Bioart

During the last decade, the term 'Bio Art' has been the subject of vital discussions as a description of the intersecting domains of the biological sciences and their incorporation into the arts. The use of biological material like tissue culture, plant breeding, and above all genetic engineering as artistic media went hand in hand with debates about the aesthetic value and ethical-ontological consequences of bringing cutting edge science into the arts. The adoption of bioscientific techniques and methods into the arts, however, not only broached a highly controversial subject, it also opened up new ways of artistic expression. With the emerging field of Bio Art, tissue culture, bacteria, cells, and even genetically engineered organisms have become part of the art world, raising questions about the aesthetic and ontological status of live in the age of technoscience. In the last decade we have seen a number of artists questioning our concept of life while moving beyond the boundaries of art and science. Debates about changing the face of our planet through geo-engineering or debates about assembling life artificially in a petri dish through synthetic biology challenge our concept of "live" in an age, where "nature" seems to be increasingly human-made. For almost half a century the modern life sciences have been able to produce "artificial" living organisms that evolution has not brought forth so far by using the methods and techniques of genetic engineering. The concept of life as technology has been one of the starting points of producing "biofacts," which owe their existence solely to the culture of experimentation and the expanding systems of apparatus in the laboratory.

Mελανίτης : Χαίρομαι που βρίσκεστε στην Ελλάδα ... Stelarc : Ευχαριστώ ... Μ : Ας μιλήσουμε καταρχήν για το σώμα , το οποίο θεωρείτε ως ένα υπερφορτωμένο πεδίο πληροφορίας που αντιδρά με σπασμωδικό τρόπο ... Έχετε μιλήσει για την συνειδητοποίηση της στιγμής όπου το σώμα είναι ξεπερασμένο. Βλέπετε αυτή την συνειδητοποίηση ως μια αρχή , το ξεκίνημα για κάτι ; Stelarc : Από την εμπειρία των performances έγινε σαφές ότι το σώμα είναι ξεπερασμένο. Πραγματοποιώντας αυτές τις δράσεις δεν προέκυψε η εμπειρία της ενίσχυσης απλώς του σώματος , ούτε επρόκειτο για κάποιου είδους ψευδοεπιστημονικές εξερευνήσεις του-μάλλον οι performances αποκάλυψαν τους φυσικούς και ψυχολογικούς περιορισμούς. Το σώμα, αφού επί 2.000 χρόνια σωρεύει πληροφορίες-αυτή η τρελή Αριστοτελική παρόρμηση για συσσώρευση όλο και περισσότερης πληροφορίας-, αδυνατεί ποσοτικά αλλά πλέον και ποιοτικά να αναλύσει αντικειμενικά και να διαχειριστεί δημιουργικά αυτή την ποσότητα πληροφοριών. Για παράδειγμα , μπορούμε να υπολογίσουμε νανο-δευτερόλεπτα , εκατομμυριοστά του δευτερολέπτου, έτη φωτός, αστρικές αποστάσεις, αλλά αδυνατούμε να βιώσουμε ως υποκείμενα αυτή την εμπειρία. Η πληροφορία είναι ξένη στο σώμα μας, το βιολογικό μας σώμα, χωρίς την μεσολάβηση τεχνικών οργάνων. Κατασκευάζουμε επίσης μηχανές που λειτουργούν ταχύτερα , με μεγαλύτερη ακρίβεια και πολύ περισσότερη ισχύ απ΄ ότι το ανθρώπινο σώμα. Έτσι οι μηχανές συχνά υπερσκελίζουν το ανθρώπινο είδος. H τεχνολογία επιτάχυνε το ανθρώπινο σώμα , το σώμα έχει κατακτήσει ταχύτητα κατάργησης της βαρύτητας και τώρα πλέον βρίσκεται αποκομμένο από την βιόσφαιρά του , ώστε αδυνατεί να επιβιώσει σε αυτά τα ξένα περιβάλλοντα χωρίς την συνδρομή εκτεταμένου τεχνολογικού εξοπλισμού. Γι΄ αυτούς λοιπόν τους λόγους , το σώμα είναι ξεπερασμένο. Διαθέτουμε όμως τώρα ένα σώμα που αντέχει λίγα λεπτά χωρίς αέρα , περίπου μία εβδομάδα χωρίς νερό , ίσως ένα μήνα χωρίς τροφή ... Η διατάραξη της εσωτερικής του θερμoκρασίας κατά 3-4 βαθμούς προκαλεί σοβαρούς κινδύνους υγείας και η μείωση των σωματικών υγρών κατά 10% επιφέρει θάνατο. Συνεπώς οι παράμετροι επιβίωσης του σώματος είναι εξαιρετικά περιορισμένες και δεδομένου ότι το σώμα διαθέτει κατά μέσο όρο 10 χρόνια καλής φυσικής κατάστασης είναι ένα πρόβλημα αν είσαι ήδη 50 ετών !-(Γέλια) Μ : Τελικά , πώς αντιλαμβάνεστε τον εαυτό σας μέσα σε αυτά τα περιβάλλοντα που κατασκευάζετε-ως μέρος της ροής των δεδομένων ή ως έναν συνειδητό χειριστή ; S : Παρ΄ ότι οι πρώιμες performances ήταν πιο δύσκολες από φυσική άποψη οι πιό πρόσφατες είναι τεχνικά πολύπλοκες. Καθώς το σώμα είναι συνδεδεμένο καλωδιακά με αυτό το σύνθετο σύστημα από αναδραστικά κυκλώματα και εικόνες δεδομένων , καλωδιωμένο στα μηχανήματα , τότε στις πιό επιτυχημένες φάσεις συντελείται ένα είδος ολιστικής συμβίωσης όπου πραγματικά χάνεις την αίσθηση του εαυτού σου και γίνεσαι μέρος αυτού του λειτουργικού συστήματος. Το

