Monthly Archives: March 2012

Poetics of space, Damian Moppett, memory, and relationships

3 Replies

I was introduced, kicking and screaming all the way, to Gaston Bachelard‘s book, The Poetics of Space in one of my first courses at university. It was, as I remember it now,  a kind of meditation on structures such as houses, shells, nests, etc. and the relationship between those structures and our memories and consciousness. From the Poetics of Space, Beacon Books, 1958 (1970 printing),

A house constitutes a body of images that give mankind proofs or illusions of stability. We are constantly re-imagining its reality: to distinguish all these images would be to describe the soul of the house; it would mean developing a veritable psychology of the house.

To bring order into these images, I believe that we should consider two principal connecting themes: 1) A house is imagined as a vertical being. It rises upward. It differentiates itself in terms of verticality. It is one of the appeals to our consciousness of verticality. 2) A house is imagined as a concentrated being. It appeals to our consciousness of centrality.

The Rennie Collection (where the Moppett show is being held until April 21, 2012) is housed in one of Vancouver’s historically important buildings, the Wing Sang Building. The building houses both the Rennie Collection of art (gallery/museum) and Bob Rennie‘s businesses (real estate marketing and real estate sales). The consequence of co-locating two of Rennie’s primary pursuits (art and real estate) is that the verticality of the building or more specifically, the gallery/museum is emphasized since the gallery occupies only 1/2 or less of a building that has been split along its vertical axis.

Damian Moppett, the Vancouver-based artist whose work is being shown, has a giant mobile (referencing Alexander Calder) hanging from the highest ceiling on the building’s top floor (each of the three rooms on that floor enjoys a different ceiling height) further emphasizing the verticality.

The giant mobile, titled ‘Breaking the fall‘ (I hope I remembered that title correctly; ETA Mar.23.12 The title, according to Aaron Carpenter’s article for New York Arts Magazine is ‘Broken Fall‘), has a flaw. One of the pieces has fallen onto the floor and the mobile no longer balances perfectly. One of the themes in Moppett’s work is that art is not perfection, it takes work and he often makes that work and/or flaws visible. The pictures (cartoons/doodles) on the main floor of the gallery show the pencil lines and other marks that would usually be removed from a finished piece.

Our guide, Karen, offered a set of references for the cartoons/doodles. A student at the University of British Columbia (visual arts dept.?), she mentioned a few names that escape me at this point. For me, they were reminiscent of images from Pan’s Labyrinth (a 2006 film directed by Guillermo del Toro),

I found this image somewhere (not sure exactly where). It's either a still from or a poster for Pan's Labyrinth.

Moppett’s images are more benign but both sets of images (Moppett’s and del Toro’s) could be described as surreal.

Pottery (found on the gallery’s 2nd floor and integrated in sculptures), a form that Moppett has taken up recently, extends the notion of  imperfection. These piece are not the kind of thing one would usually find in a fine art gallery by virtue of the fact that they are, both, beginner’s pieces and pottery, i.e., craft work.

The film, which is found in the basement, is yet another commentary on imperfection. Photographed on Salt Spring Island, the film documents Moppett in a forest as he builds a trap. It mimics the shape of a sculpture (which you’ll see on the 2nd floor gallery), is flimsy, and will never function properly.

Karen informed us the film is a commentary on Canadian artists and landscape art (think ‘Group of Seven’, Emily Carr, Tom Thomson, etc.), which serves to create and extend the myth of the pristine Canadian wilderness while it is exploited. A kind of chimera if you will, artists creating a utopia that doesn’t exist anywhere except in the imagination while reality presents an opposing perspective.

I thought the film was the least successful of the pieces and I’m not sure why I think that. It seems to me that it has something to do with physicality and one’s sense of Moppett’s hand in all of his pieces.The trap that Moppett constructs is not accessible to us and so the physicality which is present in his other work disappears. It also seemed, in an odd way, that Moppett became prey to the same impulse to idealize nature that he was critiquing. The images of the forest are gorgeous and subsume what I think he was trying to portray. Maybe one of these days, he or a curator could include the trap as part of the installation rather than showing only the film.

While Moppett comments on imperfection, it should be noted that he has mastered the crafts of drawing and painting, unusual in artists trained in the 1990s (and later) many of whom have never mastered (or, if my information is correct, learned) those skills/crafts, historically associated with art. That’s something else you’ll find in Moppett’s work, historical references to art.

