William Myers

Bio Art Altered Realities William Myers

Bio Art is an emerging art practice that responds to
the new and often dislocating realities revealed by the
advance of the life sciences. This book presents work
by more than sixty contemporary artists who blend
techniques from the laboratory – such as tissue-culturing
and genetic engineering – with traditional art-making.
The results evoke an ominous future where human
manipulation of the natural world has altered cultural
norms, with results both beautiful and alarming.

Altered Realities

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www.thamesandhudson.com £29.95
 Bio Art

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 Bio Art
Altered Realities

William Myers

With 300 illustrations

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 Contents
To my collaborators, especially Mariam Aldhahi, Julia Buntaine, Daniel Grushkin,
and Wythe Marschall. Foreword 06
Front cover image · Vincent Fournier · Great Grey Owl (Strix predatoris) with predator-resistant Preface 07
feathers from Post Natural History · 2012–ongoing (see pages 24–25)

Back cover images · clockwise from top left:

Kate MacDowell · Daphne (detail) · 2007 (see pages 48–49)
Neri Oxman · Arachne (Self Portrait) from Imaginary Beings: Mythologies of the Not Yet · 2012
Bio Art and the 08
(see pages 54–57)
Mark Dion · Mandrillus Sphinx from The Macabre Treasury · 2013 (see pages 106–108)
Gnawing Invisible
Jon McCormack · Evolved plant form based on the BP logo from Fifty Sisters · 2012
(see pages 184–85)
Vincent Fournier · Brown-cheeked Hornbill (Bycanistes attractivus) with unbreakable beak
from Post Natural History · 2012–ongoing (see pages 24–25)
I Altering Nature, 18
Frontispiece · Kate MacDowell · First and Last Breath · 2010 (see page 48) Naturally
First published in the United Kingdom in 2015 by
Thames & Hudson Ltd, 181A High Holborn,
II Redefining Life 76
London WC1V 7QX

Bio Art © 2015 William Myers III Visualizing Scale 128

and Scope
Texts by other named contributors © 2015 the contributors

Designed by Barnbrook

Experimental
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording
IV 178
or any other information storage and retrieval system,
without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Identities and Media
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
Artist Interviews 234
from the British Library
Further Reading 246
ISBN 978-0-500-23932-2
References 248
Printed and bound in China by Toppan Leefung Printing Ltd
Picture Credits 250
To find out about all our publications, please visit
www.thamesandhudson.com. There you can subscribe Acknowledgments 252
to our e-newsletter, browse or download our current
Index 253

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catalogue, and buy any titles that are in print.

About the Author and Contributors 256

 Foreword Preface
Suzanne Anker William Myers
The influence of the biological sciences on the visual arts can be traced back to the furthest During the course of writing BioDesign (2012) I encountered numerous examples of artists
reaches of human history. From Paleolithic cave paintings of human–animal hybrids to blazing trails toward new ways of thinking about nature and the self. These artists were often
periods of grotesque and Romantic art; each significant innovation in the sciences and using living tissues and microorganisms, or even constructing complex ecosystems. They
related technologies has created a tier of attendant cultural expressions in the arts. For the seemed to be testing, playing with, and discovering new forms of expression and articulating
Romantics, symbolists, and surrealists, paintings, sculptures, and photography were an positions on what I have come to regard as the most urgent issues of our time: those defining
expression of tacit anxiety amidst technological and social upheaval that altered stable ways our era as the Anthropocene, the epoch of human intervention with the environment. These
of life. At the same time, the astonishing nature of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory and artworks were being loosely categorized under the term “Bio Art,” yet were defined by medium
Sigmund Freud’s evocation of the unconscious jolted man’s conception of his own agency, rather than in relation to the interplay between culture and the sciences; so it became clear
compelling him to reconsider what was already known. that the topic of Bio Art warranted further study, and called for a new book of its own.
In the present day it is Bio Art that responds to the need for cultural expression in a It is first important to address the question of how biodesign and Bio Art differ, which
time of change and unknowns, and it is gathering steam as an international art movement. frequently arises in discussion of any creative output that draws from the life sciences.
It is neither media-specific nor geographically bound, and its development is flourishing Biodesign is an approach that integrates biological processes and cycles within ecosystems
in art schools, studios, and amateur and professional labs worldwide. In such a climate of into practices as wide ranging as graphic design, manufacturing, and building. It goes
experimentation and energy we can fairly say that this genre will continue to thrive, fueled by beyond mimicry to integration of the biological, and living material often becomes a part
the rapid advances in biological sciences as well as the growing need for the public to engage of the finished product or system that has utilitarian application. But biodesign can also be
with them. As the works profiled in this book collectively attest, the creative output of this speculative within these parameters, or may consciously reject or critique the design brief.
practice demonstrates that we are, in fact, living in a “Biological Age.” Design, therefore, must be directed in some way toward others, while art may not.
Bio Art is an umbrella term for a host of practices that draw from fields such as synthetic By contrast, Bio Art is a practice that utilizes living biology as an artistic medium, or
biology, ecology, and reproductive medicine, often combining art’s pictorial processes and addresses the changing nature of biology’s meaning through its output. This can be achieved
nature’s living library. Simply put, Bio Art employs the tools and techniques of science to in a Petri dish or in a photograph; what is defining is the work’s connection with meaning
make artworks. Harnessing microbes, fluorescence, computer coding, and various types in flux. At its core, Bio Art is a response to the cultural dislocations that are erupting as a
of imaging devices, it brings to the fore the ways in which nature is altered by humans. Its result of the advance of life sciences research and its application as technology. As fields
results are part critique, part irony, and sometimes part hard science. At other times the works including biomedicine, ecology, and synthetic biology advance, our shared, foundational
resemble science fiction narratives, projecting possible, and sometimes frightening, future cultural concepts of identity, nature, and our relationship to the environment are shifting.
scenarios. Bio Art is therefore an arena that requires dedication to two mistresses: the visual An important backdrop to these changes is the era of the Anthropocene and the unfolding
arts and the biological sciences. One without the other is insufficient, as it demands both tragedies of habitat destruction, mass extinction, and climate change. This blend of elements
rigorous aesthetic practice and an understanding of biology and its embedded metaphors. precipitates the “crisis of consciousness” that many bio artists respond to.
And while its close relative biodesign may have utilitarian targets, Bio Art is more concerned Bio Art also engages with new understandings of the self. As artists such as Stelarc have
with art historical connections and the ways in which ideas, long since dismissed as sterile, provocatively argued, the human body is “obsolete” in light of the possibilities of technological
are reconsidered. extension, digital archiving, and networking. This argument advances further with recent
Bio Art may be the latest in a long line of artistic movements exploring the relationship developments in genetic medicine, such as the possibilities of generating both eggs and
between humans and nature, but this time our relationship to our environment has changed sperm from a single donor’s stem cells, or the manipulation of gut microbes to manage
gear. Many argue we have entered the Anthropocene, an era where human activity has a mental health. Life sciences research in this century will undoubtedly come to be regarded
defining impact on the natural world. Our artistic response to this might be considered as as a golden age. It is a place of accelerating breakthroughs and fundamental developments,
a form of neo-romanticism, perhaps with a slight surrealist accent, echoing the art made such as the rise of epigenetics, which has revealed how we are all in meaningful genetic
during previous times of uncertainty about man’s place in the world. While its breadth of communication with our ancestors as well as future generations. This pace of discovery
scope, techniques, and intentions mean that Bio Art is not easily defined, we can anticipate creates fertile ground for artistic expression, and calls for art as exploration and translation
that its practices and practitioners will continue to astound us with the possible. of what are truly jarring developments in our time.