The aim of this article is to present my personal cognitive experience of transdisciplinary work, which can also be understood as knowledge transfer and aesthetic experience. My BioArt uses the microphotography technique - my instruments being LEICA E 24 and LEICA DM 750 microscopes, with an LEICA ICC50 HD camera and a Dino-Lite Pro HR AM 7000 5 Megapixel manual microscope. The preparations and objects I have photographed so far have been mainly plant and insect material (dry and wet) and my own biological material. This text is the first non-artistic thematicization of my work and as such it signposts the possible direction my future research could take. The first, short section also indicates the direction my reflections, based on the philosophy of culture, will not take.

Communication is neither just verbal communication nor written and has to be understood in relation to a particular context: historical, material, embodied, emotional, and so on. We also have acknowledged that some kind of communication is possible between species. The investigation of interspecies and material communication is interestingly developed through artistic experiments of Eduardo Kac (a Chicago-based, Brazilian-born bio-artist interested in genetic engineering, and the first person to implant an RFID microchip under his skin in the art project "Time Capsule," 1997). The aim of the interview was to inquire into Kac's views on language, evolution, and material and in-terspecies communication, which turns out to have the capacity to mitigate our anxiety that direct, material, nonlinguistic communication will be lacking poetic, aesthetic, and interpretative values. Kac states that if we resign from linguistics and philology, we will open ourselves to the possibility of interspe-cies communication. This kind of communication appears in a few instances, or on different levels, biological and behavioral (which are not always easy to distinguish between), creating new threads of relationship with other nonhu-man entities, which plausibly will make us more sensitive to their well-being, and can cause important shifts in our behavior, supporting the development of empathy toward others in global terms.

Charla con motivo de la exposición "Cosas raras. Bioarte en la Argentina" (La Plata, Centro de Arte de la UNLP)

Participan:  Flavia Costa, Javier Samaniego García, Constanza Pedersoli, Natalia Matewecki, Daniel López del Rincón

Jueves 2 de mayo de 2019
19h
Auditorio Cenrtro de arte de la UNLP
Calle 48 entre 6 y 7
La Plata

