The History of Biological Art

A talk and discussion led by Oron Catts, Cofounder and Director of Symbiotica, at the National Centre of Biological Sciences, Bangalore, on Monday 10 March 2008, 4 p.m.

The session was attended by around 50 people, artists from across the world, NCBS scientists, Srishti faculty and students, the artists in residence at CEMA and their two students.

Mukund Thattai, a scientist at NCBS, launched the session by stating that this was not the first time that biological artists have visited NCBS we have had olfactory artists here before but this is the first time there has been a workshop on this scale. “There is money being spent on this workshop and it is worth asking why we are spending this money and what we get out of it. Talking to the organizers, I see three outcomes emerging:

1. If we see the artists here learning the new words and techniques in molecular biology, we think it is something we should be doing ourselves anyway. (For instance, today in the morning we learnt how to create a sterile room in one’s own home.)
2. How would artists approach the same tools molecular biologists use and then what ideas or directions would emerge which we don’t usually see as scientists?
3. I will leave Oron to talk about this – he convinced me that there is a function that scientists should perform which is to keep track of what is going on and its implications and how to project it onto society at large and how it connects to applications. etc. But we thought of the word “uneasiness” pertaining to the things we are working on and there is a gap that can be filled by somebody from outside the camp coming in. Scientists can be “uneasy” about these people coming in and begin wondering “What are they going to come up with?” By Friday, we will see if there are any such ideas emerging.”

ORON CATTS then continued with his presentation on Introduction to Biological Art. He showed an example of the type of work that can come out of a biological laboratory, the type of work that comes out after two years of research.
The NoArk – a new vessel for new life.

You can read about this project here:
http://www.stillliving.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/pages/artists/tcanda.htm

This is a project in which existing taxonomies are questioned. Here were lab-grown life forms – artificial life – things that have only life-likeness – neo-organisms engineered by research organizations, biotechnologists and artists and other amateurs.

The appearance of most of this neo sub-life forms in public life has to do more with curiosity. But behind it lurks the understanding that the classical role of collection as a mode of knowledge collection has shifted to mode of manipulation. Now it is about tweaking things rather than just observing things.
The organisms are living in a techno-scientific body. In this biomass, the fragments do not fall under the categories of the current or the classical. The Tissue Culture and Art Project is significant because it destabilizes the usual classification of human bodies. There comes the notion of the Extended Body.

Read about it here:
http://www.intelligentagent.com/archive/Vol6_No2_transvergence_cattszurr...

This notion re-examines current taxonomies and hierarchical perceptions of life. It is a soft, artistic, conceptual view of the subject of technologically mediated and augmented life. There are now technologically mediated ecologies of life. The semi-living, a part of a complex living, is rapidly growing out of labs into artistic context and opens new discourses of the different relationships we might form with these entities. These are constructed elements and living parts of one or more organisms created by human beings in manufactured environments.

This brings us to the idea of ”Life as raw material”(?)

We overlook the fact that a living being may also be regarded as raw material as something plastic something that may be shaped and altered.
– H G WELLS 1895

How does culture do this? You gain knowledge of life and you engineer it and so we are looking at the directions this kind of concept can lead us into. There are two examples which have filled people with fear and anxieties, two developments. One is the Human Genome Project and the second is the project of the mouse with an ear grown into it. (The latter was a PR exercise by scientists seeking funds for tissue engineering and it backfired because the ear collapsed a few weeks later on the mouse.) Both these projects developed scientists led to controversy and misunderstanding and generated fears and anxieties even leading to the distrust of scientists and less hope in scientists. For instance, there is the example of Parkinson patients ringing up scientific establishments which had promised a quick cure through the new biological and other techniques to ask them “Where is the cure you promised us?” when no cure seemed to be in the offing.

We need to ask ourselves: What are the roles artists play when they are working with new sets of knowledge and their applications?

1. Solving real problems in real world.
2. Making meanings through making strange.
3. Critique
4. PR – No, this must be avoided.
5. Aesthetics – it cannot only be aesthetics
6. Research – art as research; but the how and why matter
7. Intervention

How can artists engage with new sets of knowledge and their applications (in the context of emerging knowledge and science and technology)?

1. Representation
2. Visualization
3. Interpretation
4. Hands on

Is it different in Biosciences?

Let me show you some models of artistic engagement with the life sciences

a. The Illustrator

Example: Drew Berry’s Body Code 2003. It represents exactly what happens inside a cell – he has a cinematographic style which means he makes decisions and removes aspects that hinder showing what is exactly to be seen. It is manipulation of the image and I am suspicious of such work.
http://www.acmi.net.au/drew_berry.htm#essay
Body Code

b. The commentator/representer

Example: Alexis Rockman – The Farm (2000) – Fantasy art – interesting because it represents the anxieties and hopes of culture regarding knowledge.
http://www.viewingspace.com/genetics_culture/pages_genetics_culture/gc_w...
Rockman's The Farm

c. The visitor/guest/onlooker

Example: Double Agent (detail) by Catherine Yass 2002 – commissioned for Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, Oxford University. The lab was exploded in huge scale images that slammed the face of one outside the lab in the tea place. One is amazed by the aesthetics inside the lab – glassware, etc.
http://www.artpointtrust.org.uk/projects/details.asp?projects_id=5
Double Agent (detail)

