Tag Archives: synthesis

Textile Artist Spins Wool Into Metaphors

Raw material: Wool. Operating mode: the hook.

Nice, France textile artist Stéphanie Lobry frantically fashions her art with an unexpected yet satisfyingly fitting leitmotiv: feminism.

A Teacher when she’s not at the loft, where she created and exhibited her works, Stéphanie Lobry is busy hanging a crochet. Entitled 1.8 cubic meter, “parce c’est la taille qu’il fait”, lies in the piece, in the middle of a crowd of scattered bodies which share this small space with balls of yarn and needles.

If we pay attention to all red wires that surround and hang throughout her living room, we realize that they are, in fact, a gun.

“I wanted to divert the everyday objects. And to do so with needles and wool. No, no to knitting scarves for her daughters in some kind of ‘good housewife’ role, but rather to rediscover the woman inside, and then to discover humans in general.”

Why crochet? Rolled cigarette in mouth, she passes a nonchalant hand into blond spiky hair. She thinks… “This practice is also ancestral, but has potential for feminist messages and aesthetics when it is diverted from its original use and put towards the service of art. I’ve always been very creative and a little hyper active yet the only compliment I could expect from that was to be commended for being a good mother…”. I got fed up.”  Reduced once too often to the status of “the good historical female”, Stéphanie Lobry “lost it”and held her first exhibition.

Our compulsive crocheter remembers having hesitated….stalled somewhere between a choice of direction. Between science and art: “When I started my studies in molecular biology, my mother asked me if I was sure didn’t want to make fine art instead.” Would an academic focus on science bind her passions?  In her artistic process, she discovered that there was in fact a synthesis manifested through the act of the creation, which after all, begins with the cells inside the brain. Fittingly, her art work began with a small croqueted skull which “immediately went to Gallery’. The creative process then dissected and took over other parts of the body.

An Ariane of modern times

Sweeping my gaze around her workshop, it stops suddenly on the croqueted heart, “it was a participatory project I created shortly after Charlie.” Surely a way to re – unite people, to reconnect, “everyone needed it.” The artist put out a call using social media, letting all participants know that their name would be displayed at the bottom of the finished work. In a few weeks, she received 763 balls of wool, from more than 120 donors, scattered to the four corners of the world, from Paris to Noumea, the Chile, the Belgium and the Greece.


A Runaway success requires a lot of hard work.
It takes almost a month to sort the fabrics and create a ball that weighs more than 40 kg. As for the hook… 45 days are necessary for the realization of a typical piece of finished work: “the ball weighed a ton! I couldn’t do more than five knots without being exhausted.” It is a technique so grueling and time-consuming, but I feel like I’m really at the beginning, I still have a lot to say.” She seems to have found her way alright and is brimming with ideas to express her commitment.

Worried perhaps about her peers who see their emancipation sometimes as endangered, this knitter doesn’t fail to hang onto a hint of conviction to her works. I remember especially this sort of determined representation that she had given at the Théâtre National de Nice, last May, dressed in a full suit. Knitted of course. Delivering metaphors spun into all of her creations.  For the Silo, Marine de Rocquigny originally for Art and Facts www.artandfacts.fr 

*photos by Florian Lévy

Stéphanie Lobry accroche l’œil au crochet avec son cœur. Ledit, intitulé 1,8 mètre cube, « parce c’est la taille qu’il fait », gît dans la pièce, au milieu d’une foule d’organes éparpillés, partageant ce petit espace avec les pelotes de laine et les aiguilles.
Pourquoi le crochet ? Cigarette roulée au bec, elle passe une main nonchalante dans ses blonds cheveux en bataille. Elle songe… « Cette pratique aussi ancestrale soit-elle, prend des allures féministes quand elle est détournée de son utilisation pour se mettre au service de l’art. » Car c’est bien avec une volonté libératrice et féministe qu’elle s’est lancée il y a maintenant sept ans : « J’ai toujours été très créative et un peu hyper active pourtant le seul compliment que je pouvais espérer c’était d’être une bonne mère de famille… J’en ai eu marre. » Réduite une fois de trop au statut de BMF, Stéphanie Lobry « pète les plombs » et organise une première exposition.
Alors que les curieux s’aventurent dans ses appartements, elle les reçoit en nuisette, repassant chemise après chemise, la main collée à son fer. Et si l’on prête attention à l’ensemble de fils rouges qui l’entourent et parcourent son salon, on s’aperçoit qu’ils forment, en fait, un pistolet. « J’ai voulu détourner les objets du quotidien. » Elle se munie dès lors d’aiguilles et de laines. Non, pas pour tricoter des écharpes à ses filles en bonne femme d’intérieur, mais plutôt pour redécouvrir l’intérieur de la femme, puis de l’humain en général.
Rencontre logique. La crocheteuse compulsive se souvient avoir longtemps hésité entre la science et l’art : « Quand j’ai commencé mes études en biologie moléculaire, ma mère m’a demandé si j’étais sûre de ne pas vouloir plutôt faire les Beaux-Arts. » Alors autant entreprendre une reconversion qui pourrait lier ses passions et ses connaissances. Dans sa démarche artistique, elle revient donc à la genèse de la création, qui commence avec des cellules. Elle commence avec un petit crâne « tout de suite parti en galerie », puis dissèque et reprend toutes les parties du corps. Du neurone au pied. Du sexe aux poumons.


