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BIOTECH CULTURE SYMPOSIUM
27 FEBRUARY 2004, 11am - 4pm MERCURY CINEMA, 13 MORPHETT STREET, ADELAIDE ADMISSION FREE PROGRAM, 11am Opening of Symposium and Introduction, Melentie Pandilovski 11.15am Bioart - the perversion of scientists by artists or the perversion of artists by science?, Dr Stuart Bunt 11.40am Bioaesthetics as bioethics, Dr Anna Munster 12.05pm Aspects of Semi-Living and Partial Life, Ionat Zurr 12.30pm humancraft, Gina Czarnecki 12.55pm Discussion 1.25pm Lunch 1.40pm The different Projects of the Tissue Culture & Art Project - from the Semi-Living to Partial Life, Oron Catts 2.00pm Natural Reality SuperWeed Kit 1.0, Heath Bunting 2.20pm transient patchiness, Maja Kuzmanovic and Nik Gaffney (FOAM) 2.40pm kuh, Michalis Pichler 3.00pm ZERO, Mike Stubbs 3.20pm Discussion 4.00pm Close |
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Introduction
The speakers at the Symposium, ranging from scientists to cultural theoreticians, art critics, writers, lecturers, and new media artists, are engaged in the attempts to provide a cultural and artistic response towards the development of emerging disciplines such as biotechnology and genetics. In the morning session the issues of the politics of the discipline of biotechnology, the ethical implications of genetic engineering, the relationship between ethics/aesthetics/bio-technology, the essence, spectacle and background of scientific processes, the complex relationship of science and culture, as well as the wider political and social context, surrounding these fields will be addressed. In the afternoon session the focus will fall on the artistic and cultural codes appearing in our age. The exhibiting artists will present to us the processes in which they engage in their practice. This is especially beneficial as biotech artists have expanded their practice, and it has become very difficult for art critics to define this newly produced work, let alone find a consensus or common ground regarding it. How indeed do we define the new art work that utilises the merging of genetics, art and information technologies, when it is augmented and accented through the interaction of these fields and in the process replaces bio-textuality and bio-imagery with a wide ranging 'moist visualisation'? The Evolution of the Human Form? MELENTIE PANDILOVSKI Some of the developed art projects, such as Extra Ear 1/4 Scale, a project by The Tissue Culture & Art Project in collaboration with Stelarc, raise questions of possibilities of changing the human body. Art in general, and media arts in particular, have seen in the last decade quite a few experiments tending to show the potential for a further extension (evolution?) of the human body (Orlan's plastic surgeries; Kac's chip implant; Stelarc's robotic arm, etc). The technologies used in the projects are plastic surgery, robotics, prosthetics, etc. However, assisted by the Tissue Culture and Art Project, Stelarc reaches a more advanced area, by taking his cartilage and bone marrow and nurturing them in the form of an ear. The ear should result in being surgically placed under a flap of skin on his arm where it will develop its own blood supply, becoming thus a permanent part of Stelarc's body. The issue of the artists' breaking of barriers, and reaching new frontiers set aside, the underlining subject seems to be the question of the evolution of the human body. The most important question that the Extra Ear 1/4 Scale project indeed raises is the question whether the human body has truly reached the 'ultimate' form, or whether its evolution has not been completed yet. Four questions fall to my mind. Has the human race reached the perfect body form? Is the evolution of the human form at all possible? If possible, is the evolution of the human body at all necessary? If possible, should it be assisted by the humans themselves? Quite a few people would object to the enhancing of the human form and would find it repulsive. On the contrary, nobody seems to object at the expansion of human consciousness. What is it then that makes us so much in love with the human form, as it is? Where does this attachment originate? If we change the form to a considerable level, do we speak of human beings? If the human being obtains a considerably altered body (leap forwards or backwards), can it still be called a human being? Do we always link the human form to the human consciousness? Can we indeed differentiate the human consciousness from the human form? In order to understand the driving current between the centre of consciousness and the world of forms that represent the human reality we need to explore the field of identification. For example, we identify ourselves as human with the human form of the body. In a way this signifies that the identification with the forms is an obstacle to the emancipation of consciousness, for our experience with the phenomenal world is conditioned by our own limitations. Through it we experience the conflict between the need for the emancipation of