[Music]
thank you so much for inviting me here
and also Amy thank you for that amazing
introduction so it’s such a pleasure and
an honor and a little surreal to be
already back at high school and sharing
with you the research experiences I’ve
had since I graduated so today as my
talks title suggests I will be speaking
about microbes and their growing
relationship with artworks and cultural
heritage but before I get there
given my research interests in memory
and memorialization and also given the
topic of this event growth I thought I
would reminisce a little bit I want to
recall and perhaps speculate on how NCS
SN shaped the research that I’m doing
today in particular my current research
draws on ethnographic fieldwork that I
conducted in the United States and Italy
with scientists from different
backgrounds scientists like physicists
chemists and biologists to understand
how they brought their perspectives on
how nature works in order to develop new
technologies for restoring art and
cultural heritage and these objects
range from the Milan Cathedral to
paintings by Jackson Pollock and this
morning I will demonstrate how Italian
scientists are using microbiology logics
and practices to reshape what art works
and cultural heritage can look like but
before art and microbes entered in my
life there was a sea slug called a
pleased iya California
my very first independent research
project was conceived and executed while
I was a student here at science and math
I was just accepted into dr. Scheck’s
research in biology class and I was
cramming my head to figure out what I
was going to do all I knew was that I
didn’t want to do what I said I was
going to do in my application so I
remember wandering around campus
bouncing ideas off of my senior mentor
and I had this brief moment of pseudo
clarity where I decided that what I
wanted to study was the act of
misremembering I had this kind of
embarrassingly naive notion that if I
could solve the problem of
misremembering
I could help solve many of the world’s
social conflicts social conflicts that I
imagined ranged from disagreements
between individual friends and
disagreements among entire nations this
is super embarrassing to admit but it is
true that I think many people are
heavily heavily invested in the question
of what really happened right all the
time and in all kinds of frames and
contexts one of which I will relate in a
little while so I’m rummaging through
all these all this biological literature
on memory and here comes a please eeeh a
sea slug which turns out to be a model
organism for neurobiological research
and memory formation they exhibit this
behavior called the gill and siphon
withdraw reflex and scientists from the
60s and 70s are most notably led by an
ear scientist and Nobel laureate Eric
Kandel found that they varied the
duration of their reflex according to
different kinds of stimuli and what was
really amazing was that they retained
memories of the lessons that the
scientist gave them long after the
training sessions were over and what
really stuck out to me was the fact that
their behavioral changes correlated to
physical changes in these sea slugs
neurons
and this concreteness was what really
and this concreteness was what our
really caught my eye I loved this that
memory something as intangible and
elusive something as intangible an
elusive as memory could be made as
material as visible and as hard of a
fact as the increasing and decreasing
number of synaptic connections that one
could actually count on a macroscopic
slide so this revelation led me to do
many absurd things I actually raised sea
slugs in saltwater tanks and fed them
pieces of romaine lettuce I squirted
them with Jets of water with a Waterpik
which is a water flosser device that
you’re supposed to use to clean your
teeth I timed the duration of their
withdrawal reflex and I dissected them
and mounted their neuronal game neuronal
ganglia on microscope slides things I
cannot believe that I actually did and
to and to this day whenever I see
romaine lettuce I think about the smell
of salt water I think about stress and I
think about general textures of slime
enos in slipperiness it’s terrible and
in the end because of this experience I
graduated science and math and I entered
college with the aim of becoming a
neurobiologist it was going to be the
brain I was convinced that told me why
and how people remembered and forgot as
a cultural anthropologist now as an
anthropologist of Science and Technology
I think about memory a little
differently so the questions are
basically what makes time hold still
how do certain histories persist while
others are forgotten ignored or
intentionally or unintentionally
distorted rather than think about
electric signals
and the in the travel of
neurotransmitters in the tiny gaps
between neurons I instead think about
how memory formation happened in the
conversations and practices everyday
practices of people if as a aspiring
neuroscientist I wanted to think about
the biological process that made people
remember and forget I am now interested
in the cultural processes that lead to
social memory and like I stumbled upon
the sea slugs I stumbled upon a group of
microbiologists at the university of
milan in milan italy and this was a team
led by francesca Cappotelli and she was
interested in how microbes are growing
on objects of art and cultural heritage
and how she could contribute to
practices of conservation and
restoration so here are a couple of
examples of what these microbiologists
were doing this isn’t callaghan bina i
went to the monumental cemetery of milan