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 Bio Art and the
Gnawing Invisible
“We do not doubt that in yielding quite naturally Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, and Yves Tanguy. They
to the vocation of pushing back appearances developed techniques such as automatism, and
and upsetting the relations of ‘realities,’ it is wielded imagery of the uncanny and grotesque,
helping, with a smile on its lips, to hasten the among other strategies for their expression. In the
general crisis of consciousness due in our time.”1 following decades, new media and performance
—Max Ernst, 1948 art emerged, each also rooted in early 20th-century
experimentation, but driven by a variety of new
The self-proclaimed “surrealists” may be long gone, but intentions, and utilizing technologies going well beyond
they are not yet through with us. Their project echoes visual experience. The nature of this experimentation
through a proliferation of artwork over the last ten and elements of its formal output are also embodied
years that uses biology as either medium or subject to in contemporary art which uses biology as medium
signal significant cultural shifts caused by alterations or subject. The pioneering video installations of Nam 1
in our ideas of identity, nature, and environment. This June Paik and the mythological, chimerical imagery
essay maps out the ways in which these shifts make employed by Matthew Barney provide vivid examples;
historical alliteration with upheavals of the early works of this kind have influenced bio artists such
20th century, particularly those to which the as Eduardo Kac, whose 1999 work Genesis included
surrealists responded. Bio artists working today are an interactive website inviting visitors to mutate a
cast as interpreters of cultural transformations, like microorganism; Saša Spačal, who has staged video
journalists formulating the first draft of history, but and sound installations that facilitate cross-species
using aesthetic experiences as language to assign communication; and Vincent Fournier, who is creating
meaning. Like the surrealists before them, who a bestiary of futuristic chimeras adapted to a world
struggled with the implications of the unconscious dramatically altered by climate change.
mind and the aftermath of war, bio artists are These parallels in form and technique, as well as
motivated by an imperative to engage with the crises the similarities between particular social conditions,
of their time. This emerging art is not defined strictly do not imply that contemporary art follows an
by medium, by the use of living material, but instead established cycle or pattern. Just as it is futile to
by its connection with the reshaping and movement attempt to fit every story into neatly labeled boxes
of our concepts of the self, and the definitions of life, of “tragedy” or “comedy,” appreciating art in its time
nature, and community. Dislocation of these concepts requires a suspension of grand, linear narratives. As
is exactly what is happening today, as discoveries in Alfred H. Barr Jr., the founding director of the Museum
the life sciences propel advances in biotechnology and of Modern Art, New York, summarized in 1946, “art is
in our understanding of both the climate crisis and the an infinitely complex focus of human experience.”2
wider human impact on the biosphere. The particulars of how and why artwork is generated
The rise of surrealism is firmly associated with and what meaning it accumulates during the course
the anxiety and distrust of reason bred by World of its making, display, and interpretation transcend
War I, coupled with a deeper understanding of the identifiable systems or static labels. Nevertheless,
unconscious mind, especially as elucidated by there is evidence that we are entering a new age of
Sigmund Freud. The collective, psychological terrain surrealism, distinct from but making rhymes with

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these conditions created within culture provoked the creative expression of the past, and hastening 2
artistic responses from figures such as André Breton, a “general crisis of consciousness.”
1 Eduardo Kac • Genesis • 1999
Bio Art Bio Art and the Gnawing Invisible 8 2 Saša Spačal • 7K: new life form • 2010
 Liberating Thought drawing techniques. Following in this spirit of play
that relished veering into the nonsensical, Breton and
The surrealist movement of the early 20th century Philippe Soupault wrote in their seminal 1920 surrealist
aimed to facilitate creative expression unburdened by work Les Champs Magnétiques (The Magnetic Fields):
reason or aesthetic and moral conventions; as Breton
wrote in the Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, the surrealists “It was the end of sorrow lies. The rail stations
would commit themselves to aiding the imagination were dead, flowing like bees stung from
in “recovering its rights.”3 What they sought was honeysuckle. The people hung back and
a deeper, unseen truth within and around us, one watched the ocean, animals flew in and out of
that might be brought to light through materializing focus. The time had come. Yet king dogs never
dreams, tapping into unconscious thought, and giving grow old—they stay young and fit, and someday
voice to suppressed desires. The surrealist practice they might come to the beach and have a few
of automatic writing was an exercise to advance this drinks, a few laughs, and get on with it. But not
goal: writing that was rapid, free-form and unedited; now. The time had come; we all knew it. But who
an attempt to tunnel a reservoir to unconscious would go first?”5
thought and access ideas and feelings in a purer or
more authentic form. Automatic writing applied a hope Freud’s theories about dreams, the uncanny, and
that the creative act itself would move the mind away the unconscious informed Breton’s ideas, and were
from the conditioned, reflexive reliance on reason. a continual source of inspiration for the surrealists.
Contemporary artist Arne Hendriks likens this to a tool Representing the uncanny became particularly
for dismantling control, insisting that automatic writing important, a quality described by Freud as a recipe that
and other techniques like the use of mind-altering must include the familiar, even primal, yet profoundly
3 4
drugs were a focused desperation of the surrealists: uncertain.6 Elaborating on this concept, Freud turned
“Anything to break free from the unseen program”. 4
to examples such as the effect of watching epileptic
This is even more difficult to do today, almost a century seizures and manifestations of insanity, as they
later, wherein sophisticated algorithms deliver us excited in the spectator the notion that “automatic”
continual streams of tailored information. processes, normally concealed beneath ordinary
Such experiments were simultaneous with the animation, were at work. Essentially, Freud’s theories
emerging dominance in art and commerce of the were understood at the time to have uncovered new
machine, which was establishing a position as central dimensions of reality, much as Louis Pasteur and
to aesthetic and economic life. Against the context of Robert Koch’s research in microbiology had revealed,
these events, the call for epistemological reform heard much more literally, a previously unseen universe at
by the artist’s ear was loud: the rule of reason coupled the microscopic scale. These new terrains cried out
with industrial capitalism had recently mass-produced for new acts of artistic intervention and interpretation
machine guns, mustard gas, and mortars for World because they offered the possibility that neither
War I, a profound failure of Enlightenment values and thought, behavior, nor environment were as they
the reigning political order. Breton even witnessed the seemed. At the very least they had new dimensionality;
outcomes of this first hand, treating patients in Nantes they existed on spectrums of scale rather than binary
suffering from shell shock. The war’s worldwide orgy of divides such as sane/mad or deliberate/unconscious.
brutalism shoved those who witnessed it over perverse This point is extended further by contemporary bio
psychological thresholds, force-feeding them death artists such as Vincent Fournier who think about
at a speed and scale previously unknown, such as in “mixing living forms with synthetic biology, cybernetics
the Battle of the Somme in 1916 that saw a staggering or nanotechnologies.”7
70,000 casualties in a single day. Simultaneously, Surrealists plumbed the implications of Freud’s
the Spanish Influenza pandemic would claim up newly sketched blueprints of the mind as others,
to fifty million lives, or about 3 percent of the global including artist René Binet and architect Hendrik
population. The new reality of a world of such horror Petrus Berlage, drew from the discoveries of scientists
bred confusion about, and disillusionment with, like Louis Pasteur and, in particular, the German 5 6
modern life that ran deep and sought outlets, as might biologist Ernst Haeckel. These artists elaborated
a repressed erotic desire. Free-form, spontaneous, styles in the decorative arts and architecture inspired

