To create the artwork, JoWonder reproduced John Everett Millais’ well-known 1852 painting of Ophelia, using live bacteria in a Petri dish. She filmed the Petri dish using time-lapse photography, which shows the bacteria growing and shifting. Ultimately, the artwork will be displayed as a video installation, with music by Milton Merikides based on the genetic code of the bacteria, and with recordings of poems for Ophelia read by members of the public over voicemail. In reference to the bacteria's six-day incubation period and the poetry, JoWonder has called the work 6 Days Goodbye Poems of Ophelia. 

JoWonder’s use of bacteria plays on Millais’ depiction of growth and decay in the painting. “I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of death and dying, and actually I think for me life is probably more frightening than death in the sense that, who knows where our bodies begin and where our bodies end,” she says. She's enthralled by “the idea of Ophelia being a beauty but made up of something that we think is disgusting. But we shouldn’t really be thinking it’s disgusting because in fact, nine out of 10 cells in our body are actually bacteria. That’s art’s job to me -- to break down our firm idea of what we think the world is around us and look at it at fresh, fun new angles. I love it when art and science get together because I think they do that really well.”

Park had been instructing students to make simple drawings with colored colonies of bacteria for years when JoWonder contacted him. Then, he says, “the project evolved from doing simple pictures to doing a much more complicated and traditional painting. We applied to the Wellcome Trust and got funding and that’s how it started. ... I sort of went round and found bacteria that had the right colors, sent off for them, basically developed a palette of probably around 20 bacteria that had different colors and then prepared those for Jo. Jo would come in and paint using the different colored bacteria.” Park enjoyed the project so much that he is now working on others, including a bioluminescent photo booth.

Chromobacterium violaceum, a bacterium that inhibits the growth of other bacteria, was used like the black lines in a coloring book to shape the painting. Bacillus mycoides was used to depict Ophelia’s soul and breath in the animated painting. Since it represented the soul escaping, the project team called this bacterium “the death bug.” The bacterium most used in the painting was also the most difficult to find. A green bacterium was needed for all the plant life represented in the painting, but it turns out that green bacteria is not that common. Park had to look long and hard to find the Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which can appear as a green pigment or a fluorescent blue pigment under ultraviolet light.

You can participate in the project by texting or reading a poem to Ophelia at +44 0207 1839366 (not toll-free).

Do you think William Shakespeare and John Millais would like the bacterial Ophelia? Do you think this project captures Ophelia's essence? Share your thoughts in the comments section below or tell your story in the Your Stories section of our site (registration and login required). 

Image of 6 Days Goodbye Poems of Ophelia courtesy of JoWonder. 

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Belkis November 12, 2009 74.105.81.116	Omg! That's so cool!!

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