Work in progress based on initial meetings with researchers at the Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts and Science, Hubrecht Developmental Biology Lab, Utrecht University.

From my Project Notebooks:

Genetic Sculpture
The themes of this project focus on the signals of life and death and how these are built into the biochemical instructions of the living cell. Installation artworks are planned that will present and explore how the architecture of the body is genetically determined based on living heart morphogenesis and the prolonging of the limbo state.

Conserved Topography
Genes that disrupt pathways associated with cytoskeleton, cell adhesion or formation of a highly organised extracellular matrix during organ formation have the potential of perturbing normal heart looping as well as the formation of a single heart tube. In addition, if there are perturbations resulting in endocardial changes and the dorsal mesocardium, these will also have adverse effects on looping. What causes cells to line up and make a heart tube ? How are pre-cardiac cells at the molecular level identified? In exploring the embryonic stages leading from early gastrulation to the formation of a tubular heart the work will evoke the implications of genetic metaphors and allow spectators to remotely view the signals of death in the genesis of life.