Scale Free Network is an Australian-based art-science collaborative originally founded by visual artist (Briony Barr) and microbial ecologist (Dr Gregory Crocetti), in collaboration with arts educator (Jacqueline Smith).

In 2008, SFN began creating interdisciplinary workshops and participatory installations for children and adults, combining both artistic and scientific themes. Focused on the microscopic world as a source of inspiration and wonder, SFN projects visualise and explore this invisible realm. Using interactive microscopes, projections from the micro-world, hands on sculpture and drawing techniques, the viewer-participant is asked not only to engage with what they are seeing, but also to question the human scale, from which they are so accustomed to seeing.

SFN has been invited to run projects, workshops and exhibitions at both science and art institutions in Australia and internationally including at the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of Ballarat, ArtPlay, Regional Arts Victoria, Counihan Gallery, The Royal Institution of Australia, CSIRO Education Victoria and the South Australian Heath and Medical Research Institute. From November 2013 to April 2014, SFN exhibited in The Aleph Project, part of the inauguration of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, Korea. In both 2011 and 2013, they were Artists-in-Residence with Natalie Jeremijenko at her Environmental Health Clinic at New York University. In 2016, they were Artists-in-Residence at the QANTAS Joey Club (Brisbane), where they created a permanent art-science lab for 3-5 year old children. In 2017, Scale Free Network developed A Hierarchy of Eddies, an interactive installation exhibited at RMIT Gallery as a part of the 2017 Melbourne Festival and touring until 2020 as a part of the Experimenta Make Sense International Triennial of Media Art.

SFN have run workshops and created installations for numerous Australian festivals including: Come Out (SA); Moomba (VIC); The Big Draw (VIC); Knox Festival (VIC); Come Together (VIC); World Science Festival Brisbane (QLD) and Melbourne Knowledge Week (VIC). Their work has been supported by grants from: the Australia Council for the Arts; the City of Melbourne; National Science Week; Creative Victoria; and the Victorian ANZAC Centennial Fund.

The Small Friends Books project was initiated by SFN in 2013. It brings together microbiologists, educators, writers, visual artists, science communicators and designers to produce illustrated science-adventure tales, inspired by the beneficial symbiosis (living together) of microbes with other larger life forms. SFN's first two award-winning books, The Squid, the Vibrio & the Moon and Zobi and the Zoox (co-created with Ailsa Wild and Aviva Reed) received critical acclaim, selling over 5000 copies combined.

Since 2017, the Australian Society for Microbiology and Creative Victoria have supported the completion two additional titles, set in the soil. SFN now co-publishes the Small Friends Books series in Australia with CSIRO Publishing, with Chinese and Korean editions due in 2021.

SFN’s multi-award-winning graphic novel ‘The Invisible War’ (co-created in 2016 with Ailsa Wild, Ben Hutchings and Jeremy Barr) is now available in: North America (through Graphic Universe, an imprint of Lerner Books); Korea (through Bannibooks) and the Middle East (through Nahdet Misr Publishing).

From 1993-2006, Gregory studied Biochemistry and Microbiology and then worked as a microbial ecologist at the University of Queensland (under the supervision of Prof. Linda Blackall), the University of New South Wales (with Prof. Staffan Kjelleberg’s at the CMBB). He also worked all-too-briefly with the awesome Agrigas team at the Department of Biotechnology at the University of Lund in Sweden.

In these roles, Gregory explored the identity and role of different microbes – particularly Bacteria and Archaea – from a range of environments, including: mouse intestines, stromatolites, seaweed. But mostly he researched the population dynamics of the bacteria involved in removing phosphate from wastewater (sewage).

In 2007, Gregory shifted from research to science education with CSIRO Education (2007-2011) and Friends of the Earth Emerging Technologies Project (2011-2013). Since 2008, Gregory began a long-term collaboration with artists Briony Barr and Jacqueline Smith in the art-science collective, Scale Free Network. In this capacity, Gregory has collaborated with other artists, including Natalie Jeremijenko, Liquid Architecture, Slow Art Collective, Eco Innovators, TAPE Projects and more.

Gregory now co-authors and co-publishes the Small Friends Books series and the Planet Human graphic novel series, along with Scale Free Network collaborator, Briony Barr.

Briony Barr is a visual artist who regularly collaborates with science and scientists as part of her practice. A testament to this fact, she was recently appointed an honorary fellow of the School of Physics at The University of Melbourne. Since 2008, she has worked with the microbiologist Dr. Gregory Crocetti and fellow artist Jacqueline Smith as part of Scale Free Network: art-science collaborative. At the other end of the scale, she collaborates with astrophysicist Dr. Andrew Melatos (The University of Melbourne) on an ongoing project called Drawing on Complexity. This involves making rule-based, expanded drawings, involving many people and large amounts of coloured tape. The idea is to use the collaborative drawing process to explore the evolution of a complex system. 

