Beautiful Bacteria

“The way we visually encounter the world is often a matter of scale. For natural objects too small for the naked eye, artistic rendering usually must stand in place of the real thing. In Tal Danino’s ‘Beautiful Bacteria,’ science and art meet in a revolutionary new way. Mr. Danino has “programmed” bacteria to grow artistically — teaching some to glow rhythmically and genetically engineering others to produce vibrant-hued proteins. Though bacteria are among the earliest living things on the planet and have colonized every corner of the globe (including the insides of our guts and the outside of our skin), they are rarely considered ‘pretty.’ Our usual reactions tend to be fear and frenetic handwashing, but in Mr. Danino’s petri dishes we see instead lavender forests, fractally repeated designs, even Rorschach inkblots in bright yellow, lime green, red and pink. By growing what comes from mouth swabs, scalps, babies’ hands, drain water and more, Mr. Danino makes the invisible world visible and as unique in design as any art installation.‘Beautiful Bacteria’ may not make you love bacteria, but it will give you an astonishing new view into the rhythms of the microscopic world-and it looks prettygood ona coffee table, too.“ — THE WALLSTREET JOURNAL“In the latest revelation of the subvisual, BEAUTIFUL BACTERIA: Encounters in the Microuniverse, Tal Danino, a biomedical engineer and founder of the Synthetic Biological Systems Laboratory, isolates all kinds of bacteria, dyes them, nurtures their growth and photographs them in petri dishes lit into wild neon tondos…. [T]his is an exercise in aesthetic response. Why do we keep reading man-made things — stained glass, bulls-eyes, sonograms — into these marvelous organic accidents? Maybe we’ve reached a level of Anthropocene where humans dictate not only the habitability of Earth but its legibility, too. Life imitating art, down to its molecules.“ — NEW YORK TIMES“Aesthetic bewilderment seems like the bedrock of Danino’s new book: Here are the invisible microworlds so many of us take for granted brought to screaming life in flamboyant colors and electrifying geometries. Bacteria often inspire fear or disgust—particularly disease-causing pathogens such as Escherichia coli or Staphylococcus—but the beauty of these images draws the attention, provokes a desire to understand what the eye beholds.“ — NAUTILUS

Tal Danino is an interdisciplinary artist and scientist exploring the emerging field of synthetic biology. A TED Fellow, Danino is an associate professor at Columbia University and directs the interdisciplinary Synthetic Biological Systems Laboratory. His work has been featured in many media outlets such as the New York Times, Nature, and WIRED and his bioartworks have been featured in exhibitions around the world.