consciousness and the limitations of consciousness, as such. The turn of the century, with the numerous alterations it is providing to us, above all signifies a need for a change of the consciousness, and provides us with a new cultural and communication matrix. The old interpretation systems have a hard task in describing the changes, so that this leads to the conclusion that what is necessary is a new understanding (could it be found in phenomenology?), which will enable an easier interpretation of the processes we are witnessing. Bioart - the perversion of scientists by artists or the perversion of artists by science? DR STUART BUNT As the scientific director of SymbioticA Dr Stuart Bunt has been the scientific advisor or liaison for numerous 'sci-artists' from many disciplines, observing first hand the prejudices on both sides of the science/humanities divide and the strange transformations that can occur. He will address the issues of the narrow line between artistic experimentation and bad science, the conflicts of aesthetics and criticism, and the exploitation by both groups of each other. He will compare the ethical constraints on the scientist and artist, the contrasting requirements for artistic and scientific context, and finally, differing attitudes to priority, funding and publication. Dr Stuart Bunt is co-founder and Scientific Director of SymbioticA at the University of Western Australia - the first art and biology lab situated in a science department. He consults and lectures on the nexus between art/science and technology, and the philosophy and history of science. He has exhibited in Ars Electronica and collaborated on or helped to produce a number of biotech art pieces revolving around emergent technologies in the biosciences. http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au Bioaesthetics as bioethics DR ANNA MUNSTER Dr Anna Munster will examine attempts within the field of bioart to come to terms with the new conditions for ethical life after the advent of biotechnologies. How can artists engaged in cloning, tissue culture, and transgenic animal experimentation, for example, co-determine aesthetic and ethical value for their work? Some bioart works implicitly adopt the consequentialist ethics espoused by ecological and animal liberationist concerns. These positions help to reveal the 'speciesism', as Peter Singer has termed it, at work in humanist science and art. However, there are often covert theological notions of life's sanctity at work in the speciesist critique. She will suggest that we look to the varying strategies developed by artists for sustaining, domesticating and killing off their 'live' artwork as evidence of an emerging investigation of an ethics of process. This processual ethics is concerned with ongoing encounters and qualifications between technics and life. It must situate itself within an unstable field, modulated by both the instrumentalisation of life and life more radically conceived as an ongoing relation to difference. Dr Anna Munster is a writer, artist and lecturer in the area of electronic and new media arts. She has written and presented papers on digital aesthetics, embodiment, ethics and biotechnologies and recently contributed to the development of online critical culture as a facilitator for the discussion list 'fibreculture'. Her artwork includes still imaging, video and sound installation, interactive and online work. She is a lecturer in the School of Art History and Theory at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales. Her current research includes an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant funded investigation of biotechnological art as a dynamic interface between bodies and computers. http://www.icinema.unsw.edu.au/bios/zbio_munster.html Aspects of Semi-Living and Partial Life IONAT ZURR An exploration of the use of tissue technologies as a medium for the creation of objects/subjects of partial life and semi-living entities. The relationships with the different gradients of life through the construction/growth of a new class of object/being - that of the Semi-Living. These are parts of complex organisms which are sustained alive outside the body and coerced to grow in predetermined shapes. These evocative objects are a tangible example bringing into question deep-rooted perceptions of life and identity, conceptions of self, and the position of the human in regard to other living beings and the environment. New discourses and new ethics/epistemologies surround the issues of partial life and the contestable future scenarios they offer. An introduction to both the conceptual and technical aspects of the creation of an Other that is positioned at the fuzzy border between the living and non-living, the other and the familiar and which is both part of us - a complex organism - and independent of us - a meta-body. The elaborated rituals and dramatic dÈcor in Dr. Alexis Carrel's laboratory, as well as the poetry written at Dr Bridget Fell's laboratory, will be interwoven to illustrate the history of life in vitro (life in glass) in the scientific, social and popular culture arenas. These historical narratives will raise ethical dilemmas of speciesism (Peter Singer) in the light of our - humans and artists - creation of semi-living entities which are dependent on us for their existence. Ionat Zurr is a biological artist who has exhibited and published internationally. She is currently artist in residence in SymbioticA - the Art & Science Collaborative Research Laboratory at The School of Anatomy & Human Biology, University of Western Australia and co-founder of the Tissue Culture and Art Project. Zurr was Research Fellow at The Tissue Engineering & Organ Fabrication Laboratory, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School (2000-2001) and is currently a PhD candidate researching the ethical and epistemological implications of wet biology art practices. http://www.tca.uwa.edu.au/ humancraft GINA CZARNECKI This workshop series seeks to question the very ideology of biotechnology through an investigation of arts practice based on unorthodox applications of new scientific discoveries and advances. These works spark excitement, awe, fear and contention in equal measure. They deal with the implications of genetic engineering and genetic intervention for disease treatment, human biodiversity, contamination and containment, ethics and accountability, social perceptions and species boundaries from both aesthetic and polemical perspectives. Through art we can trace the history of humankind's struggle for dominance over natural evolutionary forces, from the domestication of animals, engineered organisms and through this, map the potentiality of the 'future-human'. What is real or 'whole/some' and what is not real in relation to the body are perhaps no longer valid questions. Does the ability to deconstruct matter into individual units or single building blocks allow the possibility of making undetectable re-constructions imitating the authentic - the untouched? Thousands of individual genes have already been identified as being responsible for specific diseases and characteristics. The new supremacy of belief in genetic determinism raises a whole plethora of concerns and questions. Surely if something can be identified and isolated then it can therefore be eliminated. The possibilities offered by developments in genetic engineering, cosmetic modification, probabilities of life in alternative atmospheres, developments in the interface between man/machine: these will all go to redefining what is human, and extending the capabilities of our bodies - perhaps even to making major evolutionary changes. The concern is with who or what is defining these? Who makes decisions between what is normal and acceptable and what is not? Who has the right to change, alter, buy, own, who has the right to information and the licence to withhold it? The research and technology which make these things possible have (allegedly) developed faster than the ideological or ethical guidelines surrounding them. There is widespread public paranoia about the possibilities of engineering the human form - based on fiction and also on recent histories involving ethnic cleansing and on people's own conception of themselves as not complying with the accepted ideal. Gina Czarnecki works in time-based and digital media making single screen, photographic and installation work. Through sampling, generating and re-processing images and sound she creates contemplative spaces with strong visual aesthetics. Her work focuses on the human: the physical, biological and psychological. More recent work has been concerned with the ethical and cultural issues raised by the scientific and technological advances in the fields of genetic engineering and with their future commercial and non-commercial uses. She has exhibited internationally at among other places, ISEA, Ars Electronica Life Sciences 1999 and a permanent exhibition at the new Federation Square Development, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, Australia. In 2002 she was awarded the Creative Scotland Award for her interactive installation Silvers Alter.> http://www.silversalter.co.uk http://www.acmi.net.au/gina_czarnecki.htm The different Projects of the Tissue Culture & Art Project - from the Semi-Living to Partial Life ORON CATTS The Tissue Culture & Art Project (TC&A) explores the different relations humans have with other living and partially living systems. These concerns and narratives have evolved through the years, as will be illustrated through these different projects: in the Pig Wings Project the artists explored the public reactions to the semi-living through the iconography of winged bodies. The type of wings represented the creatures (chimeras) as either good/angelic (birds) or evil/satanic (bats). There is yet another solution to flight in vertebrates - which seems to be mostly free of cultural values - that of the Pterosaurs. Using tissue engineering and stem cell technologies in order to grow pig bone tissue in the shape of these three sets of wings, this project presents