March 9, 2005  



Theoretical Perspectives Op Ed

Biomedia - Biology the new Media



by MARTA LWIN

Biology is the new media, dissected, synthesized, manipulated, like a dj playing with sampled music or a designer building a piece of furniture. 
Broken down into scientific symbols, objectified, codified, and patented, biology has become information (or biomedia), to be used at will by humans.
Since the MIT Synthetic Biology Conference last June, 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 humans to extend their
scientific resources to the control and manipulation of nature is unprecedented and is the latest zeitgeist. 

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 re-creating new forms of it. 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. Many companies are happy, and profiting from this new biomedia.
Pharmaceutical companies are finding that synthetic biology produces useful drugs. Nanotechnologists are finding that naturally occurring biological 
functions can be redirected to tasks such as building molecular circuits. Geneticists claim they will solve many medical problems and world hunger issues. 
Claims of using biomedia for feeding the hungry, extending life , advancing medicine, and being an overall benefit to humanity are plentiful. Since 
the current extinction rate of species, and habitat loss around the world is happening at an accelerated rate, these promises may well come in handy.
 
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 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.

As an artist, the promise of extending my creative vision to the creation of synthetic biological media offers a world of exciting unexplored possibility. 
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. 
 
Where is biomedia taking us, and what does it mean for our world? While synthetic biology 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.

With so many of our environmental problems stemming for our sublimation of nature, will attempts at controlling nature further, at a genetic level, create more
problems? Regardless if it does or not, is the approach to nature as being something to conquer for our survival is an old and pervasive perspective stemming
from a time where people struggled to maintain the boundaries between human and natural forces.

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, further 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. 

If the world we inhabit today, is in fact choking from pollution, running out of energy, warming to the point of self destruction; is the pursuit of biomedia
worth the focus and attention and funding we are throwing at it? Are we living in the fiction of the future? Have we become so removed form natural 
systems that our only ability to interact with nature is to abstract it and create systems of control over it. 

How is it that, we at once, have all this understanding of the micro world, while seeming larger systems of climate change, natural phenomenon such as 
tsunamis, pollution, habitat loss, all exist and threaten to decimate our existence. Has our curiosity and drive for control brought us to a crisis of seduction
and profit from an outmoded system of controlling nature. Are we living in an imagined future, ignoring the harsh reality of our failed integration with the natural world? 

We are curious, explorative creatures, and I by no means suggest we should stop exploring biology in order to understand it. However, I am suggesting 
that an approach to nature as a system with which to integrate, not control, has been neglected. There is a lot of investment and effort towards this in the sciences
which promise to help us control natural resources, manipulate them for our benefit, and control the fabric of life.
There is hardly any investment or funding for those sciences which aim to help us to find a way to integrate with natural systems.   

Taking an integrated approach to scientific exploration, which optimizes existing natural systems offers us the possibility for creativity, 
innovation, and experimentation beyond our current imagination, and perhaps it will bring us a step closer to our biological reality.

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