with her and we went because she had
been tracking the growth of a layer of
microbial communities called biofilm on
the stone monuments and tombs and the
statues that were in them in the
cemetery she was particularly interested
in how microbial growth changed over the
course of the year because she was
interested in any effects of seasonal
change she was using a particular
technique whereby she wanted to measure
microbial growth by measuring the color
of the microbes on the surfaces of these
artifacts and this is really amazing the
idea came from watching leaves change
color in the fall right so just as
leaves lose chlorophyll with the
changing seasons the argument went
microbes photosynthetic bacteria would
also change color
in response to changes in humidity
temperature nutrient availability right
so we went around with this color
emitter and measured color the color of
microbes might prove to be a dependable
natural signifier of these artifacts
deterioration Michaela argued and it was
it would be potentially very helpful for
conservators because by hovering this
device over the surface it was a very
minimally invasive procedure especially
compared to for example taking samples
from the stone artifact to rightly so
conservators have long battled what they
considered to be the destructive actions
of microbes they reach out to
microbiologist to identify which
microbes and how they do damage to the
surface of artifacts and for instance it
can cause reddish brown spots on paper
they can cause pits on the surfaces of
stone and tracking the color of microbes
in on the statuary is one effort one
example of this effort to figure out
whether and how microbes are harming the
surface the artifacts of art and
cultural heritage but Francesca and her
team are interested in not only doing
that but also in this idea of using
microbes to help conservators actually
save these artifacts so a few weeks
after my trip to the cemetery I followed
an ELISA about LOI who’s another
collaborator Francesca to saloon toe
which is an ancient Phoenician city on
the northern coast of Sicily and the
caretakers of salento had reached out to
annalisa
because they’re fragile they’re ancient
fragile terraces which you see pictured
under these I’m sort of glass cases
we’re crumbling and annalisa had a
bacteria that they wanted her to try
which would precipitate calcium
carbonate and actually helped to
consolidate
stone and according to an ELISA right
the since microbes are natural objects
themselves this was also the most
effective on least invasive and most
natural solution to deterioration so
what do these practices on art and
culture and cultural heritage have to do
with memory preservation and
conservation restoration can mean
different things to different people and
it depends on also not only who you ask
but when and where in general the
conservators are pretty committed to the
idea that artifacts contain very
important information and represents
stories that are worth transmitting to
future generations that and I find and
as a result I find the work of
conserving and restoring artifacts
really fascinating because it navigates
a kind of paradox a paradox if you will
of memory keeping so on one hand at its
heart conservation restoration at least
in its Western tradition wants to
preserve the material aspects of an
artifact that are supposed to represent
its to represent the artifacts
originality or to recover them right if
those material aspects have been lost
but they struggle conservators struggle
with the fact that time inevitably
passes and not only do the materials of
the artifacts change over time but also
the social meanings that are attached to
those material aspects change over time
and as a result practitioners are
constantly negotiating what being
faithful to that original artifact means
and I find conservators remarkable for
the ways in which they have to work on a
tangible object at the same time that
they deliberate these intangible
philosophical questions about what
authenticity is a notion that is as
complex as interpreting an artist intent
or deciding how clean or beautiful an
artifact should be
and at the end of the day conservation
restoration is controversial
controversial and the cleaning of the
Sistine Chapel right is just one example
controversial because the practice the
practice are based the practices are
based upon claims of expertise right who
has the right kinds of knowledge to
decide or to contribute to decisions
about what should last what is
interesting about this from an
anthropological perspective is that it
is not self-evident that one expert is
privileged in these decisions over
another why and how do scientists make
themselves relevant to these
conversations and because these
artifacts have traditionally been the
domain of people like artists and
historians conservators and artisans and
I argue that microbiologists are
changing the terms of artifacts
deterioration and recovery according to
the logic of their discipline according
to the logics and practices of
microbiology their knowledge and passion
for microbial life actually reconfigures
what artworks and cultural heritage are
supposed to look like by simply for
instance just highlighting that
microbial presence exists that microbes
are there they can inform conservators
on how to get rid of microbes or they
can even show conservators how microbes
can help them when Mikaela sent me this
watercolor sketch she wrote to me that
she had painted a summary of her
proposal to study how microorganisms
contributed to biodiversity Michaela’s
an illustration captures how in addition
to using microbiology to understand