For anyone who might be concerned that you need an art history degree to look at the art; good work doesn’t punish you for your ignorance or, on the other hand, render itself cliché if you’re knowledgeable because it evokes universal feelings, quandaries, struggles and more. Shakespeare’s work is appreciated around the world in many languages because its power is not in the English language itself but in what his language evokes; although you might need a little help understanding things at first since daily life (to which he refers) has changed mightily since Shakespeare’s time. [I changed preceding sentence, the original is appended to the end of this posting.]

I particularly appreciated the correspondences between the pieces. Shapes, colours, themes, and characters were seen in multiple drawings, paintings, and sculptures. For example, seeing a caryatid in a painting in one room, coming across the caryatid as a sculpture in another room, having the guide mention the role caryatids play in classic art and then mixing in my own references to caryatids (admittedly few) suggested a set of relationships that were new to me.

Before I go on, here’s a caryatid and a description from Wikipedia,

Caryatid from the Erechtheion (British Museum)

A caryatid (Greek: Καρυάτις, plural: Καρυάτιδες) is a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head.

The relationships that were new to me, were the ceilings. The first caryatid (painting) was on the 2nd floor in the room with the tallest ceiling, the second caryatid (sculpture) was in the room with the shortest ceiling. The movement from two dimensions in a room with a soaring ceiling to three dimensions in a room where the ceiling seems to press down on a figure that in classical art is an architectural feature designed to hold things up evoked a set of rich relationships.

The building which I’ve always perceived as quite vertical became even more so. The tour took place on International Women’s Day and so the image of women holding things up took on a particular resonance, especially since one of the caryatids was in a building that had housed four of the owner’s wives. The reference to a classical Greek architectural feature in an historically important building in Vancouver’s Chinatown provided an interesting juxtaposition.

Each person brings their own references and experiences to the show or any show for that matter. I think what distinguishes Moppett’s show at the Rennie Collection is a kind of openness. You can see the references, you can see the imperfections, you can see the artmaking process and those factors allow for a different kind of engagement.

Moppett is the first local artist (I understand he is represented by Catriona Jeffries) to be featured at the Rennie Collection. There’s not a lot about Moppett online (in common with many artists he prefer to leave the writing to someone else; ETA March 23, 2012: Ooops, I found more.  You can find links to other reviews and commentaries of Moppett’s work here in the Rennnie Collection’s Mar.14.12 news listings) but I did find this about a 2007 show in Paris (from the French language article on Artnews.org),

Pour cette exposition Damian Moppett présente un ensemble de nouvelles oeuvres comprenant neuf peintures et deux sculptures. Plusieurs constantes marquent la pratique de Moppett comme artiste. D’abord, un électrique et personnel catalogue de références : à des œuvres et à des artistes particuliers du passé et du présent (Calder, Brancusi, Rodin, Rauschenberg, Fischli and Weiss..); à des œuvres dans son atelier ; au phénomène de la culture populaire et à des pratiques culturelles, en marges du monde de l’art. La première étape de Moppett est de recueillir et de documenter ses références, sources en fonction d’un ensemble de critères subjectifs qu’il applique toutefois de façon systématique ; les documents assemblés (qui seront ou non exposés) forment alors une archive extensible de références.

Rough translation: His show included  nine paintings and two sculptures. He referenced a number of artists in his work, as well as, popular culture and artmaking practices on the fringes of the art world.

As for the ‘consciousness of centrality’ mentioned in the Bachelard quote, I’m going to take liberties and apply that notion to Moppett’s work. In Bachelard’s description of a house there’s an interplay between the basement and the attic and the consciousness and memories one brings to both places. In the Rennie Collection building, we toured the main floor, top floor (three rooms of varying ceiling heights), the basement where Moppett’s works were displayed and the roof where they were not.

One’s consciousness and memories are affected by ‘place’. By that token, the film meant to evoke Canada and landscape art is in the basement/Canadian subconsciousness and our notions of the pristine north. Had the film been shown elsewhere in the building, or in the world for that matter, another set of memories, subconscious or otherwise, would have been evoked.

The show ends in another month and you can signup for the tours here or you can book an appointment, which is done for groups of 10 or more.

