Week 6 | BioTech + Art

I am an atheist, but I still get the impression that we are playing God when creating some pieces of art using biotechnology. Then I quickly come to my senses and maintain that there is no God (Dawkins 1986) and we are capable of creating anything possible. On one hand, that we are not bound by divine restrictions gives us an unlimited supply of creative possibilities and artistic mediums, including life itself. On the other hand, it leaves us with potentially devastating consequences, both practically and ethically. 

“Ear on Arm.” STELARC, http://stelarc.org/?catID=20242.

If one decides to put an extra ear on one's arm, as Stelarc did, then people would regard it as a form of artistic expression, albeit quirky and unoriginal after Stelarc's. If one decides to create a virus with a particular genetic structure, out of some strange aesthetic standards, that turns out to aid dangerous viral proliferation, then people would be outraged especially in the aftermath of Covid 19 pandemic. Admittedly, the latter example seems contrived, and people would certainly not consider it art, but if the artist thinks and claims their creation is art, who could possibly refute that claim? 

“Pickle Rick.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 14 Mar. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickle_Rick.

BioArt, as defined in Wikipedia, falls squarely under Dawkins' definition of extended phenotype: that is, the creative outputs classified as BioArt are an outcome of human genetic makeup that supports artistic expression for some evolutionary reason. This way of looking at BioArt also highlights its delicate relationship with the audience, whose reaction would be determined by their backgrounds and life histories. Despite good intentions behind many of the works, as summarized in Ruth West's article in the book Context Providers, some may be outraged that it involves animal cruelty or it is blasphemous, for instance. Others may celebrate the collaboration between art and science.  Appropriately, the situation can be summed up as the relationship between substrates and enzymes, where they need to have suitable fit with each other for there to be further reactions. 

“Enzyme.” Genome.gov, https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Enzyme.

“BioArt.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 3 May 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioArt.

Dawkins, Richard. The Extended Phenotype. Oxford University Press, 1982.

Dawkins, Richard. The Blind Watchmaker. Penguin Books, 1986.

Fernández, Clara Rodríguez. “Stelarc -- Making Art out of the Human Body.” Labiotech.eu, 12 Aug. 2021, https://www.labiotech.eu/trends-news/stelarc-ear-art-human-body/.

Lovejoy, Margot, and Christiane Paul. Context Providers: Conditions of Meaning in Media Arts. Intellect Ltd, 2011.