Week 6: BioTech + Art

BioArt is an art process that human work with living things such as tissues and organisms to express their ideas. It enables artists to further explore the meaning of life and extend the existing forms of art.

The artwork that interested me most in this week's lecture is fish and chips created by Simbiotica, a group that engages artists in the science lab. I am always curious about what is happening in our minds when we are thinking. In this project, the scientists created a robotic drawing arm that moved by the activity of goldfish neurons to produced art.  Though the art seems like kind of a mess, it has its unique beauty and meaning.

Another worth-mentioning project is Alba, a genetically modified glowing rabbit made by Eduardo Kac with the GFP genes. The scientists injected the GFP genes, which came from a kind of  fluorescent jellyfish named Aequorea victoria and was modified to glow twice as powerful, into the rabbit to make it glow. Kac described Alba as a transgenic artwork. However, animal rights activists believed that what Kac did was an abuse manipulation on the animal.

Eduardo Kac is not the only artist that caused ethical debates about BioArt. BioArt does inspires lots of people to think about life. But since it is deeply related to biotechnology, which possesses great power but is also considered dangerous if it is mistakenly used, BioArt is facing the same ethical and social inquiry as it started to be practiced by more artists in the world.
In my opinion, life itself is an expressive medium with or without artificial manipulations. Indeed, using biotechnology as an artistic technique is an innovative way to explore what living beings are capable of and what lives truly are. However, if artists who what to create BioArt are not experts in biotechnology, they may cause unpleasant damage. BioArt should have a certain restrict boundary which defined by today's laws and morals. But this boundary should neither be more nor less stringent than that in the industrial and academic area.
There are no limits to human creativity, but there are limits to human practice. And these limits, believe it or not, will change as the time goes by.



Sources:

 "GFP Bunny." Vimeo. Web. 8 May 2016. <https://vimeo.com/9762314>.

"the Portrait Series" MEART. Web. 8 May 2016. <http://www.fishandchips.uwa.edu.au/project/project_portraits.html>. 

 "Mutant Bunny." New Scientist. Web. 8 May 2016. <https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16-mutant-bunny/>.

Vesna, Victoria. “5 BioArt pt2.” Lecture. Youtube, 17 May 2012. Web. 8 May 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL9DBF43664EAC8BC7&v=MdSt-Hjyi2I>.

Vesna, Victoria. “5 BioArt pt1.” Lecture. Youtube, 18 Sept. 2013. Web. 8 May 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaThVnA1kyg>.