Edith Stein Excursion

Around 11:15 the future comes walking onto the BioArt Laboratories property. This time the future looks like a group of students from Ukraine who now study at the Edith Stein College in The Hague. Their art teacher Dasha Tsapenko noticed the students’ interest in bio art during class. After that, she put in the work that has led to a visit to BioArt Laboratories. The group that consists of roughly 24 students is mixed, and not all of them understand English, but the accompanying teachers act as wonderful translators.

Their visit starts with the guided tour around the grounds given by our own Wing Tai Cheng: “These buildings are one of the few historical properties in and around Eindhoven that are left from the WWII period.” They are a reminder that history is something to learn from and not something to repeat. A message that the students couldn’t agree more with.

The tour leads them, among other things, past the Tree Antenna and Aquatecture. The students look around with curiosity in their eyes. BioArt Laboratories is a place where you can cross the bridge between imagination and reality. An appropriate message to send the students, because even though something hasn’t been done yet, doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

Then the tour leads them into the laboratory building where microbiologist Roy Celi eagerly waits to give a workshop about bacterial art. He enthusiastically talks about why bacteria are good and how they were an inspiration to Alexander Fleming to start making art with it. Beautiful paintings made with bacteria give the students an impression of how you can use bacteria in artistic ways. 

Not too long after, the students get a chance to try it out for themselves. Divided into small groups, they each stand around a table and start drawing onto agar inside petri dishes with white or yellow bacteria. They have been given some example pictures which they can trace or they can, completely in line with the essence of BioArt, draw whatever their imagination comes up with. 

After two days the cultures have grown enough in order to see the picture, but the result after five days is nothing less than surprising and simply wonderful.