I purchased ten borosilicate glass Petri dishes last week in each size [1500mm and 900mm]. This will enable me to do the engraving and materials tests while I wait for ethics approval.

I am going to start with some simple designs that connect to motifs from my previous practice and signal notions of ongoing development and ‘rippling outwards’. 

Screenshot of vector ‘ripple’ design created in Adobe Illustrator.

This design was originally created for The Contamination of Alice #9 as part of the group show Ghost Biologies at Contemporary Art Tasmania in 2016. I feel that a similar pattern could work quite well engraved on the base of the Petri dishes. However, I will need to include some etched ‘shaded’ areas to see if scarring the surface helps with cell adhesion.

To create the new designs, I will try to work directly in Rhino – the software platform used for the laser cutter. Hopefully, this will enable me to create designs will fewer nodes to reduce clean up time and double lines.