cultural heritage scientists can also
use cultural heritage to understand a
larger a larger picture about natural
ecosystems so here she has painted a
land
gave of C and H on the left which stands
for a cultural and natural heritage
which is supposed to play host to these
SA bees which are sub-aerial biofilms at
the microbial communities that grow and
thrive at the interface of solid and air
and Michaela is pointing out right like
as we learn in high school that like
nitrogen like water microbes can travel
between earth and sky and contribute to
biodiversity it’s these movements she
suggests that may explain otherwise
invisible dispersal and invasion
mechanisms that help to maintain
microbial diversity in the environment
and on this view the rock cliff or rock
monument is just one piece of a complex
system that selects four particular
forms of microbial life so I’ll end with
two summarizing comments first memory
formation is material not only because
the neurobiological processes behind
them can be material but but because how
people remember isn’t confined to what
happens inside their heads I think that
what we remember is inextricable from
the material artifacts that are set to
stand in for the past as well as the
everyday material practices such as
using a color color imager to measure
deterioration or using microbial bodies
themselves to restore artifacts second
and relatedly
memory formation is social this
microbiological research on art and
cultural heritage didn’t happen didn’t
emerge from a vacuum seemingly novel
connections between art and microbes are
entangled in historical economic
political and cultural conditions in
which certain commitments have already
been made we are living in a world in
which the microbe is increasingly feared
and we are also fascinated by their
potential benefits so on one new
research direction
merging are not only antibiotic
resistance but also the human micro
microbiome or the hope that bacterial
genes might become the next data storage
device
the latest microbiological interventions
and conservation restoration is just the
part of this larger dialogue and
moreover just as my research with
Aplysia from the get-go relied on the
generosity of the community at science
and math the practices I observed Italy
called
on a vast network of different kinds of
experts not just scientists and
engineers but also social scientists
humans humanists artists memory
formation is social and it should be
diversely so meanwhile it’s important to
track the different voices that assure
these paths into the future who and what
counts and who and what gets left out is
something really important to keep in
mind history is just as heavily edited
as the short reminiscences of a TEDx
talk thank you very much
[Applause]
you
thank you so much for inviting me here
and also Amy thank you for that amazing
introduction so it’s such a pleasure and
an honor and a little surreal to be
already back at high school and sharing
with you the research experiences I’ve
had since I graduated so today as my
talks title suggests I will be speaking
about microbes and their growing
relationship with artworks and cultural
heritage but before I get there
given my research interests in memory
and memorialization and also given the
topic of this event growth I thought I
would reminisce a little bit I want to
recall and perhaps speculate on how NCS
SN shaped the research that I’m doing
today in particular my current research
draws on ethnographic fieldwork that I
conducted in the United States and Italy
with scientists from different
backgrounds scientists like physicists
chemists and biologists to understand
how they brought their perspectives on
how nature works in order to develop new
technologies for restoring art and
cultural heritage and these objects
range from the Milan Cathedral to
paintings by Jackson Pollock and this
morning I will demonstrate how Italian
scientists are using microbiology logics
and practices to reshape what art works
and cultural heritage can look like but
before art and microbes entered in my
life there was a sea slug called a
pleased iya California
my very first independent research
project was conceived and executed while
I was a student here at science and math
I was just accepted into dr. Scheck’s
research in biology class and I was
cramming my head to figure out what I
was going to do all I knew was that I
didn’t want to do what I said I was
going to do in my application so I
remember wandering around campus
bouncing ideas off of my senior mentor
and I had this brief moment of pseudo
clarity where I decided that what I
wanted to study was the act of
misremembering I had this kind of
embarrassingly naive notion that if I
could solve the problem of
misremembering
I could help solve many of the world’s
social conflicts social conflicts that I
imagined ranged from disagreements
between individual friends and
disagreements among entire nations this
is super embarrassing to admit but it is
true that I think many people are
heavily heavily invested in the question
of what really happened right all the
time and in all kinds of frames and
contexts one of which I will relate in a
little while so I’m rummaging through
all these all this biological literature
on memory and here comes a please eeeh a
sea slug which turns out to be a model
organism for neurobiological research
and memory formation they exhibit this
behavior called the gill and siphon
withdraw reflex and scientists from the
60s and 70s are most notably led by an
ear scientist and Nobel laureate Eric
Kandel found that they varied the
