{"id":197225,"date":"2024-10-08T11:24:32","date_gmt":"2024-10-08T16:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/10\/when-bacteria-are-beautiful"},"modified":"2024-10-08T11:24:32","modified_gmt":"2024-10-08T16:24:32","slug":"when-bacteria-are-beautiful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/10\/when-bacteria-are-beautiful","title":{"rendered":"When Bacteria Are Beautiful"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/when-bacteria-are-beautiful.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Aesthetic bewilderment is a kind of common ground in science and art, an engine for new ideas in both disciplines, writes Brazilian artist Vik Muniz in the introduction to a new book of photographs and essays about bacteria by microbiologist Tal Danino. That book, titled <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rizzoliusa.com\/book\/9780847899869\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"Beautiful Bacteria: Encounters in the Microuniverse (opens in a new tab)\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" class=\"\">Beautiful Bacteria: Encounters in the Microuniverse<\/a><\/em>, was published last week.<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XC5686nBOf4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Danino collaborated with Muniz on a number of projects\u2014including<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=XC5686nBOf4\"> one<\/a> that involved making art out of viruses and cancer cells\u2014when Muniz was a visiting artist at MIT. \u201cI think that scientists oftentimes see a beautiful pattern and wonder about the underlying processes that make such a pattern happen,\u201d says Danino when I ask him what aesthetic bewilderment means to him. Take the complex architectures of the snowflake, the markings on the coats of animals, or the fractal-like arrangements produced by some communities of microbes. \u201cI think that there\u2019s a lot of scientific work that just begins with a scientist saying, \u2018Wow, this is such a cool pattern or dynamic process and I really want to study it,\u2019\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aesthetic bewilderment is a kind of common ground in science and art, an engine for new ideas in both disciplines, writes Brazilian artist Vik Muniz in the introduction to a new book of photographs and essays about bacteria by microbiologist Tal Danino. That book, titled Beautiful Bacteria: Encounters in the Microuniverse, was published last week. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-media-arts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}