On a completely other note: During the summer, the Royal BC (British Columbia) Museum will take over the space for its first show ever in Vancouver.

Here’s a little more about what they’ll be doing, from the March 9, 2012 Royal BC Museum news release,

Curious is the overall theme of four new and concurrent summer installations created by the Royal BC Museum: Intimate Glimpses, Artifact|Artifiction, Magic Lantern and Bottled Beauty [June 14 to September 3, 2012]. Each is built around unique items and stories from the 125-year-old provincial museum and archives, based in Victoria.

Intimate Glimpses

Emily Carr – the evolution of an artist

One of Canada’s most beloved artists, Emily Carr (1871-1945) was famous for her depictions of First Nations villages and monumental art, the forests and landscapes of British Columbia. This exhibition draws on the extensive collections of the Royal BC Museum and BC Archives to explore Carr’s youth and the early period before she became recognized. It includes more than 30 of Carr’s paintings, early sketches, and illustrated ‘funny books.’ A timeline places Carr’s art alongside national and international events with many photographs of the young artist and her family as well as displays of clothing, objects and artifacts from the same period. Letters, diaries and sketches reveal intimate glimpses of her private life, friendships and activities as a young woman. New research and findings are presented and some of the material in this exhibition will have never before been on public view.

Artifact|Artifiction

Test wits with our curators

Just for fun, visitors are invited to pick up a game card and play a mini-version of the Royal BC Museum’s annual gala game. Each of 14 items on display in this room will come with a curator’s statement – but is it Artifact? or Artifiction? All items are from the museum’s collection, but the tale told about each may be true or false. Visitors can practice as warm-up for

 

the entertaining fundraising evening held each October at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria. At that event, gala-goers can quiz curators and archivists before answers are revealed and prizes awarded. Those playing the game over the summer will get the satisfaction of their score and of learning a few new things about BC’s history.

Magic Lantern

British Columbia seen through glass

In a time before colour photography, black images on glass were hand-tinted and projected by a “magic lantern.” The 1850s to 1930s was the era of lantern slides and most were made to instruct or entertain audiences. A row of enlarged backlit slide images of people and places in BC, selected from thousands in the Royal BC Museum collection, will fill a hallway gallery near an original lantern slide projector. Images include strawberry pickers in Saanich, a hiker on Grouse Mountain and a giant Nuu-chah-nulth canoe on Nitinat Lake.

Bottled Beauty

Creatures from the collection

One hundred creatures the colour of pale peanut butter, pickled in jars then artfully uplit in a darkened room, have a strangely beautiful effect. A Western Fox Snake, Bell-headed Tailed Jelly and Great Basin Pocket Mouse are just three specimens from the Royal BC Museum’s “wet collection,” thousands of animals preserved in alcohol, some of them dating back to the 1800s. Specimens like these provide the museum’s natural history experts and researchers worldwide with information on climate change, species diversity, and wildlife and habitat conservation.

Unlike the usual shows, admission will be charged.

Editing change Mar.23.12, original sentence: Good work allows you to be ignorant or knowledgeable because it speaks to you or stimulates you.

Nanoparticles go boom!

Leave a reply

MIKE3 test apparatus. (image taken from "Fire and explosion properties of nanopowders", Research Report RR782, UK Health and Safety Executive)

Michael Berger at Nanowerk has written a Spotlight essay on the explosivity of nanoparticles. From the March 20, 2012 essay,

Recent studies have found that nanomaterials – in this case dusts and powders having nanosize particles – exhibit an explosion severity which is not disproportionate to micrometer-sized materials, but the likelihood of explosion is quite high due to very low ignition energies and temperatures.

…

The review concludes that nanomaterials present a dust explosion hazard, with metallic nanoparticles being particularly reactive. Nanomaterials have been shown to display lower ignition energy and temperature requirements than larger particles. Due to this high sensitivity, explosion hazards may exist for many processes including, but not limited to, mixing, grinding, drilling, sanding, and cleaning.

The essay is well worth a read as Berger synthesizes information from more than one study and he provides some technical detail.

Canada, emerging technologies, and chemical assessments (pesticides)

Leave a reply

The Council of Canadian Academies released a report titled, Integrating Emerging Technologies into Chemical Safety Assessment, on Jan. 12, 2012. It wasn’t what I thought it might be.