d. The appropriator

Example: Justine Cooper – RAPT I (1998) – a poetic piece which allows people to wander within her body.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dIzBwK0xoE

e. The user

Example: Nature? 2000 Marta de Menezes – modifying butterfly wings by doing some microsurgery at pupa stage – manipulating butterflies – each one is a unique piece of art.
http://www.martademenezes.com/Nature.pdf

f. The industry worker

Example: The Biojewellery project by Nikki Stott and Tobie Kerridge, researchers from the Royal College of Art.
http://www.biojewellery.com/project1.html

g. The hoaxter

Laura Cinti - The Cactus Project 2002.
http://www.thecactusproject.com/about.asp
Cactus Project

h. The afterhours/under the table

Underground work that can get you arrested – but these artists choose to engage with life sciences in an unofficial way – assert their independence. An example is that of Steve Kurtz.
http://adamash.blogspot.com/2005/09/at-last-something-really-n_112759997...

i. The mail order/readymade

Example: Eduardo Kac and GFP Bunny 2000.
Kac Bunny

j. The researcher

Example: Joe Davis – Microvenus
http://www.viewingspace.com/genetics_culture/pages_genetics_culture/gc_w...
Microvenus Icon

The researcher/embedded in science technology setting.
Kira O’Reilly – Red Lab Coat Symbiotica 2004
Oron Catts in the Fsh and Chip Lab, Ars Electronica 2001

There are scientists who think they are artists but they usually do not come up with anything interesting. There is a problem the other way around too with artists coming into our labs and working for two months and thinking they know stuff.

So then how does one reconsider the differences?
Three research cultures:
1. Art - ambiguous
2. Science - open research
3. Application based research culture
The model we strive for is that in which the ambiguous open research is being embraced while the application is constantly questioned.

Artists are amazingly positioned – the idea of non utilitarian research has a certain validity in culture. Pure science is similar – it is the right to research for yourself out of curiosity.

A discussion followed.

A participant asked “What would be the point of the scientist collaborating with the artist?” From the scientific perspective, I can see visualization and such work being useful but in the goal of science would it help us understand something better or help us reach goals? Citing the instance of the art-science experiments in Georgia Tech, “There was always this gap between the scientists and the artists – they were more involved with finding meaning (we knew there was meaning in the brain spikes, etc) that was different from what we saw.”
References were made to Dr Steve Potters Lab – Georgia Institute of Technology (http://www.neuro.gatech.edu/groups/potter), and MEART – the semi-living artist.
http://www.wireheading.com/article/hybrots.html
Oron felt that some of these issues were “deeply disturbing and society needs to come to terms with it and make decisions about directions.”
Jitu: These manipulated organisms have in a way become part of the life forms on the plant and they do represent a totally different kind of entity – Noark creates some interesting questions and this is where I think this work fits in – it raises issues that scientists have to think about. We make these chimeras in our labs all the time but we don’t think about it.

Oron: But we all need to know about it and think about it. You don’t even think about it that those are life forms that did not exist before and then there are people who do not know that tissue culture exists though it has been with us for a 100 years.
Epistemology – the idea of the structure of knowledge – many people think that science is exact but actually we can be exact only to an extent – it is more about looking at things in a logical manner but sometimes the logic is subtle and the interaction

Gabe: Issues of keeping the space – a Christian way of keeping the space clean and a sacred space – how do you keep the space open to playfulness?

Shiva: Question of intergration of disciplines and the blurring of disciplines is helping and likewise too the blurring of the two cultures – cross disciplines or rigidifying disciplines – blurring helps.

It is easy to say science is an art but is art and science?

Oron: No. I am a scientist, I can design experiments etc but I work with the same tools of my colleagues but I would take these elsewhere. We need bridges across deep valleys of disciplines, we need to breach the rigidity and come to “in-betweenness”.
Ron: Scientists and artists are playful – but in the social contract, society should support our playfulness. But the world is becoming more complex and life is becoming hard to live. Greater challenges are there in the US for instance 50 per cent of people don’t believe in evolution. There are fundamental issues about how the world works, modern technologies, scientific stuff that the public is not aware of or even bothered to learn about. Scientists have been poor at communicating our work – the challenge of communicating science is important so they can learn to live in the world surrounding them (general public) – this needs creative strategies. Are artists willing to take on that challenge? First of all artists have to figure out what is science and they can come up with creative ways of taking what they want and repackaging it in ways that are fundamentally scientific, that can be important. This can make collaboration important.

Oron: In principle I would like artists to communicate and that they should comment about it from a knowledgeable position. But with life sciences this knowledge is being kept away – you can’t even share info between labs and then how can you share it with the community? This is the gap and the tension – some are afraid of knowing what science is doing because their notions of life will be challenged and the way they were brought up to think of thinks.

I often think of this kind of work as akin to the embedded reporters on the war in Iraq. How much of it can be believed? I might have the Stockholm syndrome! However, ultimately, this has to do with issues of autonomy.
(ENDS)