Cell is a collaborative projectm that investigates stem cell research. The research has been in progress for over two years and this installation is one of several outcomes.
The collaboration explores how current research into adult stem cells is having to re-address the complexity of human biology. Human cells have been traditionally thought of as behaving in predictable ways. Stem cells can be described as the ‘master’ cells whose off-spring are the more specialised, but limited, cells that make up most of the human body. But current research suggests that at a cellular level the human body behaves in less obvious ways than has been imagined and that adult stem cell activity, which has recently become the focus of widespread attention, may be harder to define, and observe, than previously expected.

As part of the collaboration, medical scientist Dr Neil Theise, a world leader into adult stem cell research, based in New York, has been working together with Jane Prophet, mathematician Mark d’Inverno, computer scientist Rob Saunders and curator Peter Ride, who instigated the project, from the University of Westminster. One aim has been to find new ways of visualising the new and contentious theories of stem cell behaviour, and to find ways to feed the visualisation back into the scientific research so that it can be a conceptual tool in the laboratory practice. Another has been to generate a range of artistic outcomes that are under-pinned by the emerging understanding of cellular activity.

Funded with a Wellcome Trust sciart Award (2002) and a BioTech Award from Future Physical (2002). With support from CARTE, University of Westminster.

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