<p>Consistent with the Deep Data concept, this work would reproduce or reinterpret space bioscience experiments using the same organism. It appears that arabidopsis has been used extensively for gravitaxis and root development experiments, and despite my future plans to build a random positioning machine, that was not feasible on the short timescale I had to develop and make the piece.</p> <p>Being a model organism, arabidopsis has numerous documented naturally occurring and genetically manipulated mutants. One of these is the photomorphogenic mutant NW67, which will show variations in the development of the hypocotyl depending on the spectrum of light it receives at the seedling stage.</p>
Ecosystem
One Cubic Foot
How much life could you find in one cubic foot? That's a hunk of ecosystem small enough to fit in your lap. To answer the question, photographer David Liittschwager took a green metal frame, a 12-inch cube, to disparate environments—land and water, tropical and temperate. At each locale he set down the cube and started watching, counting, and photographing with the help of his assistant and many biologists. The goal: to represent the creatures that lived in or moved through that space. The team then sorted through their habitat cubes, coaxing out every inhabitant, down to a size of about a millimeter. Accomplishing that took an average of three weeks at each site. In all, more than a thousand individual organisms were photographed, their diversity represented in this gallery. "It was like finding little gems," Liittschwager says.