- Breeding better humans - Genetic manipulation, xenotransplantation and tissue culture
- Selective Breeding
- Chimera and transgenics
Even though each of these subjects are different, they still interlink with each other in relation to us creating organisms to be better, and taking control of evolution of other organisms and ourselves. All of these subjects have strong ethical issues as well as idealistic fantasies behind them. This has made it a key subject for artists and scientists to explore, especially in a era of advanced biotechnological development.
Powerful Imaginary
The image of DNA (double helix) is a powerful image and has become a 'super image'. It has been described as " the ultimate explanation of a human being", "blueprint of destiny" and a "portrait of who we are". A couple of years after the discovering of the double-helix and showing what it actually looked like, Dali created the piece Butterfly Landscape (The Great Masturbator in Surrealist Landscape with DNA) one of some he created featuring DNA. Dali used it to not only symbolise creation, but possibly a greater idea of God. This could suggest why biology and bioart has been explored by artists to not only just show something for what it is, but also for showing the bigger picture, the more complex output from our findings.
Scientists have managed to create unnatural forms forms of DNA - expanding the number of bases from 4 to 6. There has also been creation of unnatural amino acids, meaning there could development to create completely fabricated proteins, artificial chromosomes and synthetic protocells. The command in such powerful technology that we have and could continue to develop would result in greater political and economic power.
Social implication of biotechnology applications
"The body can be manipulated, reconfigured, and redesigned"
As said by Molecular biologist Lee Silver "We now have the power to seize control of our evolutionary destiny". For me this is a debate which has pulled me back and forth on which side I should take on whether us manipulating and controlling evolution is right. On one hand we have evolved into complex beings that has been given the minds to be able dig deeper into life and manipulate it, and by doing so is natural as we are part of the ecological triangle. However, on the other hand I feel like we should let nature take its own journey and not control it ourselves as it could create further disruptions and mutations in our ecosystems. I think many artists have this fear, and these fears have transferred into popular culture. For example Frankenstein and Spiderman.
Popular cultures response to transgenics, in the tradition of H.G Wells has often been negative, including the 1991 TV series Chimera Stephen Gallagher (human ape hybrid) and comics /films Spiderman (student who is bitten by a bioengineered spider).
"If the promising implications of genetic engineering have been integrated into futuristic fantasies and cultural expectations, so too have problematic ethical implications. Could it lead to the creation of monsters and mutants? The persistent "Frankenstein" fear of experiments that tamper with nature - the human body- is a recurrent theme in the public discourse and visual arts."
Breeding Better Humans
Tissue Culture
Marion Laval Jeantet and Benoit Mangin - Skin culture (1997)
Skin culture presents the fantasy of being able to change your skin for different skin, of being able to use standard quick plastic surgery instead of hours of tattooing. The presented skin cultures originally bred from their own cells at a university lab in boston. The resulting skin cultures were tattooed with images of animals exhibited in jars of preservative liquid. The reason they had become in these studies was the same utopia idea the anti-vivisection lobbies had advocated in the use of skin cultures: the desire to stop the use of animals for cosmetic testing.
Genetic Manipulation and Xenotransplantation
Xenotransplantation is when animal organs or tissues transplanted into a humans. It is suggested that xenotransplantion will prevail over its major technical obstacles and be a norm in organ transplantation. This is something that is being tested and experimented with due to the global shortage of organs, There is the idea that could farm organs from animals or grow them from stem cells. Again there are ethical issues behind us hybridizing ourselves, would be able to still class ourselves as human?
Michel Rees
Artist Michael Rees, rather than tampering with his own body, he constructs skeletal structures from computer codes, transforming them into physically concrete objects. Unencumbered by the limitations inherent in traditional modelling techniques, Rees directs his computer program to build of sculpture by layering minute layers of material, one on top of the other.
