Bio Art Readings
In the introductory chapter of Signs of Life, author Eduardo Kac examines the themes that relate/separate biotechnology, art, and society. Throughout this discussion, he mentions several important points. First is the issue of social acceptance in biotechnology. The nature of this scientific field is obviously controversial in many aspects of morality and ideology. He seems to conclude that society controls the thought process of individuals and, as a result, what we consider acceptable, unacceptable, normal, or weird is somewhat arbitrary as opposed to fact based.
Next, Kac inspects the relationships between biotechnology/art and art/society by asking questions such as: “What differentiates the ugly/weird from the bold/beautiful?” He spends some time looking into the societal views on this subject and eventually relates it a step further to include art inspired from biotechnology. For example, can a genetically engineered human who is physically perfect a beautiful piece of art or a monster? Using these relationships as a basis, he finally gets into the core of his work: transgenic art.
Transgenic art is defined as art based on the genetic engineering of one or more biological specimens in order to form a new life. Kac states that transgenic art is the culmination of his artistic experience and chapter 10 highlights his work in this field. As a few other people have mentioned, a major part of bio art might be the “creation of experience” more than anything else. It is obvious that Kac has had significant experience and exposure to bio art with projects such as Genesis, GFP bunny, the Eight Day, and Move 36. The rest of the chapter is spent explaining these projects in depth.
An overwhelming majority of people who blogged before me found Genesis to be the most interesting of his mentioned projects. I found that the opposite was true. Just to set the table straight beforehand, I have nothing against the Bible, what it teaches, or any religion(s) it is associated with. The truth is that I simply found the Genesis “artwork” to be stupid, un-insightful, and a big waste of time. The author claims that the work’s ability to change a sentence is a symbolic gesture to how we seek and accept new meanings in life. This whole concept seems rather farfetched for a simple experiment involving an English sentence, a line of morse code, and a slight change in bacteria DNA. It’s obvious that if you encode something into DNA and force a biological change in the DNA, the resulting English sentence will also change. How does this imply we don’t accept meaning in its original form? How are we seeking for a new meaning?
The GFP bunny did, however, legitimately catch my interest. It immediately raised many thoughts such as “I wonder if it looks really cool.” “Is this a scientific experiment or art?” “Where will we draw the line between respectable art, monstrous creature, and use/abuse of technology for aesthetic purposes?” I’m sure that some if not all of these questions are the type of thinking that Kac wanted to draw out of his audience. It makes for a much better showpiece than the bacteria too!
Questions:
1. Should bio art be held to the same moral standards as other aspects of biotechnology?
2. What is the difference between bio “art” and using biology/technology to enhance something/someone aesthetically or physically?
3. What is so cool about Genesis???!!! (No really, I’m serious.)