Une Ariane des temps modernes
En balayant du regard son atelier, elle s’arrête sur le cœur, « c’était un projet participatif que j’ai crée peu après Charlie. » Surement une façon de re-fédérer les gens, de renouer les liens, « tout le monde en avait besoin. » L’artiste lance alors un appel sur les réseaux sociaux, tous les participants verront leur nom affiché au bas de l’oeuvre. En quelques semaines, elle reçoit 763 pelotes de laines, provenant de plus de 120 donneurs, dispersés au quatre coins du monde, de Paris à Nouméa, en passant par le Chili, la Belgique ou la Grèce. Succès fulgurant. Travail titanesque en perspective. Il lui faut près d’un mois pour trier les tissus et constituer une pelote de plus de 40 kilos. Quant au crochet… 45 jours nécessaires à la réalisation de l’organe démesuré. « Les aiguilles étaient énormes et la pelote pesait une tonne ! Je ne pouvais pas faire plus de cinq nœuds sans être épuisée.
Une technique épuisante donc et laborieuse que la « quinqua » ne compte pas abandonner de si tôt: « J’ai l’impression que je ne suis vraiment qu’au tout début, j’ai encore beaucoup de choses à dire. » Sorte d’Ariane des temps modernes. Elle semble avoir trouvé sa voie grâce au fil et regorge d’idées pour exprimer son engagement. Inquiète au sujet de ses consœurs qui voient leur émancipation parfois en péril, cette tricoteuse ne manque pas d’accrocher un soupçon de conviction à ses œuvres. On se souvient notamment de cette représentation qu’elle avait donnée au Théâtre National de Nice, en mai dernier, enfermée dans une combinaison intégrale tricotée comme dans sa condition féminine, attendant qu’on tire sur les fils pendants pour la délivrer. Une cause qui lui tient à cœur, une métaphore filée sur l’ensemble de ses créations.
Marine de Rocquigny pour Art and Facts www.artandfacts.fr

Sugar Battery Set To Power Phones, Tablets And Other Devices

Catalyzing Commercialization Sugar could some day be used to power smartphones, tablets, and other electronic devices thanks to a recent breakthrough by Blacksburg, VA-based Cell-Free BioInnovations, Inc. It might seem strange to use an ingredient found in cupcakes and cookies as an energy source, but it’s not, as most living cells break down sugar to produce energy. And, interestingly, the energy density of sugar is significantly higher than that of current lithium-ion batteries.

Working under a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Science Foundation, a research team led by Y-H Percival Zhang, Chief Science Officer of Cell- Free BioInnovations and an associate professor of biological systems engineering at Virginia Tech, has successfully demonstrated the concept of a sugar biobattery that can completely convert the chemical energy in sugar substrates into electricity.

As reported in the January 2014 issue of Nature Communications, this breakthrough in sugar-powered biobattery can achieve an energy-storage density of about 596 A-h/kg — an order of magnitude higher than the 42 A-h/kg energy density of a typical lithium-ion battery.

A sugar biobattery with such a high energy density could last at least ten times longer than existing lithium-ion batteries of the same weight, drastically reducing how often users need to recharge their electronic devices. This nature-inspired biobattery is a type of enzymatic fuel cell (EFC)— an electrobiochemical device that converts chemical energy from fuels such as starch and glycogen into electricity.

While EFCs operate under the same general principles as traditional fuel cells, they use enzymes instead of noble metal catalysts to oxidize the fuel. Enzymes allow for the use of more-complex fuels (e.g. glucose), and these more-complex fuels are what give EFCs their superior energy density. For example, the complex sugar hexose can release 24 electrons per glucose molecule during oxidation, whereas hydrogen (a fuel used in traditional fuel cells) releases only two electrons. Until now, however, EFCs have been limited by incomplete oxidation, releasing just two to four electrons per glucose molecule.

“We are not the first who proposed using sugar as the fuel in the biobattery,” says Zhiguang Zhu, a senior scientist at Cell-Free BioInnovations. “However, we are the first to demonstrate the complete oxidation of the sugar in the biobattery, enabling our technology to have a near-theoretical energy conversion yield that no one has ever reported.”

Zhang and his team constructed a synthetic catabolic pathway (a series of metabolic reactions that break down complex organic molecules) containing 13 enzymes to completely oxidize the glucose units of maltodextrin, yielding nearly 24 electrons per glucose molecule.

We put specific thermostable enzymes into one vessel to constitute a synthetic enzymatic pathway that can perform a cascade of biological reactions the sugar, converting it into carbon dioxide, Zhang says. Unlike natural catabolic pathways for the oxidation of glucose in cells, the designed synthetic pathway does not require costly and unstable cofactors, such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP), coenzyme A, or a labile cellular membrane. The researchers used two redox enzymes that generate reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) from sugar metabolites. NADH, a reducing agent involved in redox reactions, is a natural electron mediator that carries electrons from one molecule to another. They also used ten other enzymes responsible for sustaining metabolic cycles and an additional enzyme that transfers electrons from NADH to the electrode.

This new synthetic pathway enables the biobattery to extract the theoretical number of electrons per glucose unit and thereby use all the chemical energy in the sugar. This, the team reports, represents a significant breakthrough.

In addition to its superior energy density, the sugar biobattery is also less costly than the Li-ion battery, refillable, environmentally friendly, and nonflammable. While researchers  continue to work on extending the lifetime, increasing the power density, and reducing the cost of electrode materials for such a battery, they hope that the rapidly growing appetite for powering portable electronic devices could well be met with this energy dense sugar biobattery in the future. For the Silo, Zhiguang Zhu, chief scientist at”The Sweet Battery Project”.

This technology was funded through the America’s NSF Small Business Innovation Research Program.