and other ocean micro-worlds
Neil, Sylvia, and Elliot (Strathclyde Uni) brought a table of diatoms to a pop-up Museum of Microalgae in the Glasgow Botanic Gardens, along with algal evangelist Eric Bear and a crew from the SAMS Culture Collection of Algae and Protozoa in Oban. Amazing turnout for a rainy Friday in November, and there were algae-based energy … Read more
Neil brought a rockpool’s-worth of new nudibranch designs to the British Origami Society convention in Edinburgh, autumn 2024. Not plankton but cute anyway.
A group show of recent art-science collaborations at Arctic Science Summit Week, Edinburgh, March 2024. Neil curated the show and brought the plankton. Neil’s diatoms in the background, along with crochet Arctic sea stars by Emily Doolittle and Laura Johnson‘s painting A Way of Life, Threatened.
Neil and Peter brought a coastal food chain to the British Origami Society spring convention in Milton Keynes. There was gannet chat followed by gannet folding. but really, quite a lot of diatoms.
The Mapping Ocean Change Through Art project kicked off a season of public workshops around Scotland with a day at Cove Park where we combed the beach, filtered plankton out of the sea, and folded a Scottish coastal food chain from phytoplankton to gannets. Diagrams for many of these are available elsewhere on this site.
As part of a COP26 Science Showcase called “Changing Climate, Changing Stories” at University of Glasgow’s Hunterian Museum, Neil folded the zooplankton typically eaten by a sandeel off the coast of Scotland at 50x magnification. The small copepods (representing Oithona, Acartia, Centropages spp.) are variants on the model diagrammed by Dasa Severova here. The large … Read more