Biomedia - Biology is the new Media

by MARTA LWIN

Biology is the new media, dissected, synthesized, manipulated, like a dj playing with sampled music. Broken down into scientific symbols, objectified, codified, and patented, biology is the creative medium of genetic engineers.

Since the MIT Synthetic Biology Conference last June 2004, more information has become available explaining genetic network design, parts fabrication, characterization, and assembly as well as directed evolution and evolutionary optimization strategies. This remarkable ability for scientists to extend their scientific resources to the control and manipulation of nature is unprecedented and is the latest cultural zeitgeist. But what are the implications of this trend? And how do artists fit into this paradigm?

What is the role of the artist in an age when 'creatives' are now genetic engineers? Where major cultural changes are determined not by art but by science, and most recently genetic engineering.

Some artists often thought of as outsiders and social critics, resistant to the onslaught of scientific 'progress', are getting in on the act. Biomedia is enticing, exciting and becoming more accessible. Biotechnology is becoming a hobby activity, with kits, and parts available for sale gaining popularity the way early computer kits did back in the 70's.

For the first time in human history, synthetic biological forms have been created. Artists and scientists are exploring the boundaries of the very fabric of life, not by merely understanding it, but by re-creating new forms of life. All this very exciting new information offers a future of unprecedented control over nature and the ability to design and create specific biological forms to meet our needs.

The Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, included several biomedia projects in a recent exhibition, entitled Skin. Featured at the show were synthetic skin samples, human grown cartilage, and a new 'concept design' for the fashion house Chanel, where designers are embedding the Chanel signature in to a padded square quilt on to human skin, enabling the 'implantee' to always 'be Chanel'.

These exciting, if controversial, innovations speak to a future where science triumphs over nature, and humans are able to extend their will with unprecedented control. Synthetic forms of biology promise the ability to use biology as a technology to process information, materials, and energy as we desire according to its proponents.

Synthetic biomedia, by creating a paradigm where biology is seen as information, a symbol, a part, creates an abstract view of nature, one that works in a laboratory, but creates a greater illusion of control and power, removing us further from the present and our reality. Through biomedia, we have abstracted and fragmented our relationship to nature to such an extent that we are no longer living in the present, but the future.

As an artist, I feel it's my responsibility not just to make use of all these new technologies, but to ask where is biomedia taking us and what does it mean for our world? While I feel intrigued by these advances, looking towards a day where I am able to participate in the creation of the natural world around me, shaping the world according to my vision and extending my imagination to the biological sphere, I wonder if we aren't missing the big picture.

Art is a cultural activity able to broaden the discussion about the genetic engineering, the genome, human nature and future. It is also the tradition of art to engage with the deeper ideas of science. To demystify the sciences, unlike tv programs, museum exhibits, which enhance the mystification of biotechnology, genetic science and biology and often alienate the viewer. Further, artists can counter the power of wealthy industry to mold opinions that deliberately distort our view of reality.

Artists are able to explore, to be diverse and undisciplined, not didactic but to contextualize, rethink our relationship to nature. While scientists may be motivated by a passion to understand the order that underlies the natural world, historical, economic and cultural, philosophical forces at play result in a tendency towards control and domination of nature. Artists are free to step out of institutional confinements, and neutrally contextualize, reformat and ask questions, rather then meet industry driven goals.

Further, genetic engeeners and scientists have an approach to nature as being something to conquer for our survival. It is an old and pervasive perspective stemming from a time where people struggled to maintain the boundaries between human and natural forces. While genetic advances may or may not enhance our lives, or create for a future less burdened with its messiness and the unpredictability of nature, it exists during a time in our history where we are facing many global scale environmental problems.

Artists are able to explore this dichotomy of control and discordency in this scientific approach to our relationship with nature. We are able to explore from a perspective which is outside of the scientific papradime.

I by no means suggest we should stop exploring biology in order to understand it, nor do I see science as a part of a dystopia. However, I am suggesting that artists can engage with biology in a broader context, to approach it as a web of life and a web of interrelationships.

Taking an integrated approach to exploration, which optimizes existing natural systems offers us the possibility for creativity, innovation, and experimentation beyond our current imagination, and it is my belief that it will be the artists who can bring us a step closer to our present biological reality.