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and non-rational forms of expression were attempted by biological forms. This effort coalesced in such
3 Ernst Haeckel •Tafel 88: Discomedusae from Art Forms of Nature • 1904
through collage, frottage, and collective writing and movements as art nouveau in France at the end of the
4 Hendrik Petrus Berlage Study: Crown For An Electric Light • undated
5 Ernst Haeckel •Tafel 17: Siphonophorae from Art Forms of Nature • 1904
Bio Art Bio Art and the Gnawing Invisible 10 6 Jon McCormack • Evolved plant form based on the BP logo from Fifty Sisters • 2012
 19th century and in similar iterations across Europe experimentation, and deep emotional dread, that films also repeatedly refer to both the ceremonies and since Barney’s project concluded. In fact, we have
and the United States. Thus, while research on the reoccurs in contemporary examples of fine art film and, symbols of Freemasonry and the stages of human fetal come to ambivalently regard ourselves as something
mind and on microscopic life supported quite different as described below, in Bio Art. Then, as now, the horror development in which sexual differentiation occurs, a new: supplemented by technologies that monitor
forms of artistic expression, both arose from shifts in of the nightmare depicted argues that our perceived point before which the artist regards the fetus as being and enhance parts of the body. A more detailed
our accepted notions of the self and its environment. reality is a thin, placid surface, under which darker, in a state of “pure potentiality.” Guggenheim Museum understanding of the human microbiome also forces
These developments generated irresistible artistic more consequential forces churn. This becomes curator Nancy Spector described the films as a “self- us to consider ourselves as a superorganism controlled
imperatives: any search for truth, beauty or meaning— especially relevant in our time when we consider the enclosed aesthetic system” and “metaphoric universe” in part by trillions of microbes that live within us. Might
presumably the business of artists—would have to possibility of looming disasters generated by forces in which the “creative potential of perversion pervades we in turn feel a need to translate such technologies
respond to the new modern reality. that remain mostly invisible, as in pollution causing [its] very genetic code.”9 and organisms, or their symbols, over to a new
climate changes or global economic shifts resulting There is a dizzying array of elements and references metaphorical plane and bludgeon them?
in mass unemployment. jammed into Barney’s films: Celtic mythology, dental
As video recording technologies advanced and torture, Masonic lore, early 20th-century skyscraper
became more widely available, they were readily architecture in New York City, and bizarre feats of
Merging Technology appropriated by artists including early adopters athleticism featuring, among other obstacles, a
and Performance Wolf Vostell and Nam June Paik. Paik, in particular, salacious female kick-line and a mosh pit. A joyous Flourishing Infection
pushed the use of video in many directions and fused jumble of aesthetic experience springs from this epic,
“Skin has become inadequate in interfacing it with emerging artistic modes of performance and thanks largely to its maker’s attention to detail and eye “Microbes Maketh Man”10
with reality. Technology has become the installation in the 1960s and 1970s. His was also an for luscious color and composition. This tremendous —The Economist, 2012
body’s new membrane of existence.”8 interdisciplinary effort: he brought to his experiments output includes photographs, drawings, set-pieces,
—Nam June Paik his training as a classical pianist and an intense study and sculptures, not forgetting the films themselves, Just as new explorations of the worlds of the mind
of Schönberg. The synthesis of these elements can produced as limited-edition DVDs. Telling among the and the microbe challenged conventional thought in
The works of the surrealists, like those of the more be seen in Concerto for TV Cello and Videotapes (1971), casting choices is that of Aimee Mullens, the double- the late 19th and early 20th centuries, fundamental
anarchically playful Dadaists, anticipated various performed by cellist Charlotte Moorman, in which amputee who uses advanced prostheses for lower legs and accelerating developments in the life sciences
forms and strategies of artistic expression yet to come, television monitors were fashioned into a musical and has become an accomplished athlete, fashion now disrupt our accepted notions of identity, our
while making visible the undercurrent of unease that instrument and the images on the screens changed model, and frequent talking point in arguments definitions of life and nature, and our relationships
characterized European life in the interwar years. along with Moorman’s movements. In later works, concerning the use of technology to alter the body. to our environment. The first of these, a changing
One standout example of surrealist creation during Paik distorted the output of television screens using In the films she functions as a doppelgänger of the conception of identity, stems in part from rapid
this era is Un Chien Andalou, a silent film written and magnets or appropriated global telecommunications protagonist (Barney) but also, perhaps inadvertently, advances in genomics and biomedicine, including
produced by Luis Buñuel and Dalí in 1929. Its non-linear to coordinate live performance across the Atlantic introduces into the films the notion of the enhanced research on the human microbiome and the
narrative includes seemingly unrelated scenes, bizarre between Paris and New York in 1984. Such works self, a manifestation of narcissism amplified with expanding field known as epigenetics. The human
expressions of libidinal aggression, and gruesome anticipated the integration of interaction design into technology. Variations on this theme of the hybridized microbiome is the vast and complex ecosystem
disfiguration. The experimental character of the film’s installation and performance, as can be seen in the self are frequently explored in contemporary Bio Art, that exists on and within our bodies, consisting of
funding, acting, and directing was much like that work of contemporary artists such as Stelarc, Eduardo such as in the work of Jalila Essaïdi and Sonja Bäumel, trillions of bacteria and other microorganisms that
of present-day independent films, while the non- Kac, Heather Barnett, and Jon McCormack, all of in which human augmentation is attempted through interact with human cells, sometimes symbiotically.
traditional narrative and stylized, if sometimes sloppy, whom have devised installations in which the viewer cross-species production. As we are rapidly discovering, this non-human
editing preceded various contemporary forms, from participates in form-making mediated by technologies. Mullens’s character is one that must be defeated life is essential to our body—to such functions as
the music video to reality television programs. In Dalí’s Kac in particular has authored works channeling by Barney in his journey from Apprentice to Master digestion, maintenance of the immune system, and
own time, his vision was recognized in Hollywood and these elements into Bio Art: his work Genesis fuses Mason, in which several travails are endured. At the even possibly our psychological health. Human DNA
would lead to collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock information technology, code language, and genetic end of the final film, Cremaster 3 (they are presented contains about 22,000 genes that code for proteins,
and Walt Disney. mutation to create a completely unique, globally non-sequentially), Barney completes his quest the building blocks of life and all its functions, while
The most memorable sequence from Un Chien designed organism. by bludgeoning her, allowing him to ascend to a each of our microbiomes contains a cumulative
Andalou depicts a woman’s eye being held open If Paik’s works marked the beginning of fusing new higher level of being while subjugating the reflected three million genes. Keeping in mind that we evolved
and slit with a razor, an early film special effect media and performance to create novel aesthetic self, his female double. There are many ways to along with microbes, it seems quite probable that
accomplished by a rapidly shifting camera view and experiences, Matthew Barney’s vast project The read this film, aside from its symbolic connections we have developed to rely on this vast library of
the carcass of a calf. This scene still has the power to Cremaster Cycle (1994–2002) may represent a creative to Freemansonry or its pernicious misogyny. The genetic resources to which we play host. The rate of
induce shudders—to shock the unsuspecting viewer highpoint. The series of five films is named after the representation of a human-like chimera in the film in discovery in this field is increasing, while its impact on
with a sharp, visceral fear of pain that is generally only cremaster muscle, which helps regulate the distance the form of Mullens as part machine and part animal our thinking about the self strains to catch up: recall
experienced in nightmares. This scene also channels between the male testes and the body in order to and as an abomination challenging the protagonist, that it has been not much more than a decade since
the grotesque and erotic present in the myths of the maintain an optimal temperature for the production presaged the emerging art forms we see that address the completion of the working draft of the Human
Sandman and Oedipus, in which wounding of the of sperm. Broadly speaking, the subject of the work is identity and the definition of nature. The disruptions Genome Project in 2003; just thirty years since the

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eyes is central. It is such a gesture, straddling as it creative and destructive impulses realized in different in these concepts of the self and the environment development of polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a
does the borders between sensationalism, aesthetic contexts and scales, from the individual to society. The have only increased in importance in the decade basic tool for genetic research and experimentation;