the first ever wing-shaped objects grown using living pig tissue. In Disembodied Cuisine the group utilised another way of treating living systems - by consuming them for food: - they grew frog skeletal muscle over biopolymer for potential food consumption. A biopsy can be taken from an animal or alternatively cell lines can be used to grow a victimless 'steak'. The idea and research into this project began in Harvard in 2000. The first steak grown was made out of pre-natal sheep cells (skeletal muscle), using cells harvested as part of research into using tissue engineering techniques in utero. The steak was grown from an animal that was not yet born. In the Extra Ear -1/4 Scale a partial living 1/4 scale replica of Stelarc's ear was constructed out of degradable biopolymers and seeded with human chondrocytes. TC&A are dealing with the ethical and perceptual issues stemming from the realization that living tissue can be sustained, grown, and is able to function outside of the body. Stelarc, ultimately, is concerned with the attachment of the ear to the body as a soft prosthesis. This project provokes discussion of new kinds of bodies, including a Metabody and an extended techno-scientific body - the Ubiquitous Body, the body that foils standardisation and classification plots and is everywhere and anywhere connected. Thus the Metabody is literal, but it is also a symbolic device that extends the notion of subjectivity, changes perceptions of body boundaries, explores techno-organic borders and extends bonds between life forms. The project promotes a vision of the semi-living as an entity too subtle to become a monster and too fragile to be a threat; a benign, dependent being that challenges current cultural perceptions of life and questions the relationships we construct with living systems. Tissue Culture & Art therefore offers a phenomenological confrontation with evocative objects/subjects and an idea of interconnectivity and Ubiquitous Body that cannot be experienced through representational media or existing discourse. Oron Catts is an artist/researcher who uses living tissue from complex organisms as his medium. He has exhibited and published internationally and founded the Tissue Culture and Art Project in 1996 and was Co-founder and is Artistic Director of SymbioticA: The Art & Science Collaborative Research Laboratory at The School of Anatomy & Human Biology, University of Western Australia. Catts trained in product design (BA, first Class Honours), and Visual Art (MA) and in 2000-01 was a research fellow at The Tissue Engineering & Organ Fabrication Laboratory, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. http://www.tca.uwa.edu.au/ http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au Natural Reality SuperWeed Kit 1.0 HEATH BUNTING SuperWeed Kit 1.0 is a lowtech DIY kit capable of producing a genetically mutant superweed, designed to attack corporate monoculture. SuperWeed kit 1.0 contains a mixture of naturally occuring and genetically mutated (GM) Brassica seeds (Oilseed Rape, Wild Radish, Yellow Mustard, Shepherd's Purse). If these seeds are allowed to germinate and cross-pollinate, a SuperWeed will be created that will be resistant to current herbicides (eg, Roundup(tm)), thus not only threatening the profitability of conventional and GM Brassica crops, but also of herbicide production and distribution as well. If you feel that the authorities are not going to respect the wishes of the majority of the population for a ban on GM crops (currently 77% in favour of a total ban), you could choose to cultivate and release SuperWeed 1.0 into the environment (see planting instructions below). Alternatively you could choose to create your own propaganda campaign threatening biotech corporate interests with this genetic weapon. Whatever you do, the threat is often as effective as the execution. Without a national ban on GM crops SuperWeeds will occur without your intervention anyway. Biotech companies such as Monsanto know this, but intend to be one step ahead by developing new gene products to preserve their profits. By releasing SuperWeed 1.0 into the environment long before biotech companies have a suitable fix, you will contribute to large losses in their profitability, thus causing them to reassess their future strategies and investments. We can outpace and outmanouver these biotech giants as we are not bound by profits or legislation. We suggest that you hold this kit until you receive clear signs that there will be a national ban on GM crops within the next few months, in which case destroy these seeds by burning. If you believe that there will be no GM crop ban you could choose to cultivate SuperWeed 1.0 and release it into the environment immediately. If there is no GM crop ban within the next few months, Natural Reality will not hesitate to escalate this conflict further by manufacturing and distributing SuperWeed Kit 2.0 containing many more offensive capabilities. Planting Instructions: SuperWeed 1.0 will grow in regular garden soil. Sew 50 seeds in 1m square and rake into