From Wanderlust:
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Historically, Magnum Opus, or The Great Work, was an alchemical process that incorporated a personal, spiritual, and chemical method for creating the Philosopher's Stone, a mysterious red-colored substance that was capable of transmuting base matter into the noble metal of gold.
Discovering the principals of the Philosopher's Stone was one of the defining and at the same time seemingly unobtainable objectives of Western alchemy.
The Great Work of the Metal Lover is an artwork that sits at the intersection of art, science, and alchemy, re-examining the problem of transmutation through the use of modern microbiological practice and thus solving the ancient riddle.
Gold production is accomplished by the pairing of a highly specialized metallotolerant extremophilic bacterium and an engineered atmosphere contained within a customized alchemical bioreactor.
The extreme minimal ecosystem within the bioreactor forces the bacteria to metabolize high concentrations of toxic AuCl3 (gold chloride), turning soluble gold into usable 24K gold, pictured above.
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All photos and text from Adam Brown; more here.
Sent from my iPad
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