[spectre] Day 03 – Juxtapose Through Media / YIVF#05 2009

[venzha christ]

YIVF#05 Invisible Video! – everything connected
Yogyakarta International Videowork Festival #05
11 - 20 dec 2009

http://natural-fiber.com 

workshop + laboratory work
HONF Lab - Microbiology Lab, UGM
'intelligence bacteria?' related program


Day 03 – Juxtapose Through Media

2 days ago was the beginning of an intense discussion between Gadjah Mada University (UGM) Microbiology lab students with HONF and YIVF#05 participants. The session is involving both sides on a discussion about developing the DIY microscope from a webcam that has been mentioned in the previous day. As we have make a prototype of the webcam microscope, we asked the students to make tests on this prototype to know its’ limits to used as a tools in analyzing microorganism.

The test started with a pathogen in form of a Systa (a bag of eggs) that normally attacked the roots of potatoes. A normal Systa have a size of 0.5 – 1 mm and could contain 200 – 300 eggs inside of it. This test results to the DIY webcam microscope was able to capture the shape and the movement of the Systa but were unable to capture the structure of the eggs inside of it. The abilities to capture the shape and movement is considered quite helpful for microbiologists as they can analyze the tentacle of that is used by Systa to attached themselves and injects the eggs to the roots of the potatoes.

In the next phase of the test, the students used the DIY webcam microscope to analyze a sample of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, a species that is classified as fungus. S. Cerevisiae itself is known since ancient times and thought as the most useful yeast from its use in baking and brewing. S. Cerevisiae size is approximately100 micro (which means it’s size is 100 x 10-6 m) and the DIY webcam microscope still could capture the shape and movement.

Realizing that the lens magnifying capability of the DIY webcam microscope is still far from standard microscope, the session was continued with the use of Hemocytometer device to the test. Hemocytometer is designed for counting cells by placing the samples in to small boxes in the glass and then counted manually by microbiologist with formulas to know the amount of cells that a sample contains. This test in DIY webcam microscope has a very most potential use for Microbiologist as the DIY webcam microscope has several significant advantages than normal analyzing method. The advantages of the DIY webcam microscope compared to the normal microscope is:

   1. DIY webcam microscope has a wider scope in the analysis, providing 24 boxes to be viewed in a single analysis. Normal microscope could only capture 4 boxes.
   2. Normal microscope method is very hard to analyze and need acute precision as it need the researcher to analyze 4 boxes and write manually then slide the Hemocytometer to another 4 boxes without marking the previous one that has been analyzed. DIY webcam microscope could capture and save it as a picture allowing the researcher to count the Hemocytometer in a very significant shorter amount of time. 

After the test we develop a discussion to make a shortlist of the improvement that is needed for the DIY webcam microscope prototype. The conclusion of the improvements that is needed are:

   1. DIY webcam microscope needs an adjustable light intensity. This light intensity is considered very crucial, as the amount of light intensity is very dependable on the focus of the sample.
   2. Improvements in adjusting lens range to the object sampleLights source from bellow the object sample is needed to get a clearer image of the object.
   3. A focusing adjustment for the user needed a development to help the user to adjust the slightest movement of the tools.

In the next session of YIVF#05, we asked the students to give a presentation about Hemocytometer method in HONFlab. We wanted to know more about this method and we believe we needed the knowledge to develop the DIY webcam microscope.

news :

http://invisible.natural-fiber.com/news  

other images :

http://www.art-it.asia/u/ab_venzha/UTlFtmWu4yAIbsz2NJLx  


   
venzha

the house of natural fiber
yogyakarta new media art laboratory (HONF)
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Indonesia
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     venzha at natural-fiber.com
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