“Biogenetic Blooms: Collaborations with Genetically Modified Yeast” is a series of floral inspired paintings made with genetically modified Saccharomyces cerevisiae (S. cerevisiae, commonly known as “Baker’s yeast”) on Petri dishes.

As part of “Biogenetic Blooms” yeast painting collaborations, I adapted liquid handling robots, the Opentrons OT-2, to paint flowers with the modified yeast on agar. The yeast bloomed into colorful, living art. The OT-2 is a liquid-handling robot, and these particular robots,“Ron” and “Bee (pictured)” had been used for COVID testing at the height of the pandemic. The purpose of the performance was to show a multi-entity collaboration between different entities: human, robot, microbe. With the robots re-configured from testers to creators, one could ponder both the role and purpose of the robots. Even though these pieces are created with robots and predetermined templates, there is variation in each flower, much like flowers in nature encoded with DNA.