Learn to make your own cheap and powerful microscopes using the newest and the oldest methods for scope hacking.
Machine Project will host a workshop in which artists Rich Pell and Phil Ross will teach folks how to make both an inverted webcam microscope as well as the original device that changed biological science forever. Rich Pell will teach people how to convert a $9 web cam into a powerful optical microscope, which can then be mounted to a stage for precise imaging and recording of microorganisms anytime, anywhere. In the second half of this workshop Phil Ross will show how you can make your own version of Leeuwenhoek’s spectacular tool using inexpensive and easy to find materials. In 1673 Antony von Leeuwenhoek created a one-lens microscope that was a factor better than the compound scopes available at that time. This hack made apparent single cell organisms, including bacteria, and led to some of the most important discoveries in modern biology.
Workshop participants will upload videos from their new microscopes to our video-feed for the Enormous Microscopic Evening to take place Saturday November 6 at the Hammer Museum. They are also invited to bring their new microscopes to the event, and share with a broad audience how social microscopy can be used to explore and describe the world.
Participants will need to bring a laptop computer.
