Poetry and Lights Activate Fluorescent E. Coli Proteins

Dirty Beats: Music Generated from Bacteria) that specializes in merging biology with art-making practices.
A new project called GFP Screen, the collective turned proteins derived from E. Coli into a neon light installation that responds to poems written in code. Light in the blue to ultraviolet range activates the fluorescence of the protein, fittingly called the green fluorescent protein, or GFP. It's comprised of residue from 238 amino acids, and while it's typically found in bioluminescent jellyfish, Interspecifics Collective produced it from E. Coli bacteria.
The artists mounted 16 large vials of GFP onto tripods, and wired each one to a relay. They wrote a poem using found text from the Google search for “human,” and encoded it into ASCII. Every three milliseconds, two characters are sent through the controller, activating certain lights and lighting up their respective proteins.