Week 6: BioTech + Art

This week’s focus on Biotechnology and art covers controversial topics that draw attention to many ethical and social issues. As discussed in the lecture video, biotechnology ranges from GMO in our food to experimentation with animals to creating organismal hybrids, and artists are increasingly going into laboratories or working with scientists to create art (Vesna).

Eduardo Kac's GFP bunny

One of the artists that best helped me understand the concept of bio-art was Orlán and her harlequin coat. While this piece uses skin cells made in vitro from different races, it introduces the powerful concept of cultural crossbreeding and the beauty of self-hybridization. However one of the important questions it also raises is can a person still be the owner of his or her cells? This question reminds me of the controversies regarding HeLa cells, an immortal cell line derived from the cancer cells of Henrietta Lacks in the 1950’s. While the cell line has been widely used in research on common diseases and has helped scientists develop a number of today’s life-saving vaccines, many have criticized and noted that it was established without Lacks’s consent (Callaway). Both the harlequin coat and HeLa cells demonstrate the great potential for biotechnology to benefit us in different ways such as through medicine and artistic expression, but not without the “political, economic, legal, and scientific” implications as Levy puts it in “Defining Life: Artists Challenge Conventional Classifications.”

Orlan's "Harlequin Coat"

The way I see it, any criticism of biotechnology, especially together with art, boils down to the argument that just because we can, it doesn’t mean we should. For example the idea of creating fluorescent bunnies is possible through genetic manipulation, but as many believe it is a silly and needless manipulation of an animal. Furthermore in Jurassic Park, the message is clear. Even though scientists were able to recreate and genetically modify the dinosaurs, playing with science could be unethical and dangerous.

Egg Hatching scene from Jurassic Park (1993)

References:

Callaway, Ewen. “HeLa Publication brews bioethical storm.” Nature. Nature, 27 March 2013. Web. 10 March 2015.

Levy, Ellen K. "Defining Life: Artists Challenge Conventional Classifications."

Schulman, Ari N. "Jurassic Generation," The New Atlantis, Number 38, Winter/Spring 2013, pp. 196-203.

Uconlineprogram. “5 BioArt pt4.” YouTube. YouTube, 17 May 2012. Web. 10 May 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL9DBF43664EAC8BC7&v=2qSc72u9KhI>.

Uconlineprogram. “5 BioArt pt1 1280x720.” YouTube. YouTube, 28 September 2013. Web. 10 May 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaThVnA1kyg>.