I gave a talk about my work at Eyebeam for Upgrade New York on the 25th of May. It was really great for me to present my work from SymbioticA to a non-SymbioticA audience for the first time since I have been there and get a sense of how people outside of that rarefied environment [...]

I have realised recently that I suffer from a bad case of internalised art phobia – something about being Australian I suspect. To try and cure myself I have been applying the flooding technique here in NYC. I went to the MoMA today but I think I just exchanged my art phobia for a bad [...]

The weird thing about this city is because it is so huge, there is no sense of anything outside. Unlike in Australia where all our major cities except Brisbane have beaches and some accessible natural bush, this city is truly its own environment – buildings, cars, people and dogs. There is no ability to experience [...]

Well its my first time in NYC and I’m definitely taken with it – its not nearly as crowded and intense as I had expected, it just goes on forever. Walking through Chelsea yesterday I came upon this beautiful specimen.

Ok I take it back, its not the same. As someone said to me the small things accumulate into significant differences. For example I went to the the Grande Bibliothque today and it was chock full of people and families and cues at every counter – I can never imagine people taking their children to [...]

Familiar, yet unfamiliar. The same, but not the same. Melbourne’s uncanny double. I have landed in a parallel universe on the other side of the world. It is a comfort to know that lives are much the same half a day behind, upside down, in French. I imagine its different when its snowing. No epiphany. [...]

The first thing I noticed on arriving at Los Angeles airport was how rundown everything looked compared to Australia. The pipes in the roof of the passage from the plane to customs were all exposed and there was insulation coming loose. I was so fascinated that I stopped and took a couple of quick pictures [...]

In order to allow the E-coli that I am using in the galvanotaxis experiments to be seen I am growing them on a special media (MacConkey 3), which causes them to grow red. The media also prevents most other bugs from growing except for Salmonella, which grows white. This is a much better solution than [...]

I have just spent the past three days in at the Medical Physics lab at Royal Perth Hospital using their slow speed water cooled bone saw to cut thin sections of bone at an angle to the direction of the collagen fibres. It took me 2 full days to cut about 25 pieces of bone. [...]

All set up and tested in the incubator. The only thing I am a little worried about is the way in which the flasks are held in place. I think it will be very hard to get the same vibration patterns again after I have fed the cells and put them back in place. I [...]