Bio Art Bio Art and the Gnawing Invisible 12 Bio Art Bio Art and the Gnawing Invisible 13
 and the very structure of DNA was only first described research is the recent confirmation that more than 90
around sixty years ago, in 1953. percent of human DNA—previously little understood
Increasingly, studies of the human microbiome and even mischaracterized as vestigial “junk” because
demonstrate that humans are staggeringly more it does not code for proteins—in fact significantly
complex than a linear code of DNA, a string of letters, affects how genes are expressed; again, the previous
would suggest. “Code,” as in Morse code, suggests a understanding of genes as a straightforward set of
string of information, discrete and unchanging. Popular blueprints is woefully inadequate.12 The artist Boo
perception has for a long time been anchored in the Chapple regards this emerging science as “both
sludge of this powerful but inaccurate metaphor. As fascinating and terrifying” and goes on to say that
research is beginning to show, slight changes in the it “speaks to tangible material relationships existing
non-human life thriving inside and on our bodies may between an individual and their world over vast scales
have profound effects on how we feel and think. Like of time, space and circumstance and offers the
the surrealists, artists and designers today are driven by potential for new understandings of self, for radical
an impulse to visualize these new discoveries, to comb legal precedents as well as for Orwellian interventions
7
them for cultural meaning and to uncover (micro) into public health.”13
forces that shape yet escape our perceived (macro) A further indication of the future direction of
reality. Edgar Lissel’s work Myself (2005), for example, artistic engagement with biology—and a challenge
allows elements of the artist’s skin microbiome to to our definitions of life—appeared in 2010, with the
populate a petri dish, tracing the imprint of his hand creation of the first synthetic life form: “Synthia,” a
and making visible another scale of life. Another such cell generated entirely from artificial DNA inserted
work is Co-Existence (2009) by Julia Lohmann, an artist into a host. This effort, led by entrepreneurial scientist
whose practice often highlights material relationships J. Craig Venter, consumed many years and millions
between humans and other species. This particular of dollars and may be a harbinger of an entirely new
work utilizes 9,000 Petri dishes to form large, pixelated and virtually limitless medium for creative output.
portraits of two reclining nude figures. Each dish Indeed, artists such as Kac are eager to wield these
features a photograph of cultured microorganisms, new technologies and discover their potential for
with their placement in the portrait corresponding to creative expression. “One of my goals,” he recently
the part of the body from which the sample originated. said, “is to completely and thoroughly design a new
Anna Dumitriu also explores this new reality in the life form, to conceive every aspect of it.”14 Kac has
work Hypersymbiont Dress (2013), for which microbes been working in this medium for some time, creating
known or speculated to have various effects on their the first multicellular transgenic artwork, GFP Bunny
hosts are stained into a dress. The garment proposes (2000), and more recently Natural History of the Enigma
an imaginative conjecture: that it could impart to the (2008), in which the artist isolated a gene from his own
wearer new or enhanced abilities, such as protection body that codes for part of a blood antibody, and then
from pain or improved powers of creativity. successfully inserted it into the cells of petunia plants
The field of epigenetics further complicates ideas that were in turn cultured and grown for exhibition.
of the genetic self, given that it is the study of the This small human addition to the plant makes it unlike
relationship between environmental stimuli and gene any other that ever existed, as in each of the red veins
expression. As recent research has found, devilishly of the plant’s flowers, a genetically human protein is
complex environmental factors control when genes present.
are “switched” on or off and to what degree. Some The tension between bioethics and technology
of these environmental factors are governed by life is likely to underpin the most significant cultural
experiences, and some even by the behaviors of developments of our age, and so the language of
past generations.11 Thus, trauma such as famine or the life sciences—broadly speaking, and including
extreme stress experienced by an individual’s great- its symbols, protocols, and objects—offers a rich
grandfather could express itself as a propensity toward communication tool for artists to use in probing our
obesity or susceptibility to disease, for example. The shifting ideas of identity. Consequently, numerous 8
mechanisms of this influence across generations questions arise from projects that take advantage
are a long way from being fully understood, but the of our new ability to design life at the scale of
implications for how we regard our identity and our the molecule using techniques from the rapidly

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responsibilities toward, and interconnectedness with, developing field of synthetic biology, an engineering 7 Julia Lohmann • Co-existence • 2009
future generations are significant. Complementing this approach to designing organisms with abstracted, 8 Eduardo Kac • Natural History of the Enigma • 2009

Bio Art Bio Art and the Gnawing Invisible 14

 interchangeable blocks: are these human-made the potential analogy of that pre-threshold moment than visualize previously invisible forces like the 1 Max Ernst, “Inspiration to Order,” in Max Ernst: Beyond
creations “natural”? What responsibilities do we have with the rise of biotechnology is most convincingly unconscious, or the new realities of life and nature: Painting and Other Writings by the Artist and his Friends
toward them, and what limitations can or should be described by Freeman Dyson: it can offer us ways to ponder their meaning for our (Wittenborn, Schultz, Inc., 1948), 25.
applied to these practices? lives, help us arrive at new theoretical and practical 2 Alfred H. Barr Jr, “Research and Publication in Art
Finally, Bio Art addresses a new and critical cultural “Life was then a community of cells of various positions, and forge new cognitive frameworks and Museums,” in Irving Sandler and Amy Newman (eds),
development: the concept of the Anthropocene. This kinds, sharing their genetic information so that terms to describe them. Bio Art is thus driven by the Defining Modern Art: Selected Writings of Alfred H. Barr
is the name given to the current geological epoch, clever chemical tricks and catalytic processes need to illuminate that which is both consequential (Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1986), 209.
characterized by the largely destructive impact of invented by one creature could be inherited and invisible, a gnawing need to examine change. It 3 “Le Manifeste du Surréalisme” (1924), in André Breton,
humans on the environment. Widespread acceptance by all of them….But then, one evil day, a cell may also enable us to rework our conception of beauty Manifestoes of Surrealism, translated by Richard Seaver
and understanding of our global interconnectedness resembling a primitive bacterium happened and realign the relationship between ourselves and a and Helen R. Lane (The University of Michigan Press, 1969).
and shared responsibility for phenomena like human- to find itself one jump ahead of its neighbors world teeming with life both all around and inside us. 4 Author interview with Arne Hendriks (October 17, 2014).
led climate change, for example, is still relatively in efficiency. That cell, anticipating Bill Gates In this way, art moves beyond the passive (if poetic) 5 André Breton and Philippe Soupault, The Magnetic Fields
new and offers opportunities for artistic response. by three billion years, separated itself from the position as a signature of a civilization, to act as a (1920), translated and introduced by David Gascoyne
How will we and the species around us adapt to a community and refused to share. Its offspring lighthouse, or language-maker. (Atlas Press, 1985).
vastly changed landscape of scarcer resources and became the first species of bacteria—and 6 Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny (1919), translated by
extreme weather in the future? One vision is offered the first species of any kind—reserving their Alix Strachey (reprinted in Sigmund Freud, Sammlung
by artist Vincent Fournier in his growing encyclopedia intellectual property for their own private use…. Kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, Funfte Folge, 1922).
of potential future species, Post Natural History (2012– The Darwinian interlude had begun.”16 7 Author interview with Vincent Fournier (May 5, 2014).
ongoing). This work consists of portraits of animals 8 Nam June Paik, quoted in Jeanne Colleran, Theatre
that we might design a hundred years or more in In the future, the monopolistic control symbolized and War: Theatrical Responses since 1991 (Palgrave
the future using genetic manipulation: creatures here by Microsoft (Bill Gates is in fact now a generous Macmillan, 2012), 29.
specialized to satisfy human needs or to survive philanthropist) will succumb as ever-more accessible 9 Nancy Spector and Neville Wakefield, Matthew
in a harsher environment. These animals appear biotechnology will finally decentralize genetic sharing, Barney: The Cremaster Cycle (Guggenheim Museum
familiar but uncannily grotesque, sometimes blending yielding a richer and even better-adapted diversity Publications, 2002).
attributes of two or more life forms. They are also of life. Dyson goes on to anticipate a future in which 10 The Economist, cover story title (August 18, 2012).
rendered in a photorealistic manner that, as in the we can design miniature pet dinosaurs and program 11 Virginia Hughes, “Epigenetics: The Sins of the Father:
surrealist paintings of Magritte, makes the animals trees to grow batteries. But if such a future awaits, The Roots of Inheritance May Extend Beyond the Genome,
eerily alluring while amplifying cognitive dissonance in there are urgent ethical debates that must advance but the Mechanisms Remain a Puzzle,” Nature 507
the viewer; a discomfort reflective of all the troubling quickly, particularly around how we might define, (March 6, 2014), 22–24.
implications embedded in the images, specifically the value, and possibly protect life as it now exists. As Max 12 National Human Genome Research Institute,
alarming notion of designing animals dramatically Ernst foresaw, artists hasten understanding of these “ENCODE Data Describes Function of Human Genome,”
different than those shaped by natural selection. issues, pushing us to more fully develop positions see www.genome.gov (September 5, 2012).
In light of our continued and increasingly and articulate what is at stake. Risks accompany 13 Author interview with Boo Chapple (October 25, 2014).
sophisticated tinkering with the genetic blueprints uninformed acquiescence: the proliferation of 14 Author interview with Eduardo Kac, in BioDesign:
of life, the widely understood concept of evolution designed life forms may accelerate and amplify Nature + Science + Creativity (Thames & Hudson, 2012).
will shift. If we continue to shape whole ecosystems the destructive aspects of large and entrenched 15 Carl R. Woese, “On the Evolution of Cells,” Proceedings
by introducing genetically modified species as societal structures. We must wonder: what will the of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States
we have done with agriculture, then evolution is biotechnological version of a billion smartphones look of America 99 (13) (June 25, 2002), 8742–47.
undermined as reproductive success as a driving like? And what might they eat when they’re hungry? 16 Freeman Dyson, “Our Biotech Future,” New York Review
force of change becomes secondary to the decisions Designing life may simply intensify our destructive of Books (July 19, 2007).
of those humans wielding the ability to design life. cycles of production and consumption. Arguably,
It has been argued, albeit controversially, that our the rise of digital technologies has done exactly this,
dawning biotechnological age might be thought of helping the average human to be a more productive
as a welcome return to a time, over three billion years worker and faster consumer of goods and services.
ago, in which adaptive genetic changes were shared Will new biotechnology follow such a pattern?
among microbial species rapidly through widespread Fortunately, many additional works of art that
horizontal gene transfer, which allows for the transfer address these topics are in development. This essay
of genes between organisms in a manner other than offers a glimpse of the roots of Bio Art’s imperatives
traditional reproduction. The communal workings of and practices in works of the past, coupled with
these early life forms, before what is known as the examples of contemporary art that set out to address

