16 MINUTES IN A PETRI DISH

Year
2025

Author
Video: Laura Beloff

Audio: Erich Berger

Length: 16 minutes

Thank you to Professor Martin Hanczyc (CiBIO UniTN, IT) whose introduction to protocell research has been foundational to this project.

16 MINUTES IN A PETRI DISH (Beloff 2025)

The work is based on biochemistry. I see this liquid system as a form of technology that eludes complete understanding — a realm of controlled unpredictability that borders on magical rather than strictly scientific. As you watch this video footage filmed in one take, pay attention to the minuscule droplets and their symmetrical spacing between each other. What kind of forces guide them into such orderly patterns?

According to modern day scientists, a protocell is typically a self-organized, spherical collection of lipids with internal metabolism, which is capable of movement and self-replication. It is often considered as a comparable structure to a biological cell in living organisms, including an ability to uptake nutrients from the environment, expel waste and respond to environmental changes (Hanczyc 2009).

“The question of how life might be obtained from nonliving materials is similar to that of how contemporary life originated, since contemporary life presumably arose from nonliving materials, but these two questions lead us in very different directions. The methods and conditions used to make protocells might be radically unlike those actually involved in life’s origins, and it is an entirely open question whether such new forms of life would or could ever evolve into anything like naturally existing life-forms.“ (Rasmussen et al. 2009) The quote is from an introduction to protocell research by scientists. The protocell researchers have focused on investigating the origin of life on the planet with the question: How did biological life emerge on earth? Embedded into this question is obviously also the question - what is life?

The work is filmed as one continuous take. It presents one kind of artificial evolution, or an ongoing microperformance.

The work is made for a large scale projection with audio.