World Short Abstract Biotechnological Fashion is changing our perspectives upon the body and the self. By analyzing three creative projects, we would like to think about the transformations upon the concepts of dress, body, and environment with the aid of some new philosophical and biological approaches. Abstract Wearable technology and novel materials are changing our interpretations of the body and the self by presenting them not only as imaginery, but also as abstract data visualisations. In between all these new approaches that are being brought into Fashion, we perceive a proliferation of certain biotechnological practices that might hint those perspectives. We would like to examine those practices from Timothy Morton´s ecological thought. This author conceives that all forms of life are interconnected, in a vast mesh that penetrates all dimensions. We would also like to take into account Maturana and Varela´s approach to the appreciation of the living through their Santiago´s Theory of Cognition. It understands living systems as cognition systems, describing cognition as the very process of life itself. Thus, human beings are defined as agents constructing the world, not as agents discovering it. These perspectives blur the boundaries between our bodies and the environment. By adopting this standpoint, we hope to explore dress as a permeable membrane that beclouds the oppositions between humans and animals, between the natural and the artificial, between the self and its surroundings. Projects such as 9/4/1615 (Maison Martin Margiela, 1997), Victimless Leather (The Tissue Culture Art Project, 2004), and Future Flora (Giulia Tomasello , 2018) explore all these new perceptions of the human and the world around us through dress and biotechnology. This paper aims to examine this paradigm shift by exploring these three creative projects, correlating the new concepts to the practices of fashion design.

Abstract:
The history of clothing is also the history of the relationship between humanity and the natural world. Nowadays, this relationship has come full circle. The global Fashion system seems quite clearly divorced from nature, since its functioning relies on the depletion of natural resources. The human determination to subjugate the natural world could have something to do with this dire predicament. This short research paper discusses the “Fashion and learning from nature” proposal theme through the analysis of some new approaches that take into account rather cooperative alliances with our surroundings.
We examine a new engagement with the environment that conceives of Nature as a synergetic system. This approach is based on the insights of the Gaia Hypothesis (which contends that the interactions of living organisms with their inorganic surroundings on Earth form a synergistic system), Santiago´s Theory of Cognition (which understands living systems as cognition systems and describes cognition as the very process of life itself), and Symbiogenesis Theory (which highlights the importance of bacteria on the evolution of living systems). This new scientific paradigm, that has been developing for the past twenty-five years, is now being translated into fashion through the dissemination of different biotechnological practices. Projects such as 9/4/1615 (Maison Martin Margiela, 1997), Textured Self (Sonja Bäumel, 2011), and Vivorium (Ali Schachtschneider, 2105) explore all these new perceptions of the human and the world around us through dress, bacteria and biotechnology. This paper aims to examine this paradigm shift by exploring these three creative projects, correlating the new concepts to the practices of fashion design.

Keywords:
Biotechnological fashion; science & design; living dresses; Santiago´s Theory of Cognition; bacteria.

Table of Contents:

Bioart : définition(s) et enjeux éthiques. Essai introductif
Guillaume Bagnolini, Paolo Stellino

Transhumanisme : entre augmentation, esthétique et éthique
Salomé Bour

Critical Bioart and Postcapitalist Ethics
Kim Harthoorn

Biodesign, comment penser la production avec le vivant ?
Lou Vettier

Le bioart face aux problématiques socio-économiques du développement biotechnologique
Lucía Stubrin

Bio-art et transhumanisme : une anthropologie des limites
Julien Cueille

Biodesign : vers une relecture des rapports
Gwenaëlle Bertrand, Maxime Favard

I will discuss how art practice within a genetics laboratory can provide a situated account of scientific knowledge through a performative exploration of subjectivity. The focus of this paper is my doctoral research on my relationship with the microbial organism through its use as synthetic biology resource. Drawing source material from synthetic biology and art practices that employ biotechnology, I undertake a slow, performative practice tracing my subjective experience in the laboratory through devising a method of converting my thought into DNA and then physically inserting this DNA into the body of the common laboratory micro-organism, Escherichia coli (E. coli). Diffracted through readings of post-humanist and vital materialist works, I (re)consider my intuitive engagement with the materials, methods and tools of synthetic biology both as an imposition upon the constructed space of the laboratory and upon the constructed body of the organism. Through the ongoing art project, Pithos, a practical engagement with the organism as vessel, and Transformation, a participatory performance workshop that reconsiders genetic modification as an act of assembling lively material, I construct narratives that reframe our relation to biological material through intra-action, kinship and responsibility.