Before launching into the report, it might be helpful to know something more about the Council of Canadian Academies. (Shockingly, I can’t find a description of the group in the postings where I’ve mentioned them previously.) From the Council’s About Us page (Mar.23.12 Note: I have removed links to the Council’s Board of Governors, etc.),

The Council is an independent, not-for-profit corporation that supports science-based, expert assessments (studies) to inform public policy development in Canada. The Council began operation in 2005 and consists of a Board of Governors,  a Scientific Advisory Committee and Secretariat. The Council draws upon the intellectual capital that lies within its three Member Academies – the Royal Society of Canada (RSC); the Canadian Academy of Engineering; and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

Our mission is to contribute to the shaping of evidence-based public policy that is in the public interest. This is achieved by appointing independent, multidisciplinary panels of expert volunteers. The Council’s work encompasses a broad definition of science, incorporating the natural, social and health sciences as well as engineering and the humanities.

This latest report on emerging technologies and chemical assessments is in fact a report on emerging technologies for  health and safety assessment procedures of toxic chemicals using pesticides as a test case. Here’s the reasoning (from the abridged version of the report, Report in Focus; Integrating Emerging Technologies into Chemical Safety Assessment),

Protecting human health and the environment is of paramount importance to Canadians. As such, there has been an increasing demand for improved regulation of chemicals in Canada. Nevertheless, recent estimates suggest that toxicity data are lacking for over three quarters of the chemicals on the market. In fact, this paucity of data can extend to the other components within a chemical product. For example, the active ingredients in pesticides are among the most stringently regulated compounds on the market; however, the final pesticide product may also contain data-poor formulants. Added to enhance the use or increase the stability of the pesticide product, formulants are not typically subjected to the full battery of toxicity tests that the active ingredients must undergo.

The data-rich and data-poor nature of pesticide formulation is a metaphor for the dichotomy that exists for most industrial chemicals. While there are some substances for which we have an enormous amount of data, such as pesticide active ingredients, the vast majority of industrial chemicals are extremely data-poor. (p. 1)

This specific report was commissioned by the Minister of Health. From the Report in Focus; Integrating Emerging Technologies into Chemical Safety Assessment,

All levels of government in Canada play a role in regulating the sale and use of pesticides; however, the federal government is responsible for the registration of pest control products in Canada. In May 2009, the Minister of Health, on behalf of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA), approached the Council of Canadian Academies to appoint an expert panel to answer the question:

“What is the scientific status of the use of integrated testing strategies in the human and environmental regulatory risk assessment of pesticides.”

In response to this question, the Council assembled a multidisciplinary panel of 15 eminent experts from Canada and the United States. (p. 3)

Here’s a list of the members of the Expert Panel (from the Executive Summary; Integrating Emerging Technologies into Chemical Safety Assessment),

The Expert Panel on the Integrated Testing of Pesticides

Leonard Ritter (Chair) Executive Director, Canadian Network of Toxicology Centres; and Professor of Toxicology, University of Guelph (Guelph, ON)

Christopher P. Austin Director, Chemical Genomics Center, National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, MD)

John R. (Jack) Bend Distinguished University Professor, Departments of Pathology; Physiology and Pharmacology; and Paediatrics in the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Western Ontario (London, ON)

Conrad G. Brunk Professor of Philosophy, University of Victoria (Victoria, BC)

Timothy Caulfield, FRSC, FCAHS Professor, Faculty of Law and School of Public Health; Research Director, Health Law Institute; and Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy, University of Alberta (Edmonton, AB)

Vicki L. Dellarco Science Advisor, Office of Pesticide Programs, United States Environmental Protection Agency (Washington, DC)

Paul A. Demers Director, School of Environmental Health, College for Interdisciplinary Studies; and Professor, School of Population & Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC)

Warren Foster Professor, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology; and Director, Centre for Reproductive Care, McMaster University Health Sciences Centre (Hamilton, ON)

Claire Infante-Rivard Professor, Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, Faculty of Medicine, McGill University (Montréal, QC)

Catherine Jumarie Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, QC)

Sam Kacew Associate Director of Toxicology, R. Samuel McLaughlin Centre for Population Health Risk Assessment, Institute of Population Health, University of Ottawa (Ottawa, ON)

