I met up with some of the really supportive staff and students working in the labs at Leeds to have a little look around and discuss a few ideas. What I love about these opportunities is how they steer and affect the work that develops ,and just a small fragment of a conversation can then develop the work in a new way .
One such example was a conversation about casting round anodes for electroplating 3d objects more efficiently. I’m interested in these as sculptural remnants of the process so making a sculptural anode that is worn in the process would be interesting avenue to explore.
It was an exciting visit as it was my first time seeing the bacteria under a microscope, alive and moving around. The tiny dot I could see had such purpose, it was incredible to see it busying itself with what it is designed for.
The cultures were being bred in flasks on little glass balls, which creates a surface for the bacteria to develop on. These are an interesting sculptural material to me.
There were also flasks with bacteria in extracting Indium from ipad screens. This is a metal that I’m actually keen to work with as at room temperature , combined with Gallium It forms A liquid alloy which I was thinking about using to draw on paper. I would then pass a current through the drawing to light up mini bulbs. I would like to have a go at extracting my own Indium.
Other exciting things I saw was the ball
Mill for powdering e waste and some
Lovely gold flakes taken from pcbs.