Human action — agriculture, and industrialization, and globalization — has significantly impacted the systems of Earth. Understanding the extent of these changes has problematized the dualism behind dominant Western worldviews and raised the importance of adopting a more integrated and contingent view of human beings in the world. As definitions of nature change in light of anthropogenic climate change, human beings are coming to be seen as a fully-integrated part of the Earth’s systems. Researchers at the intersection of the humanities and natural sciences are re-orienting the relationship between the worlds of the human and the nonhuman. In this context, fashion designers may ask what kind of relationships fashion has with nonhuman worlds, and what kind of new relationships may be proposed as possible design-led solutions to the growing need for environmental sustainability.

This is an opportunity to negotiate new ways of designing with Earth, rather than of it. In other words, design methods are being developed which promote nurturing and forming, rather than extracting and processing as the paradigm for fashion design. This paper asks what design methodologies might be formulated in which the agency of the nonhuman is recognized. How can designers use the morphology or behaviour of nonhumans to design materials, objects or ways of living? This paper introduces concepts which could contribute towards a method for interspecies collaborative design that is relevant to fashion design.

The essay unfolds around art installations and speculative projects that embody processes of material transformation exploring a theory of the metabolic. The idea of metabolic architecture is analogous to life itself in its unfolding according to four fundamental states of development: birth and growth; digestion and nutrition; motion and action; and finally, decay and recycling. There are two primary goals in this essay, each of which is dependent on the other. First, the essay argues that the art of installation as a medium is a working tool of twenty-first-century metabolic architecture, with its capacity to focus on specific materialities such as form-in-process and kinesis. Second, and reciprocally, it argues that installation shapes metabolic architecture, setting in relief the following central themes: the feedback loop between objectification, the temporal, and ephemeral; the role of modular and infrastructural elements; the merging of experiment and experience, including the user’s participation; and the integration of the vernacular, which consists of historical artifacts, cultural habits, and rituals. From within these forces, objects and modular systems manifest metabolism, producing hybrid buildings/gardens, evolving edible structures, choreographic machines, and decaying artifacts. Metabolic architecture challenges human perception in order to reveal immaterial properties and flows, while mapping spatio-temporal changes.

In 1969, Kisho Kurokawa stated that the ‘capsule is cyborg architecture’. The capsule is the ultimate form of the prefabricated building. As such it has emancipated itself from the land to become the immediate extension of the moving self, similar to cars or the Japanese kago. In Japanese Metabolism, an architecture movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the capsule is a small, repeatable building unit rooted in historical elements, such as the teahouse. The capsule is also a tool – a machine for living – that is modular and part of a system offering simplicity and complexity. The capsule signifies individuality within a diverse society, including standardization, functionality, technology and smallness in scale. This article re-examines the potential of the capsule in contemporary bioarchitecture, in living systems and in evolving environments. Through Philip Galanter’s theory of ‘complexism’, the article connects the capsule to modular(ity), embodiment, protective vulnerability, voyeurism, unpredictability, complexity, immateriality and ephemerality. I propose that the capsule instantiates a cyborg bioarchitecture.

What happens to morphological fields, at different stages of developmental commitments, when the body is shuffed or the tissues are liquefied? By comparing transgenic art and tissue culture art to transhuman inherited ge- netic modification of the human genome (IGM), questions are raised about dissective aesthetics. These questions are further complicated through a contrast of perceptions. How do organicists, sadists and the object-beings in question view anatomical deformation during embryological development. This is a reference text meant to show how bioart public labs underscore the emotional landscape inherent in tissue and explant culture, transgenic em- bryology while providing novel perspectives on the sculpting of posthuman embryonic stem cells (hESC) and their kin.
And it is here that developmental biology cannot disavow its cleavage from the lifeworld, as it is. The life world appears, forms, fuses and networks without stewardship. Compared to the expiring use of non-humans in our labs, (e.g., eels, goats and human cell cultures), the microsurgical, toxico- logical and genetic alterations of embryos that lead to actual born-into bod- ies of transgenic organisms carry more continuance, some of them live on semi-freely even after meddling. IGM (inherited genetic modification of the Human genome) offers the human versions of this artistic isolation and pain, captivity and denial. This is the bargain that experimental research entails for the object of processional desire.