Robert J. Kavlock Director, National Center for Computational Toxicology, United States Environmental Protection Agency (Durham, NC)

Daniel Krewski Director, R. Samuel McLaughlin Centre for Population Health Risk Assessment, Institute of Population Health, University of Ottawa (Ottawa, ON)

Paul G. Mezey Canada Research Chair in Scientific Modelling and Simulation, Memorial University of Newfoundland (St. John’s, NL)

Terry W. Schultz Emeritus Professor, Department of Comparative Medicine, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Tennessee (Knoxville, TN) (p. 7)

Getting to the point (from the Executive Summary),

“The issues inherent in the current approach to chemical testing are two-fold: to address the lack of toxicity data for the vast majority of industrial chemicals and to recognize that regulatory decisions must be based on the best available science. The Panel believes that these challenges can be best met by adopting an Integrated Approach to Testing and Assessment (IATA).” – Leonard Ritter, Chair of the Expert Panel (p. 4)

As for what that means,

Integrated Approaches to Testing and Assessment (IATA) represent a pragmatic approach that will move toxicology away from describing what happens towards an explanation of how it happens. Toxicity testing will no longer depend on the one-size-fits-all hazard-based checklist of tests currently used but rather be based on a refined and focused testing strategy tailored to the toxicity profile and intended use of the chemical in question. An IATA strategy uses a tiered approach to help categorize and prioritize higher risk chemicals; all of the existing data on a substance are compiled at the start of the testing process in order to evaluate what data gaps exist and what testing approaches would be most appropriate to understand the precise toxicological profile of that substance.

Given my interest in the toxicological impacts of nanomaterials and concerns about responding to uncertainty and risk in a timely and appropriate fashion, this approach seems promising. Of course, the recommendations may or may not be accepted and, even then, there’s no telling what implementation would look like. Still, I am encouraged.

You can find a full list of all the documents (Report, Report in Focus, Executive Summary, etc.) here.

Periodic table of cupcakes, a new subculture?

1 Reply

As I’ve commented before, ‘you never know when you’re going to encounter some science’. I was vegetating in front of the television set a week or so ago when Jill Amery of the Urban Mommies website mentioned to Fanny Kiefer on the Studio 4 show, a project for kids on their spring break, the Periodic Table of Cupcakes. Here’s what they have on the Urban Mommy website,

3.  Periodic Table of Cupcakes.  Ditto.  What an amazing way to teach chemistry to kids going in to high school – especially if they have a sweet tooth.  Kudos: Buzzfeed.  Wow.

There were five other projects listed (with more detail for those ones) on the site.

As I wanted more information, I started searching. It seems there’s a whole subculture of cupcake-baking lovers of the periodic table of elements. There’s this 2011 video celebrating chemist’s Martyn Poliakoff’s birthday, from the University of Nottingham’s Periodic Table of Videos,

Woman’s Day magazine has a periodic table of cupcakes complete with recipes but this periodic table does not have the standard elements. The editors have tailored the table so the elements relate to the cupcake recipes, e. g., the nonelement, Rv stands for Red Velvet.

The earliest versions of the more correct cupcake tables seem to date from 2009.  Here’s this picture and text from a Nov. 27, 2009 posting by Katherine on the Foodie Friday blog,

I helped my little sister bake these periodic table cupcakes for her birthday party tomorrow.

…

She’s a chemistry nerd, so everything had to be exactly correct.  Astute chem majors will notice the color-coded icing for solids, liquids, and gases, as well as the empty cupcake liner for as-yet-undiscovered element ununseptium.

CERN’s artist-in-residence speaks

3 Replies

CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics) in conjunction with Ars Electronica was looking for an artist-in-residence last fall (my Sept.21, 2011 posting). They found one, Julius Von Bismarck. From the Arts@CERN webpage,

Creative collisions between the arts and science have begun at CERN with the first Collide@CERN artist, Julius Von Bismarck starting his digital arts residency at the world’s largest particle physics laboratory outside Geneva. He was chosen from 395 entries from 40 countries around the world from the Prix Ars Electronica Collide@CERN competition launched last September 2011.

To mark this special occasion, the first Collide@CERN public lecture open to everyone will take place on March 21st 2012 at CERN’s Globe of Science and Innovation, with a drinks reception at 18.45 and with presentations starting at 19.30 [CET].