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“Darwinian threshold” when species began to compete, cultural shifts of recent years driven by the life
has been elaborated by Carl Woese15 and others, but sciences. In this effort, Bio Art can do much more

Bio Art Bio Art and the Gnawing Invisible 16 Bio Art Bio Art and the Gnawing Invisible 17
 1

Vincent Fournier

Fournier’s work is rooted in art history but aimed 1–4 Post Natural History • 2012–ongoing
squarely at the future as anticipated by scientific Redesigned species, including: Brown-cheeked Hornbill
and technological advances. The artist’s own blend (Bycanistes attractivus) with unbreakable beak (1);
of educational background in sociology, fine arts, and Rabbit (Oryctolagus cognitivus) with high intelligence (3);
Red Poppy (Ignis ubinanae) with fiery plasma (4). C-prints.
photography informs his strategy of utilizing visual
experience to articulate social behaviors and their
potential consequences. In the case of Post Natural purpose, assuming an inherent wisdom in nature
History (2012–ongoing), those behaviors do not yet and drawing on that to guide behavior. In contrast,
exist but will be possible and perhaps even likely in the Fournier’s work stands between cautionary tale and
coming decades. The work centers on the redesign of playful surrealism: the photorealistic quality of his
species to bestow traits better suiting them for the era contemporary bestiary makes it both alluring and
of the Anthropocene, a world characterized by harsher grotesque, situated in an uncanny valley wherein too
climates and severely limited natural habitats. Such much familiarity makes the fiction uncomfortable.
redesign, Fournier suggests, would go far beyond the The artist takes his cues from such figures as Freud and
familiar selective breeding of animals or plants, instead Darwin—whose works “destroyed” commonly held
creating hybrids of the familiar and exotic, with traits notions of the binary divisions of sane/mad or animal/
that would either help species to survive or satisfy human—by depicting mental state and evolution as
new human desires. continuums. By extension, Post Natural History redefines
The ideas within Post Natural History stretch the border between natural and artificial as porous, on
back to antiquity, mirroring, for example, the early its way to complete disintegration, and accompanying
depictions of fantastical animals in the ancient Greek a future characterized by both hope and dread.

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work Physiologus (2nd century ce). Physiologus used a Fournier’s earlier works include Brasilia (2012)
combination of illustrations and text for a moralizing and The Man Machine (2010), each made up of several

Bio Art Altering Nature, Naturally 25

 photographs of expectant and monumental energy. 4
Brasilia presents what the artist calls “a true ruin
of a future,” in the form of a reflection on the
utopian promises offered by modernist architecture
of the 1950s and 1960s: well-funded intentions
that have scarcely delivered. The Man Machine
depicts an unnerving ordinariness in moments of
interaction between people and robots; despite
being unsophisticated in appearance, the robots
are imbued with character, even melancholy, as
they are so carefully and humanly choreographed.
These works can be seen as a double reflection of
robots as portraiture: the successful rendering of
our technological creations as both sublime in their
apparent autonomy and mundane in their humanness.
The recent work Synthetic Flesh Flowers (2014)
expands on Post Natural History and depicts the
imagined results of tissue engineering experiments
to make artificially fleshly plants. In the words of the
artist, these are “precious vanities” and emblematic
of the human desire to transform the living.
5 Asterae (Paulisper desiderare) from
Synthetic Flesh Flowers • 2014
Computer renderings, 3D printing
3

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5
 Azuma Makoto
In 1962 Hans Haacke, a pioneer of systems-based art,
created his Condensation Cube, the first enclosed natural
system displayed in a gallery. Azuma has taken up
and developed this practice much further, achieving
original forms, immense complexity, and layered
meaning. As a self-described “flower artist” updating
the traditions of Japanese ikebana and bonsai, Azuma
works with plants to create artworks that straddle
traditions of sculpture, installation, institutional
critique, and Earth art. Inspired by the life force that
generates the shape plants take over time as they grow,
Azuma creates environments for flora and fauna to
flourish into beautiful forms endowed by evolution,
yet clearly framed by his hand.
In his Shiki 1 (2011), for example, Azuma suspends
a pine tree in the center of a perfect cube framed in
6
metal. In effect he transplants the living organism
into an alien but habitable environment, held firmly
in place by wiring, almost as if it were leashed. In
decontextualizing the bonsai plant from the soil, its 6–7 Water and Bonsai • 2012
root systems are exposed and its true form, free of Sabina chinensis, java moss, water tank
any other visual distraction, is revealed. Its presence
in a gallery is akin to an ancient relic or religious totem
meant for worship appearing in a museum: an object create what he calls an “encapsulated environmental
completely removed from its intended context. experiment system.”
Extending the idea of controlled or closed systems The elaborate features of this system include light
for plants further, Azuma has also created entire to mimic the sun’s cycles, rain, and a small population
contained ecosystems, including Water and Bonsai (2012). of rice fish that swim among the underwater grasses.
In this work he submerges the plant into a water The work is self-contained, constituting a separate,
environment constructed to simulate natural light and tiny world within our own, for our contemplation.
air. The bonsai thrive in the water, growing as might As such, it can spark empathy for the plants, for the
free-floating seaweed. In this display, Azuma presents fragility of their environments and the systems they
us with an elaborate machine composed of engineering create. The artist thus raises the question: how far
and evolution; a novel, aesthetic bridge between the can we push the limits of a species to survive? This
natural and unnatural. becomes an especially interesting question when we
In describing another of his closed ecosystem consider the likelihood of mass migration of humans
works, Paludarium SUGURU (2012), Azuma writes, “…we as a consequence of climate change.
can appreciate a plant that is not capable of migrating
on its own regardless of climate, environment, Text by Julia Buntaine
countries or regions.” In response, Azuma creates
homes to protect the plants in his works, a reflection of
how we humans construct our own specialized places

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to live comfortably in extreme environments. In these
plant homes Azuma simulates wind, water, and air to
7
Bio Art Altering Nature, Naturally 28
 9

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8 Paludarium SUGURU • 2012
Juniperus sargentii, rock, water, glass, stainless steel, small pebbles
9 Shiki 1 • 2011
Sabina chinensis, stainless steel frame, wire
 53

