Grow Lab Intro, Lectures and Workshop –

Today was the first day of the ‘Mattering Life’ Programme.  Firstly, I needed to attend the ‘Grow Lab’ at 10.00am for an induction session.  Here we went through everything we needed to be safe while using the lab.

Heather Barnett – Introductory Talk

After completing our induction session Heather introduced us all to the people we would be working with throughout the week.  We filled out our consent forms and she also gave an introductory talk.  I have included a selection of slides for reference.

A Selection of Intro Slides

Talk By Nick Lane

Next we had a talk by Nick Lane which helped to highlight some of the problems that science was facing when trying to define ‘What is Life?’ and ‘What is Living’

Below are a selection of slides for reference.

Nick Lane – Selection of Slides

Masahiko Hara

The next talk was by Masahiko Hara, who posed the question ‘What is Colour, Fundamentally?’  On balance it would seem that colour is as a result of brain perception as opposed to eye perception.  The eyes ‘see’ but it is the brain that actually decoded the information.

Masahiko Hara – Selection of Slides

Below are a selection of slides from the presentation.

Heather Barnett

Next up was Heather Barnett, who showed us some of her work.  She had been looking at the movement movement and flow of organisms.  Some of the subjects included humans being tracked as they moved together.  This made for a variety of beautiful flowing motion patterns.

Heather Barnett – Selection of Slides

Below are a selection of slides showing some of Heather’s work. There is a beautiful sense of flow running throughout her videos.

Alice Taylor

A talk by Alice Taylor wrapped up the lectures. She spoke about some of her work which included adding neurons to diamonds. It sounded amazing!

Alice Taylor – Selection of Slides

Below are a selection of slides from Alice’s work with diamonds.