duration of their reflex according to
different kinds of stimuli and what was
really amazing was that they retained
memories of the lessons that the
scientist gave them long after the
training sessions were over and what
really stuck out to me was the fact that
their behavioral changes correlated to
physical changes in these sea slugs
neurons
and this concreteness was what really
and this concreteness was what our
really caught my eye I loved this that
memory something as intangible and
elusive something as intangible an
elusive as memory could be made as
material as visible and as hard of a
fact as the increasing and decreasing
number of synaptic connections that one
could actually count on a macroscopic
slide so this revelation led me to do
many absurd things I actually raised sea
slugs in saltwater tanks and fed them
pieces of romaine lettuce I squirted
them with Jets of water with a Waterpik
which is a water flosser device that
you’re supposed to use to clean your
teeth I timed the duration of their
withdrawal reflex and I dissected them
and mounted their neuronal game neuronal
ganglia on microscope slides things I
cannot believe that I actually did and
to and to this day whenever I see
romaine lettuce I think about the smell
of salt water I think about stress and I
think about general textures of slime
enos in slipperiness it’s terrible and
in the end because of this experience I
graduated science and math and I entered
college with the aim of becoming a
neurobiologist it was going to be the
brain I was convinced that told me why
and how people remembered and forgot as
a cultural anthropologist now as an
anthropologist of Science and Technology
I think about memory a little
differently so the questions are
basically what makes time hold still
how do certain histories persist while
others are forgotten ignored or
intentionally or unintentionally
distorted rather than think about
electric signals
and the in the travel of
neurotransmitters in the tiny gaps
between neurons I instead think about
how memory formation happened in the
conversations and practices everyday
practices of people if as a aspiring
neuroscientist I wanted to think about
the biological process that made people
remember and forget I am now interested
in the cultural processes that lead to
social memory and like I stumbled upon
the sea slugs I stumbled upon a group of
microbiologists at the university of
milan in milan italy and this was a team
led by francesca Cappotelli and she was
interested in how microbes are growing
on objects of art and cultural heritage
and how she could contribute to
practices of conservation and
restoration so here are a couple of
examples of what these microbiologists
were doing this isn’t callaghan bina i
went to the monumental cemetery of milan
with her and we went because she had
been tracking the growth of a layer of
microbial communities called biofilm on
the stone monuments and tombs and the
statues that were in them in the
cemetery she was particularly interested
in how microbial growth changed over the
course of the year because she was
interested in any effects of seasonal
change she was using a particular
technique whereby she wanted to measure
microbial growth by measuring the color
of the microbes on the surfaces of these
artifacts and this is really amazing the
idea came from watching leaves change
color in the fall right so just as
leaves lose chlorophyll with the
changing seasons the argument went
microbes photosynthetic bacteria would
also change color
in response to changes in humidity
temperature nutrient availability right
so we went around with this color
emitter and measured color the color of
microbes might prove to be a dependable
natural signifier of these artifacts
deterioration Michaela argued and it was
it would be potentially very helpful for
conservators because by hovering this
device over the surface it was a very
minimally invasive procedure especially
compared to for example taking samples
from the stone artifact to rightly so
conservators have long battled what they
considered to be the destructive actions
of microbes they reach out to
microbiologist to identify which
microbes and how they do damage to the
surface of artifacts and for instance it
can cause reddish brown spots on paper
they can cause pits on the surfaces of
stone and tracking the color of microbes
in on the statuary is one effort one
example of this effort to figure out
whether and how microbes are harming the
surface the artifacts of art and
cultural heritage but Francesca and her
team are interested in not only doing
that but also in this idea of using
microbes to help conservators actually
save these artifacts so a few weeks
after my trip to the cemetery I followed
an ELISA about LOI who’s another
collaborator Francesca to saloon toe
which is an ancient Phoenician city on
the northern coast of Sicily and the
caretakers of salento had reached out to
annalisa
because they’re fragile they’re ancient
fragile terraces which you see pictured
under these I’m sort of glass cases
we’re crumbling and annalisa had a
bacteria that they wanted her to try
which would precipitate calcium
carbonate and actually helped to
consolidate
stone and according to an ELISA right
the since microbes are natural objects
themselves this was also the most
effective on least invasive and most
natural solution to deterioration so
what do these practices on art and
culture and cultural heritage have to do
with memory preservation and
conservation restoration can mean
different things to different people and
it depends on also not only who you ask
but when and where in general the
