Maróy Ákos » log

bio.display on the front page of the Hungarian online newspaper HVG

akos — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:02:18 +0000

the bio.display project is featured on the front page of the Hungarian online newspaper HVG, together with other bio art projects.

HVG article – in Hungarian

our 3d printer being utilized by hackerspace budapest

akos — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:12:22 +0000

The Fab@Home 3D printer I used to create the bacteria prints is now being utilized by hackerspace budapest, a new formation created by IT enthusiasts in Budapest, Hungary. I really hope they will make good use of the hardware & contribute to the effort of developing a cross-platform control software for the Fab@Home printer.

Infective Art: Bacterial Photobooth

akos — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:01:08 +0000

Simon Park & Anne Brodie have created a photo booth where they take photographs by illuminating their subjects by bacterial bioluminescence – light generated by bacteria – instead of traditional light sources.

The created images are quite interesting.

Bioart Windsor blog entry

Printing by growing bacteria on paper

akos — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:52:45 +0000

Jelte van Abbema just won the Dutch Radio Prize for his project – printing by letting bacteria grow an fill in the area that should be colored.

Congratulations!

via de zeen

bio.display presentation at the Budapest New Technology Meetup

akos — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:45:13 +0000

Yesterday I had the privilege to present bio.display at the Budapest New Technology Meetup. Here’s the video – albeit in Hungarian:

Maróy Ákos – bio.display from Budapest New Tech Meetup on Vimeo.

hm, didn’t work out

akos — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:25:08 +0000

Jos Arents just informed me that the experiment done yesterday didn’t really work out. It seems that the transformation of pHluorin to the XL1blue and DE21(DE3) E. Coli strains didn’t seem to work out, as there’s no visible inidication of the fluorescent protein being there.

keeping them active

akos — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:52:43 +0000

Today I had a chance to look at ways they are keeping yeast and bacteria and similar organisms active for extended periods of time. The idea is that you have to control their apetite for replication, have to provide them food and clean their excrement. This is all done the way you’d think from a 1950’s movie: tubes lead in and out of a container, carefully controlled to provide growth inhibitors, nutrients and get the unneeded stuff out.

Quite interesting and elaborate, actually.

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running out of options

akos — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:35:47 +0000

It seems that the results for the experiments done so far are not pointing in a positive direction. In some strains the fluorescence is just not visible to the human eye. In others, it seems that while the appropriate DNA is there, it’s just not expressed, so the fluorescent protein it should build is just not around.

Today we put them to a test again, to see if the two DNA sections put into the same bacteria are interfering with each other. We’ll see tomorrow.

It’s also hard to pinpoint which fluorescent protein is visible enough to the naked eye. In research, the results are measured by sensitive apparatus, so there it’s good enough if the differences in fluorescence are minuscule, but still picked up by these machines. But here we’re aiming for a display tailored at humans.

Given the fixed timeframe of this project, we don’t have the liberty to engineer the proteins and DNA we need. But it seems that the ones we’d need are just not there at the moment.

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Progress on cross-platfrom C++ development

akos — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:35:26 +0000

I’ve just posted a page describing my ventures into cross-platform C++ development using CMake and Eclipse CDT. The results are mostly based on the CMake - Eclipse tutorial, and also on some experimentation / verification on my own. The post includes a description and a code sample that is a little OpenGL application that compiles & runs on all Linux, Mac OS and Windows - including development using and IDE, interactive debugging among other things.

It’s always funny to work on multiple platforms at the same time - this is something I always liked actually.

getting them excited

akos — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 11:48:00 +0000

Today I made measurements with a phluorometer (or similarly called) machine, that can provide details on the excitation levels and the nature of fluorescence on my different bacteria. Fluorescence work in a way that one has to shine a specific light on the target, and alight of a different wavelength (color) will come out as a result.

It seems that for the TorA-GFPmut3* GFP, which we’re trying to control by pH change, the excitation wavelength (color) is just too close to the emitted light for a human eye to see.

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