Patricia Piccinini

52

“And if she could be engineered, would she actually 52 The Listener • 2013
be something people might choose to create?” Silicone, fiberglass, human hair, speaker cabinet
53 Doubting Thomas • 2008
So said Piccinini of her recent work The Skywhale (2013), Silicone, fiberglass, human hair, clothing, chair
a balloon in the form of a terrifically fecund aquatic
mammal. This question resonates through much of her
work, from drawing and sculpture to film. The artist beyond abstracted models. In The Listener (2013) we see
thrusts into our consciousness an uncomfortable a friendly monstrosity mounted on a speaker, a unified
combination of the plausible and grotesque: life forms sculpture and plinth with warm, welcoming eyes. Its
we might one day breed, engineer, or simply imagine, diminutive size works to amplify its non-threatening
which cross meaningful psychological thresholds. Our nature—like a tiny dog—and it somehow balances
uneasiness with exposed flesh, outward sexuality, the revulsion and comfort within its gaze. It appears both
endangerment of children, or large insects, for example, profound in its strangeness and akin to a cute consumer
creates distinct vulnerabilities that Piccinini readily product tailored to some tasteless preference. Still
exploits with cinematic finesse. But in these works more confounding to the senses is Doubting Thomas
she constructs more than friezes from horror films in (2008), referencing the biblical story and its depiction
her mind’s eye; she confronts us with a combination by Caravaggio in c. 1601–2, about the skeptical apostle
of what we fear and want and do not yet have a who needed to touch Christ’s wounds to believe
vocabulary to describe to create a vision of dystopia the Resurrection. The allusions to the original story
laden with hope and humanism. accumulate quickly: the stand-in for Christ appears to
Although she is keen to downplay it, Piccinini’s be a mutated or engineered blob of tissue—a product of
study of economics prior to her shift to fine art may technology, a contemporary god. And one cannot help
inform many of her creative decisions and critical but be fearful for the boy, Thomas, who is more curious
reflexes. She has described the subject as more akin than skeptical and seemingly in danger, threatened by
to an ideology, and it seems that it is the (albeit something he may have inadvertently created.

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unintended) consequences of such an ideology’s Eulogy (2011) presents a sad portrait of a species
manifestations that interest her most: the messy reality victimized by human industry and a clear indication

Bio Art Altering Nature, Naturally 58

 of the mindless exploitation that characterizes part
of the nature/culture relationship for the artist. The
work stands out for how literally it can be read: it is
about the unfortunate blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus)
brought to near extinction by the crabbing industry.
Its outlook is especially bleak given its lack of aesthetic
appeal. The fish is unlike, say, an adorable panda and
few would miss it. Eulogy spotlights the invisibility of
many of the consequences of human activity. Likewise,
Aloft (2010) presents an infestation of sorts, one that
feels repellent and brazenly unnatural, but can be
seen as a critical mirror. Humans routinely trammel
the habitats of other species; why should we expect
anything different from them?

56
54

54–55 Eulogy • 2011

Silicone, fiberglass, human hair, clothing
56–57 Aloft • 2010
Fiberglass, stainless steel cable, felted human
hair and wool, silicone, robotics, clothing

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 Uli Westphal
Westphal’s work highlights the absurdity of our a normal state being round, bright red, and weighing
assumptions about nature in general, and agriculture about 100 grams (3½ ounces). Modern agriculture
in particular. While evolution may be the most has suppressed mutation and polymorphism in the
elegant generator of form and function, it is, of tomato, but enough survivors have endured and offer
course, not a process of design as it doesn’t conform an abundance of taste, textures, and colors. The
to any overarching plan or ideals. Westphal begins tomato plant also traces the churn of history: it was
from this observation by embracing mutation and widely used in Mesoamerica, then likely brought to
polymorphism as essential mechanisms of nature Europe by Hernán Cortés in the 16th century, where it
that ensure variation and thus survival. These are grew readily in Mediterranean soil. Over the following
powerful forces that have been at work for billions of centuries it slowly transformed from ornamental plant
years, slowly yielding form through chance mutations to food ingredient. The tomato began its path to the
that confer a small survival advantage. But natural uniform variety we know today when an all-red and
variation has given way to standardization: humans simultaneously ripening variety discovered in the
have mechanized agriculture, resulting in roots, mid-19th century became dominant, at a time of wider
fruits, and vegetables that follow some arbitrary mechanization of agriculture and mass production.
notion of perfection. We encounter these selected but Now Lycopersicum is enjoying a renaissance as chefs
essentially artificial products in the supermarket, a and gardeners demand heirloom varieties and the lost
place that is perhaps our last and weakest connection hues, flavors, and feelings of what was once known as
point to nature. Westphal’s work confronts these the “golden apple.”
realities as it considers “the way humans perceive, Supernatural (2010–ongoing) amalgamates food
depict and transform the natural world.” packaging imagery that artificially depicts nature,
Mutatoes (2006–ongoing) presents images of and then presents it as a ridiculous diorama. These
some “survivors” of biological variation; examples of idealized, isolated, and multiplied forms produce an
1 the everyday tuber or fungi in forms unrecognizable uncomfortable effect, reminding us that the images
to most people. These varietal mutants were gathered we carry with us, the representations of the natural
from farmers’ markets in Berlin and photographed world we might claim to value and protect, may in
with care. The resulting imagery gives the subjects a fact be cynical lies. And how might this influence
focus and drama normally reserved for sculpture, or our understanding of the environment? Package
perhaps a luxury consumer product. The effect is a designers provide a balm for our conscience, inviting
show of respect, almost worshipful, for these products us to think of happy cows and well-proportioned
of the earth that would be deemed unfit for sale in most chickens on clean, lush grass, instead of the darker
supermarkets. The vividly colored and curvilinear reality. The way in which we regard nature is also the
forms recall the energy and idiosyncratic style of subject of Chimaerama (2004–ongoing), another
abstract expressionism, but the orderly arrangement meditation on distortion. For this work the artist
into grids and color spectrums gives the work a highly gathered one hundred Victorian animal illustrations
polished, almost industrial, quality. This blending that he cut into three segments and positioned so that
of styles embodies the internal contradictions of each head fits onto each body and each body onto each
contemporary agriculture, creating a work of global tail. The individual segments can be recombined, by
and unsustainable design. means of three switches, into a million new creatures.
A logical extension of Westphal’s Mutatoes project
is Lycopersicum (2014), which takes its title from
the Latin name for the tomato species. This work is

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an homage to the spectacular variety this plant can 1 Mutatoes • 2006–ongoing
achieve; a plant which suffers from the expectation of Digital photographs

Bio Art Redefining Life 83

 2 4

2 Lycopersicum III (part of the Cultivar Series) • 2014

Photograph mounted on 3 millimeters (1⁄8 inches) aluminum-dibond,
sealed under 2 millimeters (1⁄12 inches) acrylic glass
3 Current Version (Chimaerama #9) • 2014
HTML/jQuery, 3 channel interactive video loop

Copyright Material for Reference Only 3 4–6 Netto, Aldi, and Albertsons dioramas from Supernatural • 2010–ongoing
Wood, fluorescent lights, glass, aluminum, pigment ink on back-lit film
 Yves Gellie
Gellie worked as a photojournalist for more than
twenty years, capturing scenes of community, conflict,
and warmth. He spent much time in the developing
world, documenting the unfolding human dramas of
events like war in Somalia and cocaine production
in Columbia. His more recent focus has been to
blend documentary and contemporary art. He often
manages to capture ordinary settings like classrooms,
community baths, or factory floors and imbue them
with a sense of the eternal: that we are looking at
arrangements of people, practices, and contexts
that have been repeating for millennia. In this sense,
Gellie literally frames an abstract frame, and presents
it to us with impeccable technical execution. The
results are poetic and engaging. Other works by the
artist, however, take on a thought-provoking new
dimension when they incorporate the unfamiliar, 7
as his subjects communicate a reality that is ordinary
but sharply unsettling. 7–8 Deer Stalking • 2011
This thread of the uncanny emerges in the artist’s Lambda prints
series Deer Stalking (2011), which lavishly documents
hunting parties on private estates in the north of
Scotland, where landlords maintain thousands already well documented how the rise of automation in
of hectares of land to stalk deer. In total, Gellie our era, particularly of learning machines, is upending
captured fifteen tableaux vivants depicting groups our expectations about working life. In this series
in various stages of the hunt, in scenes that echo we are confronted with the startling verisimilitude of
the compositions of artworks found on the walls of new robotic technology, and its logical implications
nearby castles. In the midst of virginal landscapes and for how we might replace not only workers, but also
reposing, dignified figures, the violence of the hunt perhaps lovers and friends. If we can design a superior
seems, remarkably, part of the tranquility, as innate as being, why wouldn’t we want its companionship?
it is inevitable. Could it be etched in human nature that Doesn’t this serve our natural human selfishness to
we would only so lovingly preserve tracts of land as its highest degree, or logical conclusion? The robots
long as we could exploit them as grounds for a bloody may signal humanity’s hubris, its newest savior, or
game? But the figures betray neither malice nor glee perhaps its replacement. Gellie captures the exciting
at their labor; they seem rather to be enacting a ritual, yet uncomfortable reality these beings represent when
and achieving blessed peace after considerable effort. he says: “We are as fascinated as we are afraid.” 8
Suggestions about human nature and the
emergent unnatural are amplified in the series Human
Version (2007–9), for which the photographer traveled
worldwide to capture images of laboratories working
on humanoid robots. Here the ordinary mingles with
the profound: bundles of cable, workstations in

