Mapping the Sawkill: Citizen Science Microbial Cultivation Workshop

This Bioart Lab is made for all ages and shows how to Do It Yourself (DIY) or Do It With Others (DIWO) a process known as Pure Culture Technique. This involves a lot of the same procedures used in Canning, Fermenting Beer and giving a safe Tattoo. We will have a very nice microscope as well as a usb microscope for more casual use.

We will cover:

Bio-safety

Autoclaving (Pressure Cooking)

Hands-On Sawkill Stream Water Collecting

Preparing clean vessels

Inoculating sterile stream water with raw Sawkill Stream Water samples

Nomenclature, Labeling for archival records

Giving life support like filtered air and sterile food (like autoclaved grass clippings or tweezer flaming wheat berries, kasha, rice or spelt

Allowing time for different microbial populations to divide and multiply exponentially

Using a sterile field (possible a home made sterile hood) we prepare by cleaning with alcohol and wearing gloves

No eating drinking something vaping or using phones during microbe handling

Training in pipetting into convex slides

observing the microbial colonies we have grown under the microscope

Capturing images and video of our explorations

Identifying standard microbes and documenting unicorns, unknown microbes

A short session on how to search online for microbes, ask a water microbiologist through email and or name your own microbe using images,videos and descriptions.

Possible passaging of any colonies that look like they need care or a new home with fresh food after cleaning: proper disposal techniques for disposables and methods for cleaning reusables.

Images and videos can be made into drawings, paintings, poems or video art (including Video Jockey {VJ} demo) Our interpretive aret is just another form of research and can be included in the Mapping the Sawkil database as art and biology crossover bioart documents equal to scientific data.

Some things that we may cover more informally that are not just about technique but about sociocultural effects of studies in citizen science: Microbial Health, Watershed Diversity and Signs of Chemical Contamination 

What are microbes that show signs of stream health, signal species that suggest environmental toxicity, etc? Red flag microbes, algae blooms , runoff and toxic spills change the distribution or diverse microbial range in samples of stream water. We may compare samples from different parts of the Sawkill Stream to make ameteur observations.

Is there such a thing as ‘pure’ culture? For instance, If we inoculate sterile pond water with a single drop of unsterile pond water, how does this inform colonialism, population genetics, bottlenecks and concepts of rascism? What does it mean to intentionally make a Colony?

The difference between Anthropomorphism and Anthropocentrism: 

Do microbes have feelings, families, personalities, cultures or even a metropolitain sense of urban irony? Can microbes be enriched with music, fine food, mood lighting or mazes etc. Do cultures want to be mixed or form co-cultures? It could be symbiosis? It could be encouraging stress and strife? What is cognition and consciousness? What is just hereditary instinct and automated responses to environmental cues? Since we all come from an original archaic microbial origin, is there such a thing as Micropomorphism? Can we try ways of making interspecies dialogue by utilizing our inner memories of being formerly microbial or ‘thinking like a zygote?

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Adam Zaretsky, Ph.D. 

Dr. Zaretsky is a Wet-Lab Art Practitioner mixing Ecology, Biotechnology, Non-human  Relations, Body Performance and Gastronomy.  Zaretsky stages lively, hands-on bioart production labs based on topics such as: foreign species invasion (pure/impure), radical food science (edible/inedible), jazz  bioinformatics (code/flesh), tissue culture (undead/semi-alive), transgenic design issues (traits/desires), interactive ethology  (person/machine/non-human) and physiology (performance/stress). His art  practice focuses on an array of legal, ethical, social and libidinal  implications of biotechnological materials and methods with a focus on  transgenic humans. Zaretsky has a PhD in Bioart, and is a Visiting Full Professor of the Department of Audio and Visual Arts - Didactics of Bioart. He also runs a Bioethics NonProfit call BEAK and is partner in Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia 2026 Synergies: selected projects: Co-Laboratories: Technobiological Futures.