Selective Breeding
"creating organisms through selective breeding or transgenic technologies involves a special kind of responsibility associated with the lifelong welfare of the organism and the surrounding environment. The care of the organism should no way be compromised by its placement in the context of art... It is my jope that new discoveries in genetic research and artworks will help us to fully realise how connected all lifeforms are" - Eduardo Kac (Sign of Life)
Andrea Zittel - A-Z Breeding Unit of Averaging Eight Breeds
Here work was designed to reverse the domestication of Bantam chickens that has made naturally recessive traits artificially dominant. Although the design seemed based more on conceptual notions of anti-utilitarianism and Rube Goldberg like design the 'units' looked better than they actually worked to produce chickens.
Accidental release is a major concern of selectively bred plants and animals, as well as transgenically manipulated organisms.
Bringing back life
Reactivating of genetic information long after its owner has died. This is ideal for cloning endangered animals and extinct animals. An artist that explored this idea was Alexis Rockman, who created a alternative universe, one in which has extinct animals in a modern environment. Although the piece highlights our control over evolution, in reality would this be the case? I can't help but think there was a reason why some species do not exist in the world today, and if there were to return, the possibility of our ecosystem being corrupted could happen.
Chimeras and Transgenics
"We have now entered a social realm in which the minutest elements found inside the body (genes) cab be externalized (through gene sequencing and amplification), and what is created outside (eg a synthetic chromosome) can be internalized (transgenics).
Chimeras
Mythical chimeras have gone back as far as greek mythology.
In science, a chimera is an organism composed of two sorts of cells with different genetic origins, stemming from two different zygotes.
1967 El libro de los seres imaginarios (The book of imaginary being), Jorge Luis Borge stated that "we could evolve an endless variety of monsters -- combinations of fish, birds, and reptiles, limited only by own our boredom or disgust. This, however, does not happen, our monsters would be stillborn, thank God". This was written in the pre-biotech era, when imaginary beings were family in the realm of legend and literature.
L'invention collective - piscine half on top instead of down below - anagrammatic or combinant atomy is but one sign that the twentieth century ceaselessly imagined the limits and the potentials of the human body and of biological principles.
Dr Moreau's - He arrived at his fantasy island expressly to develop techniques for creating novel human beings from animal creatures. In Wells' science fiction fantasy, the chimera is a powerful warning about the grim and drastic consequences of scientific manipulations. In 1984 the first 'Geep' (sheep-goat chimera) was created by combining the embryos of a goat and a sheep, meaning it has cells of both origins.
Transgenics
Transpecies creatures are no longer mythical icons or figments of human imagination: They are, as well, the genuine results of transgenic experiments.
"Super animals"
Implanting human genes into animals so that they become, in effect, biological factories for the production of body substances, therapeutic materials, or pharmaceutical products. Human genes are inserted into cows to increase production of milk. Mice are created to produce human blood protein TPA and cows are altered to produce human hormones.
If a transgenic animal is ever sold as meat, could this be a form of cannibalism?
Many artists from the Dada and surrealist movements reconstructed the body as a combination of disparate elements. In these confabulous images, human beings meld with machines as robotic extensions, or coverage with animals as mythical beasts.
Max Ernst depicts extravagant and preposterous organisms by intermingling images of specimens from the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. Body parts such as rib cages and blood vessels are juxtaposed with fabricated exotic plants and sedimentary rocks - all superimposed on an existing anatomic engraving.
Bradley Rubenstein - Through manipulations of the artist - employing Photoshop techniques - the boys eyes take on the deep and warm characteristic of a puppy dog's. Rubenstein's work, conceptually similar to Lang's, suggests how the boundaries between human and animal are becoming more fluid and often hard to explicate, if not discern.
http://www.regenprojects.com/attachment/en/54522d19cfaf3430698b4568/Press/54b9930fa1c1382862ad734a
http://www.stillliving.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/pages/artists/aao.htm
http://www.artorienteobjet.com/index.html
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