Taking advantages in BioArt works, we could ask, what role in the social and cultural field do play various human bio-objects (DNA, stem cells, embryos, etc.)? – Are they gendered or racialised? – How could we speak about „the humanity“ then? What is it? – How is the life itself represented? How are described its borderlines?

Dear member of the research-creation community,

We are conducting a study on the issues and challenges related to ethics and responsible conduct of research in the practice of research-creation in collaboration with the Fonds de recherche du Québec. This study aims to determine how the objectives and principles of responsible conduct of research can be adapted to the particular context of research-creation. It will enable the development of training tools on responsible conduct of research-creation for artist-researchers and their institutions.

This international survey will allow us to collect the testimonies and perceptions regarding responsible conduct of research of the various actors composing the emerging field of research-creation. The term “research-creation” is used in its broadest sense. It thus designates all practices that involve both a creative and a research activity, carried out within an academic context. This survey is thus intended for people who associate a part of their activities with research-creation or deal with it in the course of their work. This includes people who conduct, evaluate, comment, study research-creation or collaborate in one of these activities.

We are contacting you because you have been identified as a member of the extended research-creation community, according to our recruitment strategy.

Respondents are asked to complete the online survey by April 19, 2017. The survey takes about 10 to 25 minutes to complete, depending on the respondent's profile.

As recognition for participation, 4 prizes of $200 will be randomly drawn from the list of respondents.

We invite you to share the link to this survey with other members of the research-creation community.

Thank you in advance for your collaboration in this project,

Bryn Williams-Jones for the research team

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For any questions or additional information, please contact Nathalie Voarino by e-mail info@crr-rc-rcr.ca or by phone at 1 514-343-6111 # 8809. This project has been approved by the Health Research Ethics Board (CERES) of the Université de Montréal, #16-174-CERES-D.

Artyści zajmujący się bio artem często chcą zaskoczyć swoich odbiorców  oryginalnymi pomysłami oraz szokującymi osiągnięciami z pogranicza sztuki i nauki. Manipulację żywą materią wpisują w różnorodne konteksty, odwołania do aktualnych problemów istotnych nie tylko dla nich, ale też całej ludzkości. Z pewnością zaliczyć można do nich prace Amerykanki Christiny Agapakis skoncentrowanej na tworzeniu we współpracy z bakteriami. Artystka wykorzystuje w swoich projektach mikroorganizmy, które wywołują w nas uczucie obrzydzenia, obawy przed zakażeniem, brudem mogącym przylepić się do naszego ciała. Tym samym zwraca uwagę na biologiczne i kulturowe uwarunkowania naszych relacji z bakteriami, w jakich sytuacjach je akceptujemy, a kiedy staramy się ich unikać. W swoim artykule omawiam wybrane projekty Agapakis jednocześnie podkreslając to w jaki sposób udowadniają one, że nauka i higiena zmieniają postrzeganie relacji między nami, a tym co, choć niewidoczne gołym okiem, żyje tuż obok nas.

This artist’s talk presents two works-in-progress as part of my ongoing art science research collaboration with the Institute of Genetic Medicine at Newcastle University. Pithos (working title) is a live bio art research project and audiovisual installation.  In this work I practice transgenic art in the tradition of Joe Davis [1], Christian Bök [2] and Eduardo Kac [3] by comparing the genetic code to language and constructing a cypher that enables me to place a sentence, in the form of synthetic DNA, within the body of the organism E. coli as vessel.  Reflecting the Pandora myth [4], the synthetic DNA construct (a question to the microbial other) is worked into a physical clay vessel and it’s predicted evolution within E. coli is sonified as an audio work.  As an ongoing live element, generations of the living organism containing the synthetic DNA construct are nurtured and monitored for actual evolutionary change. 

