CyanoBonsai Project
2008-2013
(Cyanobacterium, Nostoc sp., culture media)
This is a bacterial bonsai project to let filamentous cyanobacteria, which had been isolated from our university pond, make three-dimensional bubble architecture. The width of the bacterium is ~2 mm, while it grows to be filamentous with multicellularity. Upon a certain condition the artist developed, they are able to form bubbles by combing their photosynthetic growth and oxygen evolution. The initial surface is very thin with only an essentially single cell layer, but the size of the bubble reaches ~2 cm in a diameter, corresponding 4-km bubble structure with single-layered humans. Thus, the bubble is “huge” architecture for the species. Interestingly, most of bacteria become gradually dead but remaining bacteria often form next colonies on the surface of the residual ruin (dome) with quite different morphology under the microscope. Hence, the living history of ancestral generations dramatically affects the way of living in the descendants.