Since 2009, Briony has worked as a support staff and in-house artist at civic art studio – ArtPlay – run by the City of Melbourne - where she regularly facilitates and designs creative workshops for children and families.

Briony has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. The list includes The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Melbourne Festival, Ipswich Art Gallery, Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, The National Gallery of Victoria, The Immigration Museum, Flux Factory New York , The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea and the Santa Fe Institute in USA. Her work has appeared in diverse publications including BIG kids magazine and VOGUE Korea. Briony is represented by TW Fine Art.

www.brionybarr.com

Ailsa Wild was a professional acrobat and whip-cracker who ran away from the circus to become a writer. She is now an author, performer and community artist who loves collaboration. Ailsa has a Masters of Creative Media (creative writing) from RMIT, has written two junior fiction series: Squishy Taylor and The Naughtiest Pixie and is the lead writer of Small Friends Books series. Her collaboration, the science-based graphic novel The Invisible War was a CBCA notable and won several awards including Most Underrated Book Award. Ailsa’s books have been published in Spain, Brasil, US, UK, Egypt and Korea and publications in Israel and China are scheduled for 2020.

Ailsa’s work has appeared in Meanjin, The Monthly, ABC online and #METOO: stories from the Australian movement. She has spoken at many literary festivals including Melbourne Writers Festival, World Science Festival Brisbane, Williamstown Literary Festival and Ipswich StoryArts Festival. She has also guest lectured at several universities and presented at more than 200 schools around Australia. She has collaborated on and performed in several circus and physical theatre productions, which have toured Australia. Ailsa is available for school and public bookings through Booked Out.

Some would call Aviva Reed an artist, others a scientist. Aviva describes herself as a visual ecologist and creative provocateur. She enjoys provoking thought, smashing paradigms and rebuilding them. She loves combining ideas and exploring concepts from multiple perspectives. Through her practice she seeks to evoke enchantment, cross-disciplinary thought, and to question status quo notions of normality.

Aviva has an undergraduate degree in Environmental Science, a Masters of Education (in Environment) and has spent the past decade working as a professional artist. She has completed numerous bodies of work including drawings, paintings, mixed media and installation. Recent projects include illustrating science-adventure stories in collaboration with Melbourne-based art-science publisher, Scale Free Network, interpreting the history of evolution for a participatory landscape installation at Windgrove and interning at GASP, both in Tasmania. She has produced a series of artworks for the Jaliigirr Biodiversity Alliance (NSW), in response to community members’ sense of place, as well as undertaken two artist residencies; a Regional Arts Victoria extended artist-in-residency at Elmore Primary School exploring ecology through performance and a Laughing Waters residency, culminating in a body of work exhibited at Melbourne City Library titled The Symbiogenesis Project. In 2002, she co-founded Tasmanian-based Black Sassy Collective, an environmental art collective which exhibits annual collaborative exhibitions in Hobart, Tasmania.

Most recently, Aviva has published her first book: EON. The Story of the Fossils - an exquisite, evolutionary, exploration of life on Earth.

Aviva is available for school bookings in Australia through Booked Out.

www.avivareed.com

PROFESSOR LINDA BLACKALL is a professor in microbial ecology who works at the University of Melbourne. Her main research interests are using microbes to promote environmental sustainability, understanding symbiotic associations (e.g. corals and their associated microbes), and generally studying microbes wherever they exist – which is everywhere! Her career began prior to the boom in technology/method development that has allowed us to comprehend the omnipresent profound role that microbes play on Earth.
She has previously worked at James Cook University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville, and for the Environmental Biotechnology CRC and the Advanced Water Management Centre, while based for over 20 years at the University of Queensland.
Having been involved in the tertiary education sector since 1992, she has taught science, medicine, and engineering to students. She is passionate about trying to broaden the interests of these cohorts beyond their specific cognate disciplines so that they can be expansively engaged in the community and not confined to their 'ivory towers'. This does happen on some but not enough occasions. She would like to kindle the curious minds of the youngest learners so that some of them will embrace this notion...they will be shaping and driving policy soon enough.

Patricia Stock is a Professor at the University of Arizona, USA. Her expertise is in insect pathology, with a focus on parasitic nematodes. Her work centres on the diversity, evolutionary relationships and symbioses these parasites have with their eukaryotic hosts and bacterial symbiotic partners.