The second work-in-progress, Wishful Thinking or Velleity, With(out) Volition (working title) is a live bio art project that explores the unknown implications of using living matter as material, with my (extended) body as site of practice.  Synthetic information: a thought from my mind will be placed within my own (biopsied) skin cells.  The thought is translated into DNA, the language of the body and will be transcribed within my cells through a viral host.  This thought is volition, a will to act: held external to my mind, yet internal to my body (cells) as synthetic other. This externalization of my body will then be observed and analysed to determine whether it accepts, rejects or alters this synthetic will.  Just as synthetic biology is the imposition of human will onto living systems, I choose to impose my will, literally, on the living system of my body.

The field of synthetic biology develops genetically altered micro-organisms for use within healthcare, medicine and energy.  The industry has become a lucrative one with both private and public sector investment and increased funding within the technology and defence sectors [5] [6]. It is an inter-disciplinary field engaging the sciences, engineering, art and design to automate biological processes, with aspirations to create living machines and offer hope of ending world poverty and hunger. 

In the context of a predicted biotechnological revolution [7] [8] [9] [10], my practice-based research explores the use of DNA and the micro-organism as medium within art practice.  I speculate on our relationship with the unseen organism through an embodied understanding of living matter at the microscopic level.  The research is situated in the context of Martin Heidegger’s ‘The Question Concerning Technology’ [11] and the writings of Jacques Derrida [12] [13] [14] and speculates upon the unknowable evolutionary trajectory of life as techné. 

As I manipulate life, I consider the evolutionary consequences of my actions in the present and ask whether my future self can forgive me for what I am: a curious animal.

The essay explores some of the artistic decisions in and ethical issues raised by Neal White's work 'Truth Serum', commissioned by Arts Catalyst in 2008 as part of ‘Sk-interfaces’, an exhibition at FACT. The work is placed in the context of some of White's previous work and influences. 'Truth Serum' raises questions around the extent to which an individual can be said to be exercising autonomous decision-making in a situation that usually engenders trust - an performance in an established art institution - yet appears to be inviting some level of risk-taking. How does the art context affect a person’s behavior?

In 1994, philosopher Michel de Certeau wrote of la prise de parole, the capturing of speech, and its seminal role in political agency. For de Certeau, the use of language as a mode of resistance in the student uprisings of May 1968 constituted a unique seizure of power. 

This paper is about la prise de temps, the capturing of time, within sci-art hybrids. In particular, the French phrase refers to the distillation of the temporal process of biological development in still and moving biocentric images. While I use the word “biocentrism” to refer to scientific imagery deployed in the context of modern and contemporary art, the word has a very specific meaning and lineage. According to László Moholy-Nagy expert Oliver Botar, biocentrism [Biozentrik] is a strain of biologistic Neo-Romanticism, which materialized in Germany in the mid nineteenth century as a form of education by way of natural forms and oneness with nature. Biocentrism in Moholy-Nagy’s thinking is driven by themes of intuition, idealism, holism, the unity of the mind and body, and the oneness of organic and inorganic matter.

I argue that la prise de temps of the biocentric image triggers a process of awe and wonder which then culminates in the drive for scientific literacy: a will to understand the biofunctionalism of living complex systems. Deliberation over sci-art hybrid images catalyzes a digression of wonder, which is then followed by continual speculation, recognition of the order underlying beauty, and Yügen. In the term Yügen, I invoke the Japanese concept connoting “cloudy impenetrability…exceptional elegance or gracefulness.” (Gilbert and Faber 1996: 133) The word describes any shape or form that is in the process of change, characterizing “movement in stillness” and “the embodiment of form in changing substance.” (Gilbert and Faber 1996: 133)

This paper foregrounds la prise de temps in contemporary bioart (works by Adam Zaretsky and Jill Scott) in the history of sci-art exhibitions, in particular György Kepes’s 1951 exhibition, The New Landscape, at MIT’s Hayden Gallery. [Image 1] The goal here is to reveal the politics of scientific literacy at work in biocentric images within art across time – beyond their presence as mere abstract biomorphic forms and in addition to referencing Foucauldian biopolitics.

It is all around us: in the oceans, in the land, in our homes and in our hearts – and now it can even support life. So why is it that this crucial component of modern society is also one of its main antagonists? And, more importantly, what are we going to do with all that plastic?

