''Protocell Circus'' (2010), produced by Dr. Rachel Armstrong and

Michael Simon Toon Michael Simon Toon (born 12 March 1977) is an English photographer, filmmaker, designer and builder. Short films Toon has made two short films in the style of cinéma vérité which are globally recognised as serious inquiries into the nature of ...

, is the first film to show the recognizable lifelike behavior of laboratory-created

protocell A protocell (or protobiont) is a self-organized, endogenously ordered, spherical collection of lipids proposed as a stepping-stone toward the origin of life. A central question in evolution is how simple protocells first arose and how they coul ...

s."Living Chemistry & A "Natural History" of Protocells."
Synth-ethic: Art and Synthetic Biology Exhibition 2013. 14.05 – 26.06.2011 in the Natural History Museum, Vienna, Austria. Produced by Biofaction KG. Added 20-4-2011 21:09. Armstrong synthesized and filmed the protocells of ''Protocell Circus'' at the laboratory of the

Bartlett School of Architecture Bartlett may refer to: Places *Bartlett Bay, Canada, Arctic waterway * Wharerata, New Zealand, also known as Bartletts United States * Bartlett, Illinois ** Bartlett station, a commuter railroad station * Bartlett, Iowa * Bartlett, Kansas * ...

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = � ...

. Her research incorporates protocells in the development of self-repairing 'living' architecture. Armstrong and Dr. Martin Hanczyc of the

University of Southern Denmark The University of Southern Denmark ( da, Syddansk Universitet, lit=South Danish University, abbr. SDU) is a university in Denmark that has campuses located in Southern Denmark and on Zealand. The university offers a number of joint programmes i ...

developed the Bütschli dynamic droplet system used to synthesize the oil-based cells shown in the film. Although they contain no genetic material, these protocells absorb fuel and react to their environment as well as each other, which among other factors contribute to the theory that this "model could be considered as a type of primitive life that could have been possible on the early Earth." Toon edited, sound designed, and post-produced Armstrong's raw footage, emphasizing moments of seemingly lifelike motion and interaction among the reagents. He also wrote subtitles for the cells' interactions using simple anthropomorphic statements such as "I'm afraid", "I love you", and "I want to escape." The combination of images and subtitles have been variously interpreted, both as a reflection of the human need to see similarities to ourselves in even proto-biological systems, and the converse suggestion that human behavior is actually a complex reflection of the behavior of primordial chemistry.

Featured exhibitions

*Future Human season (2010) British Film Institute, BFI Southbank, London *''Digital Art@Google NYC'' (2010) Chelsea Art Museum of Manhattan, New York City"Digital Art@Google: We Write This To You From The Distant Future."
TheProjectRoom.org. August 20 – October 22, 2010. *''Synth-ethic: Art and Synthetic Biology Exhibition'' (2011) Natural History Museum of Vienna, Austria

References

{{reflist Documentary films about science

Featured exhibitions

See also

References