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Week 6 : Bio + Art

Week 6 : Bio + Art
Blue Delphiniums
The first artist who created and exhibited Bio-art in the Museum in history is Edward Steichen who hybridizes beautiful delphiniums. He described his work as “The science of heredity when applied to plant breeding, which has as its ultimate purpose the aesthetic appeal of beauty, is a creative art”. Delphiniums were indeed beautiful and nobody questions the ethic of Bio-art at that moment. However, when Eduardo Kac presented genetically engineered green fluorescent rabbit, people began to question whether artists creating or manipulating living organisms for art works is ethical or not. Furthermore, Stelarc has undertaken a radical transformation of his body; the extra ear being constructed on his arm which is bizarre for many people. People do wish there should be limits to human creativity in the fear of bio-art turns into bio-hazard by bio-hackers and outlaws. However, with DYI biology, anyone can create their own bio lab in their garage or backyard and it would be difficult to prohibit them as they are transforming into the form of open source software.

Frog with fluorescent protein

Stelarc's Ear
Among the materials provided this week, ‘Questions by Ruth West’ is the most helpful for me to think and understand the issues of bio-art. One of the questions from Ruth West is “Is there a need for separate standards for artists creating or manipulating living organisms and semi-living systems?”. I believe that the answer depends on the artists’ level of knowledge in their related fields in their art works. If an artist has learnt adequate amount of biology, the artist could be so called a scientist. Besides, scientists who are good at reasoning in nature usually have a good reason for their use of living organisms in laboratory to discover greater good for human beings. For example, by using fluorescent protein, scientists claim how cancer cells spread or how HIV infection progress can be tracked. On the other hand, artists using biotechnology for artistic expressions without strong reasoning would portray as inhumane for living organisms. 

 References
Delphinium, Delphinium and More Delphinium––Edward Steichen, Karl Foerster and Their Obsession with Blue. About the Conceptual Art of Ornamental Plant Breeding. by Hannah Stippl. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 May 2017.
Kelty, C., Meanings of participation: Outlaw Biology
Levy, E., Defining Life: Artists Challenge Conventional Classification
MacLachlan, Allison. "How a Jellyfish Protein Transformed Science." LiveScience. Purch, 27 Oct. 2011. Web. 14 May 2017.
STELARC | EAR ON ARM. N.p., n.d. http://stelarc.org/?catID=20242, Web. 14 May 2017.
https://flowergallery.tesselaarflowers.com.au/Pictures/_general_74.jpg

Comments

  1. UnknownMay 17, 2017 at 1:39 PM

    Hi! I found your blog post very interesting and pretty similar to my perspective on this week's lectures. The standards for biotech artists should definitely depend on the artist's amount of knowledge. For example, plugging in GFP in bacteria seems relatively harmless... but when it's expanded to animals (like the glowing GFP bunny), other side effects might harm the animal if the artist/scientist does not know the experiment protocol too well.

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