conservators are pretty committed to the
idea that artifacts contain very
important information and represents
stories that are worth transmitting to
future generations that and I find and
as a result I find the work of
conserving and restoring artifacts
really fascinating because it navigates
a kind of paradox a paradox if you will
of memory keeping so on one hand at its
heart conservation restoration at least
in its Western tradition wants to
preserve the material aspects of an
artifact that are supposed to represent
its to represent the artifacts
originality or to recover them right if
those material aspects have been lost
but they struggle conservators struggle
with the fact that time inevitably
passes and not only do the materials of
the artifacts change over time but also
the social meanings that are attached to
those material aspects change over time
and as a result practitioners are
constantly negotiating what being
faithful to that original artifact means
and I find conservators remarkable for
the ways in which they have to work on a
tangible object at the same time that
they deliberate these intangible
philosophical questions about what
authenticity is a notion that is as
complex as interpreting an artist intent
or deciding how clean or beautiful an
artifact should be
and at the end of the day conservation
restoration is controversial
controversial and the cleaning of the
Sistine Chapel right is just one example
controversial because the practice the
practice are based the practices are
based upon claims of expertise right who
has the right kinds of knowledge to
decide or to contribute to decisions
about what should last what is
interesting about this from an
anthropological perspective is that it
is not self-evident that one expert is
privileged in these decisions over
another why and how do scientists make
themselves relevant to these
conversations and because these
artifacts have traditionally been the
domain of people like artists and
historians conservators and artisans and
I argue that microbiologists are
changing the terms of artifacts
deterioration and recovery according to
the logic of their discipline according
to the logics and practices of
microbiology their knowledge and passion
for microbial life actually reconfigures
what artworks and cultural heritage are
supposed to look like by simply for
instance just highlighting that
microbial presence exists that microbes
are there they can inform conservators
on how to get rid of microbes or they
can even show conservators how microbes
can help them when Mikaela sent me this
watercolor sketch she wrote to me that
she had painted a summary of her
proposal to study how microorganisms
contributed to biodiversity Michaela’s
an illustration captures how in addition
to using microbiology to understand
cultural heritage scientists can also
use cultural heritage to understand a
larger a larger picture about natural
ecosystems so here she has painted a
land
gave of C and H on the left which stands
for a cultural and natural heritage
which is supposed to play host to these
SA bees which are sub-aerial biofilms at
the microbial communities that grow and
thrive at the interface of solid and air
and Michaela is pointing out right like
as we learn in high school that like
nitrogen like water microbes can travel
between earth and sky and contribute to
biodiversity it’s these movements she
suggests that may explain otherwise
invisible dispersal and invasion
mechanisms that help to maintain
microbial diversity in the environment
and on this view the rock cliff or rock
monument is just one piece of a complex
system that selects four particular
forms of microbial life so I’ll end with
two summarizing comments first memory
formation is material not only because
the neurobiological processes behind
them can be material but but because how
people remember isn’t confined to what
happens inside their heads I think that
what we remember is inextricable from
the material artifacts that are set to
stand in for the past as well as the
everyday material practices such as
using a color color imager to measure
deterioration or using microbial bodies
themselves to restore artifacts second
and relatedly
memory formation is social this
microbiological research on art and
cultural heritage didn’t happen didn’t
emerge from a vacuum seemingly novel
connections between art and microbes are
entangled in historical economic
political and cultural conditions in
which certain commitments have already
been made we are living in a world in
which the microbe is increasingly feared
and we are also fascinated by their
potential benefits so on one new
research direction
merging are not only antibiotic
resistance but also the human micro
microbiome or the hope that bacterial
genes might become the next data storage
device
the latest microbiological interventions
and conservation restoration is just the
part of this larger dialogue and
moreover just as my research with
Aplysia from the get-go relied on the
generosity of the community at science
and math the practices I observed Italy
called
on a vast network of different kinds of
experts not just scientists and
engineers but also social scientists
humans humanists artists memory
formation is social and it should be
diversely so meanwhile it’s important to
track the different voices that assure
these paths into the future who and what
counts and who and what gets left out is
something really important to keep in
mind history is just as heavily edited
as the short reminiscences of a TEDx
talk thank you very much
[Applause]
you
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