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disarray, and mundane decor surround experiments
in making what might be the future of humanity. It is

Bio Art Redefining Life 86

 9 10

9–10 Human Version • 2007–9

Lambda prints

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 30

Špela Petrič

29

The works of Petrič highlight the dimensions of In this work, rats acted as surrogates for human
human hubris and challenge conventional processes subjects, and were exposed to luminosity levels
of truth-seeking, problem-solving, and relating to dictated by sensors carried by human subjects going
nature. The artist’s practice is rooted in training as a about their everyday lives. The result was displacement
scientist, having completed a PhD in Biochemistry of circadian rhythms in the closely observed rats, and
in addition to her studies in philosophy and art their subsequent turn toward stimulants and altered
history. Petrič, therefore, draws on her familiarity with social behavior. But the artist explains that this work
laboratory protocols and the realities of contemporary was not about a romantic longing for a more “natural”
scientific practice, with its attendant pressures to existence. On the contrary, it highlights the way that
publish or profit, as part of the wider processes of our organic adaptations are in “jetlag” to our rapid
knowledge building. The results are works that are social advances, but are an evolutionary step in the
both highly contextual and critical, executed with journey to the “next version of human.”
rigor legible to scientists but colored by a personal PSX Consultancy (2014) proposes designs for
stance complicated by a simultaneous internalization plant sex toys and a service of sex therapy for silent,
of artistic and scientific impulses. The artist pokes flowering species. It is a absurdist indictment of many
fun at our cult of technology and impotent attempts of the working assumptions of scientists, artists, and
to save nature—she proposes sex toys for plants and designers regarding how we think “for” other species
reveals the absurd disguises worn in our human quest and believe we are equipped to know what they “want.”
to conquer the last enclaves of undisturbed biology The humor is compounded by the project’s context as
in the seas, by presenting aquaculture as an analogue a product of the BIO 50 Design Biennial of Ljubljana;
for colonialism. As the artist says: “Overcoming the collaborative team, which included Pei-Ying
anthropocentrism is the ultimate exercise in futility, Lin, Dimitros Stamatis, and Jasmina Weiss were
but a fruitful generator of concepts that challenge our continually asked, in earnest, whether their concept
Western worldview.” could be applied to save endangered species.
At first reading, Solar Displacement (2013) appears Petrič explores the paradox of the utilitarian object
to illuminate the Faustian bargain that contemporary for the non-human further in the project Naval Gazing
life imposes on people through pressure to stay awake, (2014), a collaboration between the artist and the
polite, and productive outside of our circadian rhythms. Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ).

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The artist describes this conflict as a “continuous For this work, a windmill-like structure was designed
negotiation” between cultural norms and biology. for release into the North Sea; the tetrahedron shape

Bio Art Redefining Life 102

 of its appendages intended to catch wind and propel
it in a gentle yet unpredictable path. Eventually, the
work is intended to accumulate growth of sea plants,
bivalves, and whatever else decides to make it home,
at which point the weight of new organisms will sink
it. The work is rich in its associations with Dutch naval
history, colonialism, and the use of windmills to “make”
land by creating polders. In the context of a research
institute investigating aquaculture (the cultivation
of the sea) the project helps pose the question: “Can
the human fathom an investment into structures and
processes which are non-utilitarian for the human?”

32

29 Solar Displacement • 2013

Wood, plexi glass, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, LED lights,
thermal cameras, piezo sensors, Rattus norvegicus,
Android phone application
30–31 PSX Consultancy • 2014
In collaboration with Pei-Ying Lin, Dimitros Stamatis,
and Jasmina Weiss
3D prints, glass, digital prints, Dianthus caryophyllus,
Sarracenia purpurea, Curcuma alismatifolia, Abutilon spp.,
Cyclamen spp., Canna spp.
32 Naval Gazing • 2014
In collaboration with the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ)
and funded by the Bio Art and Design award of ZonMW, the Netherlands
Organisation for Health Research and Development
Aluminum, PVC plastic, nets, Fucus vesiculosus, Ulva lactuca,
other marine organisms

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 Bio Visualizations
California Academy of Sciences; Lewis Lab
at Northeastern University; Tom Deerinck

Images have long served to illuminate concepts diatoms; organisms that when arranged together
and exercise our imaginations, particularly bear a likeness to both stained-glass windows and
when they bring to light invisibly small scales or diagrams of microprocessors.
incomprehensible distances. Visualizations adjust On a still smaller scale, that of micrometers
perspective and, much like figurative language, (one millionth of a meter), visualization now allows
highlight similarities or patterns where none had us to see legions of bacteria spawned in the crevices
seemed to exist, and form bridges of meaning. of a single grain of sand: Life on a Grain of Sand. The
Fields of study from astronomy to urban planning source of these images was a grain collected on a
have long benefited from the use of visualization beach near Boston in 2009 by researchers
from
techniques, but it is biology in particular that has the Lewis Lab at Northeastern University. The
enjoyed many recent advances making images both dramatic, labyrinthine connections of biofilm
accurate and affordable to make. among them appear as threads, tangled together
Often these images of biology have unmistakable in vibrant, overlapping layers. These images may
aesthetic qualities: contrast, variation, intricacy, help emphasize the stubborn and robust nature of
and fractal-like repetition, as in the photographs of microbial life, the study of which continually reveals
plants by Karl Blossfeldt published in 1929, or the wider boundaries to the concept of habitability.
X-ray crystallography of ribosomes by researchers Also at a cellular scale are the visualizations
at the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS), of Tom Deerinck, which were made possible with
or the more recent video renderings of cellular the help of advanced microscopy. In HeLa Cells
processes by Drew Berry. In these cases and several (2010) we see cancerous human cells stained to
others, visual experience helps us to understand reveal the distribution of microtubules (cyan), and
the biology as sets of systems and structures, cellular DNA (red). These cells exhibit the unique
interrelated and in motion. property of immortality: under the right conditions
The tradition of arranging microscopic life in they divide indefinitely, and have been cultured
interesting or visually pleasing ways stretches back continuously since they were harvested in 1951
to the earliest forms of cellular magnification, which from a cancer patient named Henrietta Lacks.
became a hobby for educated tinkerers in Victorian The cells have proven extraordinarily useful for
England. Arrangements of diatoms (a group of algae) medical research. As of 2009, over 60,000 scientific
for aesthetic effect, for example, were particularly articles had been published relating to research
popular and a natural extension of serious research carried out on them. The First Synthetic Life Form
and categorization of the organisms, which were (2010) is another image by Deerinck showing the
stained and preserved together depending on their product of a team lead by J. Craig Venter. The
origin or form. A. L. Brigger was a notable diatom image is of a human-designed and computer-
scientist who made such arrangements. He served manufactured microbe; its DNA is based on that 30
as a Research Associate at the California Academy of Mycoplasma mycoides but pared down to its bare
of Sciences, and in 1977 he gifted his collections essentials to survive and replicate. According to
of marine slides to the Academy, which continues Venter, this is the first organism to have “a computer
to study them to this day. Brigger’s arrangements as its parents.”