the soil either in Spring when the threat of frost is past or late summer/ fall. You could also grow SuperWeed 1.0 indoors on your kitchen windowsill. For further details contact: superweed@irational.org Heath Bunting emerged from the 80's committed to building open/democratic communication systems and social contexts. He came from the street up, passing through and often revisiting graphity, performance, intervention, pirate radio, fax/mail art and BBS systems to become an active participant in the explosion of the internet. He has produced many internet projects, some highly recognised, and has helped form a strong context for the practice of net.art. Recently he has moved into the field of genetics, proclaiming it to be the next "new media", and is also developing work in the area of physical network performance. http://irational.org/heath transient patchiness FOAM : MAJA KUZMANOVIC AND NIK GAFFNEY problem The process of globalisation is causing a rapid decrease of diversity in social, biological and cultural habitats, caused by the dominant economic powers and such things as proprietary communication technologies and transnational 'life industries'. Physical public spaces as arenas for a wide range of interaction and social change are losing their importance, as the global marketplace has shifted its locus from the accessible public markets to dispersed and elusive global networks. context In the era of mass homogenisation of branded public spaces around the world, we propose a research into the historical examples of sustainable urban spaces that will focus on dynamics and diversity in the social, biological and cultural domains. Examples of such public spaces are community gardens and pocket parks, non-institutionalised plaza and street life, travelling fairs and periodic festivals. From these spaces, we learn about ways of conducting an alternative economy based on emergent trans-local actions, rather than accepting the generic, mono-cultural approach of the global free-market. initiative GroWorld encourages multidisciplinary discussions, bringing different research topics into a common focus: 'growth processes' in (physical and virtual) life. GroWorld is currently developed in three parallel trajectories: socio-cultural, ecological, and the technological and = sym_bio_sys. The trajectories are mutually independent, but complementary, with their results being integrated into several experiments. sym GroWorld's cultural trajectory comprises artists and designers interested in 'biomimetics', learning from nature to design responsive spaces and objects. More specifically, this strand examines growth processes in audiovisual media, textile design and human computer interaction and applies this research in mixed reality installations, A-life gaming environments and smart textiles. bio The ecological strand involves building a trans-local network of public gardens concerned with preserving local biodiversity, grown by scientists, landscape architects and neighboring communities. The gardens are sites evolving on their own accord - becoming patches of autonomous organic wilderness in the midst of an urban jungle, grown and molded by their caretakers and temporary dwellers. They are devised both as growing environments in which the visitors can comfortably linger, surrounded by specific local flora, and as instruments allowing their players to collaboratively shape and steer the environment's processes of growth, decay and transformation. sys Simultaneously, the technological strand will develop responsive media, technologies and interfaces for social interaction, information and entertainment. Its results should be accessible to different communities and should be adaptable for several social, biological and cultural contexts - adaptable to both indoor and outdoor spaces, different climates and cultures. aim Integration of cultural, ecological and technological studies will move these projects towards a long term experiment in sustainable creative, technological and sociological development, connecting organizations and individuals from various disciplines and cultures in one common goal: the growing of an adaptive, sustainable habitat for nature, technology and culture. philosophy The sustainability of public spaces is dependent on an abundant diversity of social, biological and cultural habitats. Their interrelationships will inevitably grow at the edges of dissimilar environments, such as urban-natural, cultural-scientific, physical-digital. The public spaces of the future should merge the context and the meaning of the local, physical sites with the globally accessible digital media and build trans-local events encouraging interaction between communities on both sides of the digital divide. Maja Kuzmanovic holds a Master of Arts in Interactive Multimedia and her specialisation is Interactive Film and Storytelling. She is currently director of the newly formed Foundation of Affordable Mysticism (FOAM, at Starlab in Brussels), where she works with various art and technology collectives and is exploring