At the conclusion of the BioArts Workshop the participants were required to 'dispose of' or 'kill' the organisms that were created as part of the lab. Scientists have very clear protocols of how and why to do this in order to ensure health and safety. The social and cultural norms of this practice are less clear to me.

It was only at this point in the workshop that the abstract and sterile lab environment became messy again. The implications of the creation and destruction of living and semi-living artifacts became real and tangible, and not an abstraction, obscured behind lab protocols.

I wrote "A Small Requiem, for Small Life Forms on a Small Instrument" solo on Ukulele and played it during the ritual. I also made a vial into coffin, that simply stated that what was inside was "Live" and with the addition of Bleach became 'Dead'.

I appreciate that Oron asked the lab participants to consider and memorialize the life-forms we had been working with before disposing of them. The standard lab ritual of bleaching transgenic E. Coli and tossing the tube into the biohazards bin allows a human actor to abstract away any ethical implications of their actions. Being forced to create disposal protocol with cultural significance forces a lab participant to rethink the implications of their action.

I am very curios to know how many scientists who are also people of faith say prayers for the life forms that are used in their labs.

The discourse of scientific wet-lab research has created a variety of narratives that one can call on to justify the killing of non-human life forms. However, the field of Bio-Arts (or '') does not have so long a history. The majority of society may not see the same value in an artist using a rat for research and a scientist using a rat for research. Creating rituals around the killing of semi-living sculpture is one way artists can make the familiar strange in the lab environment.