This thesis will examine the work of artists who deal critically with plastic both as a medium and as a cultural artifact. The proliferation and accumulation of plastic transpires everywhere, even in the realm of art production and in the space of the gallery. I will discuss how artists are using this material to demonstrate significant challenges to common beliefs about the status of the natural in relation to human, particularly within the framework of vitalist and post-human contemporary philosophies.

At the level of cultural discourse, plastic is perceived as nearly antithetical to nature. On the other hand, beyond some basic intuition that there is a nature and that it can be identified, firmly establishing the actual referent for this concept is difficult. With a dominant ideology of ecology positioned in defence of the natural, the shared cultural enemy of the environmentally aware is plastic, a new artificial adversary. However, if we approach these categories critically – the natural, the artificial – the obvious distinction between them becomes less certain.

Australian artist Janet Laurence’s BioArt deploys plants as a conceptual apparatus and her work is an example of growing scientific and artistic interest in the neuro-biology and communication capacities of plants. Her work engages with the relevance of plant life as a means of redressing the place of humanity in the world. Her work helps to shift the ontological significance of plants, as independent and agented beings, which subsequently changes their aesthetic value. This shift towards a more equalized register of being affects our cognition and perception of plants and plant-thinking. It also affects how the functions and adaptability of plant life can inform the way we live in, and consciously perceive, the world around us.

art/fashion ( + science)

Dr Laini Burton
Academic, Artist, Writer, Critic

Dr Laini Burton is Lecturer at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. When Laini is not busy supervising PhD, Masters and Honours’ student research projects, she can be found heading up the Studio Art Major, lecturing in art, fashion and design history and theory, or writing madly on the intersections between art and science, fashion and the body. Her research centers on body politics, bio-art and design, fashion theory, performance art and body/spatial relations. Publishing in Australian and international journals, Laini has written on Lady Gaga, masquerade, bio-synthesised perfume, spatial dialectics, performance art, bondage wear on the catwalk and designer flesh.  She has been Guest Editor for Intellect Journal Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty and her book Fashion and Masquerade released in 2014 (University of Chicago Press). As a practicing artist, Laini’s work was exhibited in the Open Program of the inaugural Kochi-Muziris Biennale in Cochin, India. As a freshly minted Gold Coast-er, Laini has enjoyed collaborating with the Gold Coast City Gallery on panels relating to Raunch culture, Art and Fashion, and Speed-Curating. She is currently working on curating a major exhibition to coincide with the Commonwealth Games celebrations in 2018. Her mission, as she states it, is to develop and support the rich body of talent within our creative industries.

أثار أرنب معدل وراثيًّا خلافًا حادًّا جديدًا حول استمرار التلاعب بجينات الكائنات الحية، فلقد رفض علماء المعهد الوطني للبحوث الزراعية الفرنسي، آي إن آر آي (INRI) إهداء أرنب مُعَدَّل وراثيًّا أنتجوه معمليًّا في شباط/ فبراير الماضي إلى فنان من شيكاغو يدعى "إدواردو كاك" يُريدُ أَنْ يَعْرضَ الحيوان كقطعة فنية حية في معرض بالولايات المتحدة الأمريكية.

ولقد سُمِّيت أنثى الأرنب المحوَّرة وراثيًّا "ألبا"، بعد أن حورت جيناتها؛ لتشع لونًا أخضر تحت الظروف المعملية، ولقد أكدت المتحدثة بلسان المعهد عدم السَّماح "لكاك" بعْرض ألبا كقطعة فنية حية، وقالت أيضًا: إن ألبا ستظل في المختبر كأي حيوان معملي آخر، ولقد أضافت أيضًا: إن فنان شيكاغو، علم بوجود ألبا خلال محادثة مع واحد من العلماء الذين طَوّروها، ونفت بذلك ما أعلن من قبل عن أن المعهد أنتج هذه الأرنبة خصيصًا تلبية لطلب الفنان الأمريكي، والذي ادعى أن هذا الأرنب سيستغل كرمز للتقارب الفكري بين العلماء والمجتمع؛ لتأكيد دور بحوث الهندسة الوراثية الجديدة في تغيير الواقع والثوابت الحياتية.
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د. طارق قابيل (2000). ألبا الخضراء المتوهِّجة والتلاعب بالجينات
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Tarek Kapiel (1998). Alba the Green Glowing Rabbit and Genetic Manipulation (In Arabic).

