Week 6: Biotech & Art


       Bioart allows artists to express their creativity through transforming organisms into artworks using biological techniques. From Professor Vesna’s series of videos about the various contributions of bioartists including Joe Davis and Adam Zarestky, one can confidently say that biological technologies have helped increase the public attention in regards to art (Vesna). This is because bioart can be representative of the appreciation of artists’ infinite creativity or it can be representative of the controversy between the scientific community and the artistic community.
Joe Davis's audiomicroscope to record audio frequency signature of microorganisms
https://www.elsevier.com/connect/creating-art-with-genes-and-bacteria

            SymbioticA is an artistic laboratory in Australia, allowing artists to have a place to be engaged in science. The fact that it is the first official group to work on bioart demonstrates that there is a community out there that sees values in bioart and how it can contribute to the dialogue of human complexity and innovativeness. SymbioticA’s Fish and Chips project resulted in the creation of a robotic arm that makes drawings based on the movements of a goldfish’s neurons (Bakkum). Learning about this invention helps me appreciate both art and science to a deeper level because of the product that one can produce when combining artistic and biotechnology principles together. While this project may not evoke much ethical/moral concerns, other bioarts have led to controversy between the scientific community and the artistic community, including transgenic humans and misusing biological equipments and techniques to create artwork.
The Fish and Chip Project: a Robotic Arm
http://biomedicalcomputationreview.org/content/meart-semi-living-artist

            It is reasonable that there is controversy in regards to bioart because the process of making bioart can be dangerous to human beings, expensive, and unethical.  For example, body implant for the purpose of art is highly dangerous because of the potential futures risks of that individual (Zurr). Thus, similar to how there exists the Good Clinical Practice and the Institutional Review Board (IRB) regulating the scientific research, I believe that there needs to be separate standards for artists creating or manipulating living organisms and semi-living systems, so that artists can also be responsible for the consequences of their bioarts and be mindful of the message that they want to send to public because there should a sound purpose to any human creation/artwork.  
Bioartist Stelar's ear on arm
https://labiotech.eu/bioart-stelarc-obsolete-human-body-medtech/

References:

Bakkum, Douglas J. et al. “MEART: The Semi-Living Artist.” Frontiers in Neurorobotics 1 (2007): 5. PMC. Web. 14 May 2018.

Reiss, Michael J, and Roger Straughan. Improving Nature? The Science And Ethics Of Genetic Engineering,. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996.

Rifkin, Jeremy. The Biotech Century — Genetic Commerce And The Dawn Of A New Era. 1998, http://www.aec.at/20jahre/artikel.asp? jahr=1999&nr=E1999_047&band=101. Accessed 14 May 2018.

"The Current Status Of The Research Into Fish & Chips". 2006, http://www.fishandchips.uwa.edu.au. Accessed 14 May 2018.

Vesna, Victoria. 5 Bioart Pt1 1280X720. 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaThVnA1kyg. Accessed 14 May 2018.

Vesna, Victoria. 5 Bioart Pt5. 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL9DBF43664EAC8BC7&v=z7zHIdsFS3A. Accessed 14 May 2018.


Zurr, Ionat, and Oron Catts. "The Ethical Claims Of Bio-Art: Killing The Other Or Self-Cannibalism". Australian And New Zealand Journal Of Art, vol 5, no. 1, 2004, pp. 167-188. Informa UK Limited, doi:10.1080/14434318.2004.11432737.

Comments

  1. Aman KaurMay 16, 2018 at 11:15 AM

    I agree that there should be separate standards for artists and scientists. Furthermore, I believe that the standards for artists should be much more strict than those for the scientists. Scientists understand the nuances, and risks that come along with major experiments, whereas artists may not. I think that for the artists' safety and safety of the general public, we should limit artists' scope when it comes to experimentation (or at least until all artists interested in Bioart go through similarly rigorous training as the scientists).

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownMay 16, 2018 at 3:17 PM

    Well said. Its interesting how you drew analogy to the division in scientific research. I wholeheartedly agree that separate standards should be set based on different purposes. Maybe there could be a general standard that underlies both sets of rules that deals with basic safety and moral.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownMay 16, 2018 at 9:56 PM

    Although scientists and artists may use the same techniques in their projects, it is reasonable, as you have said, to have separate regulatory standards for artists and scientists. There is the factor of artists not having as much experience as scientists in some laboratory techniques, but I believe that since their works serve different purposes (one purely for research and another more for expression), they ought to be judged differently as well. I believe safety boards for bioartists (if implemented) should include both scientists (for general laboratory safety) but also other artists (to limit waste of scientific resources and filter out artworks which they may deem not worth the expense).

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