The Templeman Library have commissioned an exciting, interdisciplinary projection installation, which will become one of the inaugural artworks, displayed in the new Templeman Library wing, from September.

The artwork will explore the potential of demonstrating a book actively growing and revealing its microflora, with the hope to reveal the ‘unseen’ to the library audience and make people aware of their own personal interactions with the objects they use. Library books are handled by thousands of people, all leaving their microflora mark. As time passes, books become centres of microbial data and data transfer.

The artist, Sarah Craske is an Honorary Research Fellow and Research Associate in the Centre for the History of the Sciences at the University of Kent.

Four books have been shortlisted, pictured here. Top left, Mundus Subterraneus 1665. Top right, Metamorphoses 1640. Bottom left, The Cyclopedia of Art and Sciences 1728. Bottom right, Emblems of Mortality [date unknown].

Sarah will choose which book will form the basis of the installation.

Students and staff will be invited to contribute to this piece of work through an event where they can volunteer anonymously a fingerprint on a bed of agar in a petri dish. Working with the School of Biosciences, these samples will be collected and cultivated to reveal the anonymous microflora collected, directly demonstrating the unseen world they contribute to. View the full story. http://bit.ly/1PtfCIB