Processes of metabolism in biology are a very complicated matter. Many natural scientiest experience this suffering already in their first semesters of their studies. To prepare the whole complexity of this subject in a generally duplicate manner and furthermore to even produce connections to art borders completly at an adventurous procedure.
 
Uwe Ochsler has answered some questions about the basic principles of life in a simple but still vivid manner with his installation in the small place of art EINSTELLUNGSRAUM at the Wandsbeker Chaussee.
The former flower shop with a floor deep window and an entrance door of glass at the street side al the only natural light source was furnished by him with about one hundert small pots, filled with nutrition rich soil, well watered and distributed evenly along the walls.
Each on its own, resting on a small pedestal of wood, was for the time of the exhibition the place of a vegetable plant or a garden herb. On the day of the opening the little seedlings had just reached the state of seedling leave, and looked mostly rather alike. Now, six weeks later, a very different  growth is clearly showing. Of course Zucchini is different from parsley and chives in its leaves structure and size.
But the attention giving watchers do not miss further important details. Plants of the same kind are inspite of the other same living conditions smaller in the back part of the room, have a lighter green and have an elongated weak shoot. Most of the plants close by the window on the other hand have grown strong and seem to be stable and healthy. By chance, but with meaning there are text cuts from car- and motor magazines under the pots , like "Klima kostet extgra" ("climate does cost extra") or "Ein RŠtsel gibt den Technikern zu Denken"("a riddle keeps the technicians thinking"). What has happened? Biology, the science of life, the knowledge of the living beings, hence the micro- organisms, the plants and the animals is impressivly demonstrated here with educatinal material like in a field trial.

The most essential natural scientific characterizations are individuality,

organic-chemical composition, reproduction and development of population as well as the ability for modification and evolution.
Life is an individual matter. It needs threedimensionally determined defined outside appearance, an inner structured scaffold and a metabolism of matter and energy. Living beings have a very different state than pure anorganic not living matter. In essence they contain complex connections of carbon, proteins and lipids, but also anorganic substances, like for example the water. Furthermore there are salts and trace elements in low quantities.
Biological life is a continuous energetic process of chemical-physical operations. Non-organic cristalls remain in a specific structure of their own. Living organisms on the other hand are open systems and are in a permanent exchange with their environment of matter and energy and in a dynamical flowing balance. They react to outside influences and are adaptable in a special way. The development of an individual goes through different stages. The most important stages are growth, repro- duction, aging and death. They either merge themselves in the pro- duction of new individuals, or they perish after forming offspring. Those takes place continuously survival and continuation of the art for each species. Disturbances of those processes can happen through naturally and anthropologically induced actions, like for example natural catastro- phies or  consequences of technologies. So far those have not had absoluly life destroying outcomes. The basic pattern of the biological systems have now as before been stable and do still function.

Metabolism and energy exchange, energy supply exchange and metabolism of renewal of parts take place in the cells. There complex connections of high potential energy are built constantly. Encymes influence the processes of development as catalysers, without becoming part of the endproducts. But they control direction and speed of the processes. A structual order that has to come back again and again is necessary to enable balanced and constant procedures. The cell nuclei with their DNS and the genetical code function as control-, steering- and information centre. They regulate reproduction and growth. Animals but also most bacterias and fungi use external energy potentials through dissolution  of complex molecules of carbonhydrates, protein and fat. The energy centres of organisms of animals are the mitochondrias. They are the power plants, the energy producers. In cells with high activity, like for instance in those of mussles and organs of sense or in nerv cells more of them do appear.
The artist from Hamburg, Harald Finke has used occasionally in his works abstract, halfmoon-like shapes and structures of mitochondrias.