Biotechnology and Art
More recently, more and more artists have giving up the studio to bring their work into the laboratories. This week we learned about the relation between biotechnology and art in the sense that biotechnology is the use of living organisms to develop and produce technologies that can improve human life. These past few weeks we have also been learning about the way that technology, science and art intertwine into the work of an artist. Both biology and technology have been a disputable concept to many. However, I believe it’s the turning point to a new innovative time, making our society more advanced, accessible, and at it’s highest advantage. Biotechnology is boistering where artists are teaming up with the world of science and biologists and bringing their work into laboratories to take a closer look on a cellular tissue level. More particularly, biotech and art are what this is actually known as, where art is directly connected to the biological science using technological tools. We actually relate this back to when we learned about a third culture. Here, we think about how the world of science and art intertwine to create this third culture of biotech and art.
Professor Vesna talks about a pioneer of biotech and art, Joe Davis, who set the bar for other artists. Others believed his ideas and thoughts were ludicrous and bizarre, and also coined an “eccentric artist”, but some were also fascinated. He in fact had the idea that genes and genomes can be a new art and vision for artists. From this, he moved forward to invent an info gene. All in all, he was an inspiration for other artists to follow in his footsteps in biotech and art. Ultimately, I don’t believe there should be any limits to human creativity. Unless it brings any physical harm, creativity should have no restriction, constraints, or limits. According to Joe Davis, when come to biotechnology it brings "changes on the horizon that are so dramatic and sweeping that all of the revolutions of the so-called digital age will shrink by comparison."
Ruth West asks the question “How do we define and value artistic media and technologies?”. Christopher Muscato says that in art, a medium is the material that artists use to create their art. It's that simple. Whatever a piece of art is made out of is its medium. The plural of medium is media. So, one piece of art can be made of one medium or several media.
Is this inherently different from how other technologies are evaluated? I would say that biotechnology is in fact evaluated differently than other technologies because technological innovations were revolutionary and turning points that in fact changed the world of art, science, and society. Here, we think of the invention of digital media or even the printing press. As Carolina A. Miranda says in her article, “ it’s natural that some artists spend as much time in the lab as they do in the studio. Over the last three decades, in fact, artists have cultivated human tissue, bred frogs, assembled DNA profiles, and used modified bacteria as electrical transmitters. Bio-art—as this type of work is called—has also begun to surface in museums and avant-garde art festivals, from MoMA in New York to the Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth in Australia.”
http://www.museums.ualberta.ca/en/ProgramsAndEvents/Events/Perceptions%20of%20Promise%20Artists%20Talk%202.aspx
Sources
Nesi, Paolo, and Rafaella Santucci. "Information Technologies for Performing Arts, Media Access, and
Entertainment." Google Books. Scientific Publishing Services, 6 May 2016. Web. 08 May 2016.
Miranda, Carolina A. "Weird Science: Biotechnology as Art Form." ARTnews. ARTNEWS, 6 May 2016. Web.
08 May 2016.
Vesna, Victoria. “5 bioart pt1" Lecture. YouTube. Uconlineprogram, 18 Sept. 2013. Web. 3 May. 2016.
Vesna, Victoria. “5 BioArt pt4” Lecture. YouTube. Uconlineprogram, 17 May. 2015. Web. 3 May. 2016.
Vesna, Victoria. “Biotech intro NEW” Lecture. YouTube. Uconlineprogram, 26 Mar. 2012. Web. 3 May. 2016.
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