A day in the Lab at AberInnovation

In November, 2023 Myself and Owen Lloyd spent a day in one of AberInnovation’s labs to work with lab technician Ellen Cocksedge on generating a metabolomic fingerprint analysis to identify and quantify the metabolites in the cellular system of the black oat husk and groat to attempt to trace its lineage.

I attempted to catch the data as the husk and groat samples were passed through the analytic process to create a live drawing performance in the lab. Owen recorded audio from all aspect of the process, from both the preparation of the seeds and the analysis of the seeds, recordings from my drawing board, the electronic magnetic pick up from the analysis equipment, ambient sounds in the lab, and the voices of Dr Howarth and the lab technician as they discuss the process and analyse the live data feed. The lab audio will be added to field recordings made on the farm, for example of the oat growing in the fields, the harvesting process, the farmers spoken voices, perhaps Owen Shiers spoken voice and singing voice. Both the lab and field recordings will then be added to notations that we create from the data sets, data modelling and my data drawing.