This talk will be livestreamed tomorrow (March 21, 2012) at 11:30 am PST (or 19:30 CET, which is GMT + 1 hr).

There’s not much text on Von Bismark’s website but I did find this on the about him webpage,

1983
born in Breisach am Rhein
raised in Riad (Saudi Arabia), Freiburg and Berlin
2003
Abitur in Berlin
from 2005
student of “visual communication” at the UdK Berlin
from 2006
student at “Digitalen Klasse” by Prof. Joachim Sauter
2007
student at the MFA-Programm of Hunter Collage New York
from 2009
student at Institut für Raumexperimente (Institute for Spatial Experiments) “Klasse Olafur Eliasson”

Clicking on the art pieces will get you more images and some (very little) additional text. I clicked on Versuch unter Kreisen; Ordinary lamps become circles over time to find not only images and more text but a couple of videos including this one (for which he offers no explanation),

I recognized Gale Sondergaard, Dorothy Lamour, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby because I love old movies (Road to Rio).

As for what Van Bismarck will be doing at CERN, here’s how they describe it on the Arts@CERN webpage,

Julius Von Bismarck is one of the most exciting artists of his generation, being awarded the first Collide@CERN residency by the jury for “his proposal and work which manipulates and criticises our notions of reality in unpredictable ways, often with inventive use of video, objects and public interventions”. His works are also characterised by his fascination with complex philosophical and scientific ideas as well as his profound interrogations about the purpose of the invention of technology. He is studying with the great Danish/Icelandic artist, Olafur Eliasson in Berlin.

There is more about Van Bismarck and his work here at ‘the creative project’ website in a Dec. 6, 2011 blog posting Julia Kaganskiy. The accompanying video is in German with English subtitles; the posting is in English.

Windows as solar cells using carbon nanotubes from Australia

Leave a reply

It’s not a brand new idea (windows as solar cells) as the folks at Flinders University (Adelaide, South Australia) might have you believe but it’s the first time I can recall coming across a reference to carbon nanotubes and ‘solar cell’ windows. From the March 20, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

As part of his just-completed PhD, Dr Mark Bissett [photograph with Nanowerk news item] from the School of Chemical and Physical Sciences [Flinders University] has developed a revolutionary solar cell using carbon nanotubes.

A promising alternative to traditional silicon-based solar cells, carbon nanotubes are cheaper to make and more efficient to use than their energy-sapping, silicon counterparts.

…

“The overall efficiency of silicon solar cells are about 10 per cent and even when they’re operating at optimal efficiency it could take eight to 15 years to make back the energy that it took to produce them in the first place because they’re produced using fossil fuels,” he said.

Dr Bissett said the new, low-cost carbon nanotubes are transparent, meaning they can be “sprayed” onto windows without blocking light, and they are also flexible so they can be weaved into a range of materials including fabric – a concept that is already being explored by advertising companies.

While the amount of power generated by solar windows would not be enough to completely offset the energy consumption of a standard office building, Dr Bissett said they still had many financial and environmental advantages.

“In a new building, or one where the windows are being replaced anyway, adding transparent solar cells to the glass would be a relatively small cost since the cost of the glass, frames and installation would be the same with or without the solar component,” Dr Bissett said.

The researchers are suggesting that this technology could be in the marketplace in 10 years.

Skin as art and as haptic device

Leave a reply

I stumbled across an essay, Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno Skin by Natasha Vita-More on the IEET (Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies) website newly republished on Mar. 19, 2012. (The essay was originally published Jan. 19, 2009 on the Nanotechnology Now website.) No matter the date, it has proved quite timely in light of Nokia’s (Finnish telephone company) application to patent magnetic tattoos. From the Vibrating tattoo alerts patent filed by Nokia in US  March 20, 2012 story on the BBC News online,

Vibrating magnetic tattoos may one day be used to alert mobile phone users to phone calls and text messages if Nokia follows up a patent application.

The Finnish company has described the idea in a filing to the US Patent and Trademark Office.

It describes tattooing, stamping or spraying “ferromagnetic” material onto a user’s skin and then pairing it with a mobile device.

It suggests different vibrations could be used to create a range of alerts.

