Week 6: BioTech+Art


This week I learned that science and art really clash in this topic of BioTech because it includes the experimentation of animals, cells, genomes, technology, etc. in order to create some sort of art with it. The fact that artists can now use genomes,genes, it creates a new path for scientists to express their artistic ways through science(Biology and technology). In Professor Vesna's lecture video, she explains how there is Audio-microscope where you involve light and sound and you hear living cells, infogene(send message of human to the heavens by genome put into bacteria), and the one that stuck out to me the most which was micro injection. Micro-injection was where scientists got protein from jellyfish and modified it to glow where they inserted this into rabbits,known as green fluorescent protein. This is also an example from Defining Life: Artists Challenge Conventional Classification by Ellen K. Levy, where genes from coral species of fish added to genome of black and white zebra fish which made them glow in relation to the slime glow , and I related this to the micro-injection.   

I find it really amazing that you could do so much with cells, genes, etc, to create art due to how and what the scientists defines as art. For example, in the lecture video part 2, I found it really interesting how Symbiotica, which is tissue engineering based projects, with their project Fish n' Chips where a robotic arm was run by goldfish neurons, and it gave the robotic arm the ability to draw something to create art with these neurons(live cells) within the network. This is something I didn't even know was possible to be able to move something technical with living cells from a fish to create art, I believe everything in the process is art.

BioTech and Art has no limits because in, Meanings of Participation: Outlaw Biology? by Chris Kelty, explains how you don't need sciences permission to do experiments and it is for nutty ideas, for example, extracting DNA from strawberries with just household products! That absolutely makes me want to go to my kitchen as fast as possible and try it. Ideas like these are everywhere in BioTech and Art, for example, in lecture video part 4, the project the Third Ear, where there is a sub dermal implant where jewelry is put into the skin and it molds around this piece. This falls into body modification and works as a piece of art to prove that human body limitations could be overcome. I was very fascinated with this topic because of all these example being so out of the box, and makes the boring part of science fun which relates science into making art with the art of science.

Sources:

• Levy, Ellen K.. “Defining Life: Artists Challenge Conventional Classifications.” DESMA 9. Web. 2 Nov 2012.
• Kelty, Chris. “Meanings of Participation: Outlaw Biology?”. Web. 5 Nov. 2012.
• Vesna, Victoria, narr. “BioTech Art Lectures I.” N.p., . web. 5 Nov 2012.
• Vesna, Victoria, narr. “BioTech Art Lectures II.” N.p., . web. 5 Nov 2012.
• Vesna, Victoria, narr. “BioTech Art Lectures IV.” N.p., . web. 5 Nov 2012.