novel modes and resources of cultural expression. She was involved in the development of the Design Technology course at the Utrecht School of the Arts. She previously worked as Artist in Residence at CWI (Center for Mathematics and Computer Science) in Amsterdam, and GMD (National Center for Information Technology) in Sankt Augustin, Germany. Nik Gaffney is a founding member and media+systems researcher at FOAM vzw in Brussels, Belgium. Nik has previously worked as a graphic designer and programmer for Razorfish AG in Hamburg and Moniteurs in Berlin. His studies covered the fields of computer science, cognitive science and organic chemistry at Adelaide University. As one of the founders of the artists' collective mindfluX, he worked on installation pieces, performances and the editing and distribution of the electronic magazine mindvirus. Nik has been an active collaborator in the performance group Heliograph, helping shape their vision for hybrid arts performance. He is a member of and prominent contributor to farmersmanual, a pan-european, net-based, multisensory disturbance conglomerate, whose 'ship of fools' filled the canals of Venice with sound during the 2001 Biennale. http://www.f0.am http://www.f0.am/groworld kuh MICHALIS PICHLER The question of postmortal dignity is directly related to the one of prenatal dignity. There is always a gap between reality and its representation; images are set up as reality, so they can convey and produce reality. Being engaged in image production, Michalis Pichler joins the politics of representation consciously. In the project kuh, he took the tanned skin, claws and horns of a cow that had been slaughtered for meat consumption and sewed it over a sculpted corpse carved out of styrofoam. The partial coincidence of signifier (skin of a dead cow over styrofoam) and referent (dead cow) makes it a hybrid of an image and a real dead cow. Afterwards the preparation was positioned at different locations in public space in Berlin as well as in the town hall of Bruehl, a small town close to Cologne. Rather than a transcendental object or a theatrical performance it is an experiment. kuh is a visual representation of death and a counter image to natural history representations which are always 'lifelike', while nothing is as absent as life. The image of an individual dead cow also confronts a schizoid media reality which is that of clean, plastic-packed meat as a commodity on one hand and, on the other hand, images of happy cows on green fields as provided in advertising (milka, muellermilch, emzett, la vache que rie etc). Michalis Pichler uses public space and everyday life both as a source and as an outlet. Employed techniques include camouflage/imitation and infiltration, as well as sculptural, archeological and ethnographic procedures. His work has recently appeared in numerous places, amongst them the Postfuhramt Berlin, the Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje and the Goethe-Institut/InterNationes in New York, where he was a DAAD Arts Fellow in 2002/03. http://www.inforeignland.com/m ZERO MIKE STUBBS Celebrating the 40th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's first manned trip to space, in an age when space tourism has become a reality, what does the future hold for our new born? A first shaft of light, a splinter of an image, first movements and a sense of independence. Zero is a lyrical view playing on the metaphor of weightlessness, mobility, existentialism and conciousness. At what point are we aware of our own bodies, what is private and where does the external world begin? Recorded by Mike Stubbs who was part of a team of artists and scientists invited onto a series of parabolic flights on a Russian Military Evolution Aircraft, based at the Yuri Gagarin Training Centre, Star City, Moscow, in 2000. The text is comprised of writings by Net Robot, poet Kevin Henderson and Netochka Nezvanova. Read by Yuri Gagarin and Kevin Henderson Construction: Gina Czarnecki Sound Design: Gerald Maire Commissioned by PVA MediaLab and Watershed Media Centre. With support of The Arts Catalyst and TVI, Duncan of Jordonstone College of Art. Mike Stubbs' practice includes film and media art production, arts management, and consultancy. During his Directorship of Hull Time Based Art, he set up Time Base (Hull's New Media Centre) AVIDLAB (a digital media lab) and EMARE (European Media Arts Residency Exchange). He co-founded Metamedia, a Soho-based production company specializing in art and music. As Senior Research Resident at The School of TVI, University of Dundee, he developed the 'Burning Bush Festival'. He has won major international awards for his work and in 1999 presented a video retrospective at the Tate Gallery, London, and in 2003 presented a new work at the Baltic Art Centre, Newcastle. He is a recipient of a Fleck Fellowship from Banff Art Centre, Canada, and is currently Curatorial Manager at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne. http://www.acmi.net.au/mike_stubbs.htm |
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