The application is dated March 15, 2012. From United States Patent Application no. 20120062371 (abstract),

1. An apparatus comprising: a material attachable to skin, the material capable of detecting a magnetic field and transferring a perceivable stimulus to the skin, wherein the perceivable stimulus relates to the magnetic field.

2. An apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the material comprises at least one of a visible image, invisible image, invisible tattoo, visible tattoo, visible marking, invisible marking, visible marker, visible sign, invisible sign, visible label, invisible label, visible symbol, invisible symbol, visible badge and invisible badge.

3. An apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the perceivable stimulus comprises vibration.

4. An apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the magnetic field originates from an electronic device and relates to digital content stored in the electronic device.

5. An apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the perceivable stimulus is related to the magnetic field.

6. An apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the perceivable stimulus relates to a time variation of at least one of a magnetic field pulse, height, width and period.

7. An apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the magnetic field originates from a remote source.

8. An apparatus according to claim 7, wherein the perceivable stimulus relates to digital content of the remote source.

If you want the full listing, there are 13 more claims for a total of 21 listed in the abstract. Nokia’s initial plans are to create a material that you’d wear, the notion of tattoos arises later in the application according to Vlad Bobleanta in his March 15, 2012 article for unwiredview.com. He describes the potential tattoos is some detail,

The tattoo would be applied using ferromagnetic inks. The ink material would first be exposed to high temperatures to demagnetize it. Then the tattoo would be applied. You’ll apparently be able to choose the actual image you want as the tattoo. The procedure is identical to that of getting a ‘normal’ tattoo – only the ink is special.

After the tattoo has been applied, you’ll need to magnetize it. That means bringing the tattooed area in the close proximity of an external magnet, and going “several times over this magnet to magnetize the image material again”. The tattoo will then have enhanced sensitivity towards external alternating magnet fields, and will basically function the same way the aforementioned material attached to your skin did. Only in a more permanent fashion, so to speak.

I suggest reading Bobleanta’s article as he includes diagrams of the proposed tattoo, fabric, and fingernail applications. Yes, this could be attached to your fingernails.

Getting back to Vita-More’s essay, she was exploring the integration of nanotechnology, biotechnology, cognitive and neuro sciences (nano-bio-info-cogno- or NBIC) as applied to skin (from the essay),

NBIC is a far cry from the biological touch, taste and smell of our skin because it suggests a cold, mechanical and invasive integration. While the cognitive and neuro sciences are a bit more familiar from a biological viewpoint, they too suggest tampering with our thoughts and probing our privacy. Nonetheless, the enhancement of our human skin is not only lifesaving; it offers new textures, sensations and smells which will have their own sensorial capabilities. [emphasis mine]

New sensorial capabilities certainly evokes Nokia’s proposed magnetic tattoo. She also comments from an artist’s perspective,

What does this mean for designers and media artists? From the perspective of my own artistic practice, it means that it is natural that humans integrate with other types of organisms, that we will evolve with other types of systems, and that this evolution is essential for our future.

The idea of fusing skin with technology is not new as you can see from Vita-More’s essay and countless science fiction stories, as well, there’s research of this kind being done globally. For example, there’s research on electronic tattoos as I noted in my Aug. 12, 2011 posting (and you can find more references elsewhere online). However, these magnetic tattoos represent the first time I’ve seen interest from a commercial enterprise.

Nanocellulose as scaffolding for nerve cells

Leave a reply

Swedish scientists have announced success with growing nerve cells using nanocellulose as the scaffolding. From the March 19, 2012 news item on Naowerk,

Researchers from Chalmers and the University of Gothenburg have shown that nanocellulose stimulates the formation of neural networks. This is the first step toward creating a three-dimensional model of the brain. Such a model could elevate brain research to totally new levels, with regard to Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, for example.

…

“This has been a great challenge,” says Paul Gatenholm, Professor of Biopolymer Technology at Chalmers.?Until recently the cells were dying after a while, since we weren’t able to get them to adhere to the scaffold. But after many experiments we discovered a method to get them to attach to the scaffold by making it more positively charged. Now we have a stable method for cultivating nerve cells on nanocellulose.”

