 1 where she introduces the idea of SF — Speculative Fabulation/ Science Fiction/ String Figures/ Situated Feminisms — and how this worlding related to my own work.
Process
I poured 10 square plates + two large Pyrex dishes with LB Agar + KIX + SPt (I may or may not have put the wrong amount of X-gal in my antibiotics)
Laser cut Kapton stencil at settings 95/80/1000
Tried the flicking method but it didn’t spread the cells evenly (also the stencil had moisture on it so the cells spread under the stencil after being flicked onto the surface). Next, I used a mini spray bottle and sprayed the cells onto a plate inside a plastic bin. This processes worked a lot better.
The white cells were not too bright on the clear agar. In the future I would experiment with adding calcium carbonate to the agar or by using the blue e.coli for higher contrast.