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often have radial symmetry, reflecting the form
of some of the most intricate, circular-shaped
30 A. L. Brigger
Diatoms arranged on a microscope slide • 1952
Bio Art Visualizing Scale and Scope 148 Diatoms collected in Russia
 36

31 32

33 34

31–34 Anthony D’Onofrio, William H. Fowle, Eric J. Stewart,

Kim Lewis (Lewis Lab at Northeastern University)
Life on a Grain of Sand • 2009
Collected from intertidal sediment on a beach near Boston
Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM)
35 Tom Deerinck
The First Synthetic Life Form • 2010
Developed by J. Craig Venter
Transmission electron microscopy
36 Tom Deerinck
HeLa Cells • 2010
Multi-photon fluorescence microscopy

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35
 1 1

Jon McCormack
The focus of McCormack’s work is the creation The underlying narrative of Fifty Sisters
and testing of digital models that simulate superbly matches the combination of visual
morphogenesis, or the processes by which elements used in the works. Oil and coal began
living things take shape, as well as ecological as plants millions of years ago and use of them
phenomena such as interdependences and is now rapidly altering the climate, a process
feedback-loops. Since the 1990s his work has accelerated by the corporate actors represented
tracked alongside, and indeed influenced, the in the composition. The title of the work plays
development of software modeling of this kind, on “seven sisters,” a term used to describe the
used to enhance research by yielding spectacular cartel of firms that dominated international oil
visualizations and sound experiences, often production and distribution for decades. The
with a significant temporal dimension. In abstraction of these corporate identities using
blending aesthetic output with formal research plant morphogenesis has a pleasant, if dark,
in measuring, understanding, and replicating irony—an impression enhanced by the fact that
biological phenomena, McCormack’s work the images are generated by models run on
recalls the influential, exhaustive On Growth And computers, which are themselves produced with
Form (1917) by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, and powered by fossil fuels.
as well as the work of contemporaries such as In Eden (2004), the artist created a model to
Tom Deerinck (microscopy, see pages 148–51) replicate evolutionary selection, and used this
and Drew Berry (animated molecular machinery, as the basis of a dynamic gallery experience
see pages 146–47). expressed in sound and light. The installation
The alluring images of Fifty Sisters begins with a population of virtual organisms
(2012) were achieved with a combination of represented on the walls of the gallery, each
modeling tools developed by McCormack over with different genetic information and sound-
the past two decades: from discrete, string making behavior that can change and mutate
rewriting L-systems in the 1990s to his Cellular across generations. The feedback loop depends
Developments Model (CDM) today. CDM goes on visitor behavior: where someone stands and
further than earlier software by incorporating for how long is detected and used to generate
continuous changes in stimuli-rich environments “food” for the artificial environment, supplying
and recycling system components in a nearby virtual organisms with nutrients and
hierarchy. In other words, the model now more survival advantage. The longer a visitor stands to
accurately replicates complex interrelations hear the sound of that organism, the more food
and adaptability that characterize the actual will be created for it. Over time the installation’s
ecology outside your window. Such complexity modeled organisms “evolve” toward producing
resists neat description but is adaptive to visual sounds that people will stay to hear.
experience, as shown by the flower-like forms
that McCormack creates, with all their intricacy
and variety, as vividly colored as the products
of natural selection. But these forms are also
supremely artificial, almost machine-like in their
aesthetic perfection. This contrast is amplified
by the integration of oil company logos as
starting components of the morphological
1–4 Fifty Sisters • 2012

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system, distorted by the evolutionary modeling Evolved digital images of plants
yet still recognizable in the finished works. derived from oil company logos

Bio Art Experimental Identities and Media 185

 2

5 Eden • 2004
Installation based on software that
creates an interactive, self-generating,
artificial ecosystem
4

Copyright Material for Reference Only 5

 Angelo
Vermeulen

Vermeulen is an artist and biologist with a

wide range of expertise accumulated over the
course of substantial academic and creative
careers. As a trained scientist currently working
on his second PhD, Vermeulen is as at ease
collaborating with practicing scientists as he
is constructing multimedia installations in
galleries and building communities through
hands-on activity and gaming. The artist’s work
confronts ambitious questions such as: “How
do we define the relationships between the
natural and the artificial and how and when
can they interface? Is it possible to set up a
45
measurable, evolutionary system in a gallery
setting? Is the nature of digital art media and its
production truly immaterial?” Vermeulen takes
on these subjects with the resourcefulness and depending on the wishes and culture of the local
curiosity of a polymath, and has a distinctive community. Biomodd was first erected in the
ability to explain his motivations with clarity: to United States in 2007 and has since been created
demonstrate the “unity of reason and intuition.” in the Philippines, Slovenia, New Zealand,
The ongoing work Biomodd (2007–) has Belgium, the Netherlands, and Chile, with plans 46

existed at different times and places as a “living to build another in the United Kingdom. The
cybersculpture” of computer systems entwined artist has thus become a community architect,
with an ecosystem. The computers are a server an initiator of interactions and new perceptions
for a multiplayer game, and as more participants among those willing to engage.
join the virtual community to play, so the Vermeulen’s 2005 collaboration with Luc De
hardware components become warmer, fueling Meester, Blue Shift [LOG.1], essentially hacks
the surrounding plants, which include algae. the evolutionary mechanism of selection for 45 Biomodd [ATH1] • 2008
Their metabolism, in turn, has a cooling effect on the purposes of a gallery experiment. Lights In collaboration with volunteers and students
the hardware. This interdependency is echoed emitting the color yellow are set above tanks Reused computer parts, peripherals and monitors, arcade
of water fleas—a species that has evolved to game seats, audio mixing table, speakers, plants, algae
throughout the realization of the project: in the
culture, gold fish, aquariums, lighting, air and water
community of artists, scientists, and designers swim up toward yellow light but then to dart pumps, tubing, metal casing, Plexiglass
who build the Biomodd each time, among the downward to avoid predators when it detects 46–47 Biomodd [LBA2] • 2009
gamers who directly participate in the game, and blue light from above. The artists have reversed In collaboration with volunteers and students
in the physical components of the installation, this system for the water fleas: exposing them Reused computer parts, peripherals and monitors, plants,
to predators if they swim away from a blue algae culture, goldfish, aquaponics system, aquariums,
including microprocessors and the chloroplasts
lighting, air and water pumps, tubing, coconut wood,
(organs within plant cells which conduct light from above, which for this installation was woodcarving, glass panels
photosynthesis). Further, each installation of triggered by the presence of gallery viewers.

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Biomodd is not a stand-alone work but rather The result is a weeding out of the water fleas 47

part of a series that varies in each location with the “normal” survival response and the

Bio Art Experimental Identities and Media 212

 beginning of a population of mutants adapted
to a new, designed environment.
Corrupted C#n#m# (2009) is an exploration
into the material quality of media and its
potential to be altered by biological processes.
The work challenges the often-made assumption
that media’s existence and production are
largely immaterial. By growing bacteria and
mold on data-containing media like computer
hard drives, each containing digital files that
had been converted from VHS tape, the goal
was to subsequently recover visual information
with glitches that could be said to have been
authored by these biological processes. The title
of the work includes a corruption of the word
“cinema,” with its vowels replaced by hashtags,
a sort of transcription error that can happen
in data sets. In a later iteration of the work
(Entomograph), Vermeulen, in collaboration with
silversmith Walter Bresseleers, captured and
translated the behaviors of Madagascar hissing
cockroaches to create disruptions in video data.

48

50

48 Blue Shift [LOG. 1] • 2005

In collaboration with Luc De Meester
Industrial storage rack, aquariums, PVC spacers and false
bottoms, water filtration pumps, aeration pumps, tubing,
yellow and blue lighting system, motion detection sensor,
logic module, CCTV system, Daphnia culture, goldfish
49 Corrupted C#n#m# • 2009
Reused computer equipment, hard drives, monitors,
51 lighting, projector, DIY laboratory equipment, aquariums,
mold cultures, plants, meal worms, crickets, goldfish,
foldable tables, chairs, wall painting
50–51 Entomograph from Corrupted C#n#m# • 2010

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In collaboration with Walter Bresseleers
Metal trestle supports, glass and plywood panels,
terrarium, cockroaches, laptops, hard drives, electronics,
49 audio equipment, CCTV camera, DVD player, television
monitors, drawings