When the nerve cells finally attached to the scaffold they began to develop and generate contacts with one another, so-called synapses. A neural network of hundreds of cells was produced. The researchers can now use electrical impulses and chemical signal substances to generate nerve impulses, that spread through the network in much the same way as they do in the brain. They can also study how nerve cells react with other molecules, such as pharmaceuticals.

I found the original March 19, 2012 press release  and an image on the University of Chalmers website,

Nerve cells growing on a three-dimensional nanocellulose scaffold. One of the applications the research group would like to study is destruction of synapses between nerve cells, which is one of the earliest signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Synapses are the connections between nerve cells. In the image, the functioning synapses are yellow and the red spots show where synapses have been destroyed. Illustration: Philip Krantz, Chalmers

This latest research from Gatenholm and his team will be presented at the American Chemical Society annual meeting in San Diego, March 25, 2012.

The research team from Chalmers University and its partners are working on other applications for nanocellulose including one for artificial ears. From the Chalmers University Jan. 22, 2012 press release,

As the first group in the world, researchers from Chalmers will build up body parts using nanocellulose and the body’s own cells. Funding will be from the European network for nanomedicine, EuroNanoMed.

Professor Paul Gatenholm at Chalmers is leading and co-ordinating this European research programme, which will construct an outer ear using nanocellulose and a mixture of the patient’s own cartilage cells and stem cells.

…

Previously, Paul Gatenholm and his colleagues succeeded, in close co-operation with Sahlgrenska University Hospital, in developing artificial blood vessels using nanocellulose, where small bacteria “spin” the cellulose.

In the new programme , the researchers will build up a three-dimensional nanocellulose network that is an exact copy of the patient’s healthy outer ear and construct an exact mirror image of the ear. It will have sufficient mechanical stability for it to be used as a bioreactor, which means that the patient’s own cartilage and stem cells can be cultivated directly inside the body or on the patient, in this case on the head. [Presumably the patient has one ear that is healthy and the researchers are attempting to repair or replace an unhealthy ear on the other side of the head.]

As for the Swedish perspective on nanocellulose (from the 2010 press release),

Cellulose-based material is of strategic significance to Sweden and materials science is one of Chalmers eight areas of advance. Biopolymers are highly interesting as they are renewable and could be of major significance in the development of future materials.

Further research into using the forest as a resource for new materials is continuing at Chalmers within the new research programme that is being built up with different research groups at Chalmers and Swerea – IVF. The programme is part of the Wallenberg Wood Science Center, which is being run jointly by the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and Chalmers under the leadership of Professor Lars Berglund at the Royal Institute of Technology.

The 2012 press release announcing the work on nerve cells had this about nanocellulose,

Nanocellulose is a material that consists of nanosized cellulose fibers. Typical dimensions are widths of 5 to 20 nanometers and lengths of up to 2,000 nanometers. Nanocellulose can be produced by bacteria that spin a close-meshed structure of cellulose fibers. It can also be isolated from wood pulp through processing in a high-pressure homogenizer.

I last wrote about the Swedes and nanocellulose in a Feb. 15, 2012 posting about recovering it (nanocellulose) from wood-based sludge.

As for anyone interested in the Canadian scene, there is an article by David Manly in the Jan.-Feb. 2012 issue of Canadian Biomass Magazine that focuses largely on economic impacts and value-added products as they pertain to nanocellulose manufacturing production in Canada. You can also search this blog as I have covered the nanocellulose story in Canada and elsewhere as extensively as I can.

Nanotechnology Design Symposium at the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada)

Leave a reply

The March 17, 2012 news item about the University of Waterloo’s 3rd annual Nanotechnology Engineering Design Symposium notes,

The symposium is on Friday, March 23 from 10 am until 6:30 pm in the Davis Centre on the University of Waterloo Campus.

… Seventeen student project teams will present their prototypes that includes solutions for improved HIV and chemotherapy drug effectiveness and HIV detection, detector systems for spoiled meat and explosives, a novel display technology that works on glass and mirrors, a flexible electricity storage device, an exoskeleton glove-based human-computer interface and a high strength and a removable and residual free adhesive inspired by the nanotechnology present in the Gecko foot.

It’s a free event and visitors are welcome to browse the displays throughout the day. To get a feeling for what it might be like, here’s a video of the 2nd annual event in 2011.


The University of Waterloo’s Nanotechnology Engineering Degree programme is unique in North America according to the program’s home page.