Biopolitics, Society and Performance, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, November 2012

ABSTRACT: Departing from Helen Pynor's and Peta Clancy’s mixed media work The Body is a Big Place in which two pig hearts are brought back to life in a performance space full of floor-to-ceiling projections of human beings roaming vast underwater spaces, this paper explores the biopolitical stratification of intersomativity. Its chief focus is the production of value in discourses and practices that govern forms of living and dying in general, and organ transplantation in particular. Informed by concepts of liminality (a period and state of being between social statuses), intercorporeity  (the uninterrupted continuum of all sentient beings, plants, minerals and inanimate matter) and subjectification (the production of self and belonging as entwined with the production of knowledge and political forms of regulation), this paper examines the emotional, material, symbolic and exchange values of transplanted organs that live after death.

More specifically, it examines the role of linguistic performativity in biomedical practices ranging from 'character-building' (a narrative technique by means of which the biological, social and moral value of both the donor body and the recipient body is construed with reference to class, race, gender and creed), and technocratic coinages such a 'biocapital' (which refers to engineered embryos acting as tissue sources) to pre-formatted online memorials in which the kin make the deceased donor speak in the hope of communicating with the recipient. In doing so the paper argues for a distinctly somatic dimension of language as a network of speech acts (Austin), which create life itself, not only inaugurate new social realities. Finally, the paper offers thoughts on the following question: what is the relationship between language and the increasingly intercorporeal systems of life exchange (interspecies as well as biologically engineered exchange)?

This paper responds to ‘Are the Semi-Living semi-good or semi-evil?’ (Technoetic Arts, 2003) in which artists/authors Zurr and Catts state that there is not, as yet, an existing discourse that deals with the Semi-Living – a ‘new’ life form created for the purpose of artistic engagement using the tools of tissue engineering and stem cell technology. As a means to reflect on what a discourse on the Semi-Living might include and exclude and to create the potential to say something different beyond the artists’ own discourse, this paper initiates two approaches. First, it considers that which the ‘Semi-Living’ defers by working from Zurr and Catts’ contribution, which I argue evokes a ‘both/and’ logic that echoes the Derridean deconstructive event. Secondly, it proposes a genealogy of the Semi-Living using a figure of Roman archaic law, homo sacer (sacred man) who shares with the Semi-Living a ‘life exposed to death’ (Agamben 1998). The symbiosis of these two approaches identifies, problematises and ‘contaminates’ the limits of acceptable discourse concerning the Semi-Living, concluding with the proposal of a ‘semi-discourse’. As the transdisciplinarity of bioart increasingly becomes the focus of academic and artistic inquiry, this paper signals towards the importance of critically acknowledging a community of artists writing and working within the academy, stipulating the acceptable discourses of their practice.

“ Field_Notes – Deep Time” is a week long art&science field laboratory. It is organized by the Finnish Society of Bioart at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station of the University of Helsinki in Lapland. Five working groups will develop, test and evaluate specific artistic approaches based on the interplay of art&science.

This research investigated the use of red pigment producing fungi in controlled inoculation into woody substrates for decorative applications. Two Fusarium species isolated from red-stained wood and two strains of Arthrographis cuboidea capable of producing red stain in culture were inoculated onto sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh.), incubated for 6–14 weeks, and evaluated for their ability to produce a high-saturation, penetrating stain. Both Fusarium species failed to produce significant pigmentation either externally or internally. Both strains of A. cuboidea produced high amounts of surface and penetrating red stain within a moderate incubation period (over 80% of the wood samples stained by 10 weeks of incubation) but were capable of doing so only under sterile or semisterile conditions. Production of red stain did not differ between A. cuboidea isolates except at 6 and 8 weeks where isolate ELS-1 had significantly higher internal red stain. It was also found that an increase in incubation time for A. cuboidea past 8 weeks led to increasing amounts of blue pigment on external wood surfaces. The findings indicate that A. cuboidea is suitable for production of red pigmentation on decorative wood applications only if utilized under sterile or semisterile conditions and incubation is halted before blue pigment begins to form.