are artists and engineers inventing the culture of tomorrow?
TRANSCRIPT
Futures 48 (2013) 55–64
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Futures
jou r nal h o mep ag e: w ww .e lsev ier . co m / loc ate / fu tu r es
Are artists and engineers inventing the culture of tomorrow?
Ursula Damm *, Bernhard Hopfengartner, Dominik Niopek, Philipp Bayer
Department of Media Studies, Bauhaus University Weimar, Marienstr. 5, D-99423 Weimar, Germany
A R T I C L E I N F O
Article history:
Available online 19 March 2013
A B S T R A C T
The human body represents the ultimate entity through which the world is shaped and
interpreted. These days, advances in the field of biotechnology redefine the borders
between human beings and their environment; contemporary evolutionary patterns
coincide with a technology that have developed detached from any cultural discourse.
From an artistic point of view, it is unfortunate that there is little possibility to be
responsibly involved in the discourse concerning biotechnology and culture. In fact, this
matter concerns our society and its various agents. No longer can it remain solely the realm
of engineers whose research, while largely ignoring the broader social ramifications of
biotechnology, exerts increasing influence on our daily lives.
Given this cultural backdrop, it is not surprising that several artists and designers have
critically positioned themselves within the fields of biotechnology and genetic engineer-
ing; thus in the late 1980s, a new term, Bioart, evolved: shaped by a complex technology
and its appropriation by artists, Bioart engages and examines genetic engineering and its
impact on the contemporary cultural environment.
This article reflects on these developments and questions the possibility of an artistic
practice related to synthetic biology. It bases itself on a project realized by a group of
students in the fields of media art and genetic engineering from the Bauhaus University
Weimar and the University of Heidelberg called Super Cell, presented at the iGEM
competition 2010 at MIT. Furthermore, it draws upon and investigates potentialities for a
social and cultural involvement of practitioners on an interdisciplinary level.
� 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction: Are engineers inventing the culture of tomorrow?
As an artist, my body represents the ultimate entity through which my surrounding environment is perceived, processed,and evaluated. It is the territory which hosts crucial confrontations and leads to my aesthetic decision making. These days,biotechnologies redefine the borders of my body. Even the possibilities of what I can or might become are subject to mattersof technology that have developed entirely void of any artistic discourse.
From an artistic point of view, it is rather unsatisfactory that this exclusion takes place and that there is no possibility tobe responsibly involved in this process. In fact, this matter concerns every citizen, as daily life is increasingly shaped andframed by engineers who fail to consider broader cultural questions in their production process.
In this environment, is it not surprising that many artists have been engaged with the fields of biotechnology and geneticengineering. Since the late 1980s, artwork has been conceived and developed under the term ‘‘Bioart,’’ which on the one handhas been shaped by the habit of appropriating a complex technology, and on the other hand, has kept a critical distance from
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 15121263934.
E-mail address: [email protected] (U. Damm).
0016-3287/$ – see front matter � 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2013.02.007
U. Damm et al. / Futures 48 (2013) 55–6456
genetic engineering. For artists like Kac [1] or the Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), both provocation and the social discourserevolving around genetic engineering make up the core of their artistic concepts and intentions.
While in the first years of this development, the understanding of genetic engineering as ‘the code of life’ was used as thesubject matter of artistic interpretations (the works ‘‘Genesis’’ by Kac, or Davis ‘‘Microvenus’’ come to mind). Threads ofresearch have developed at the Royal College of Art in London, conducted by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. Categorized ascritical design and design for debate, they put future products based on biotechnology at the core of artistic investigations.While in Davis’ case, genetic technology was considered a one-dimensional cultural expression due to its disciplinaryconstraints and thus needed artistic input (Microvenus), Ginsberg and King developed products that related to artefactsbased on synthetic biology in order to simulate social interactions.
However, in an artistic practice, it seemed inappropriate to generate arguments based exclusively on simulations as it hasbeen carried out for instance, by Kac in his work ‘‘GFP Bunny’’ [2]. Often in classical art practices (such as sculpture orinstallation art), the act of creating with physical material constitutes the process through which a conceptual examinationoccurs. In the case of our investigation with synthetic biology, this was not any different. In cooperation with the Universityof Heidelberg, students from the media art and design study program (Bauhaus University Weimar) worked together withstudents from the department of systems biology (Prof. Eils, University of Heidelberg) for an entire semester, and developeda collaborative project using their two distinct spheres of knowledge. The project was presented at the 2010 iGEMcompetition at MIT in Boston.
The question arises of how this kind of collaboration influences the art and science worlds respectively. There are manyarticles that look into the specificities of bio art and genetic art and analyze their discourses. However, the question ofwhether such projects can have an effect on the scientific community remains unconsidered. Using our project, Super Cell, aswell as other design presentations in the iGEM competition as examples, we will analyze the questions formulated by thejudges and discuss if a model for future collaboration between artists and scientists is developing. If so, is it a model thatcould potentially serve as a viable solution to the cultural challenges related to synthetic biology?
2. Genetic engineering through the lens of art in retrospect
Artists have been working with technologically manipulated organisms since the late 1980s. This genre, called Biotech Art,
Transgenic Art, or Genetic Art [3] has been seeking a socially relevant discourse via biotechnologies. At first, this art movementgradually acquired an understanding of the methods of codification in nature and exposed and argued about how geneticallymodified organisms are integrated into our daily life. Bio Art emerged almost exclusively from scientific laboratories becausetheir generation required that they operate with the methods and infrastructures of genetic engineering. In the meantime,forms of cooperation for such transdisciplinary interactions have been established. For instance, at SymbioticA, a researchlaboratory at the University of Western Australia, they enable artists to learn practices of Wet Biology within their biologydepartment and realize their Bio Art projects [4]. What is representative of this art genre, is that artists are initiating contactwith scientists in order to realize their projects. However, it seems that this relationship has become inverted for quite sometime now, as shown in the example of the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM), and theincreasing amount of iGEM Teams competing against each other, emphasizing collaboration between scientists and artists.In 2009, a team from Cambridge that included designers won the competition. In the same year, the team Art ScienceBangalore was awarded the Best Presentation Award. Based on the experience of the Weimar-Heidelberg Arts Team, acollaboration between artists, designers and synthetic biologists [5], this article pursues the question of if and how thedifferent perspectives and interests from the art and sciences communities can be integrated within one collaboration.
2.1. Bio art
Artists initially sought contact with research institutions because of their interest in the development of biotechnologies.Through informal contact with scientists, they engaged with technological innovations and discoveries in the field of biologyand created new strategies of appropriation. The first examples of collaboration between art and biology go back to the late1980s and concern the issue of the codification of DNA. Genetic Art drew from computer code, an advanced method ofexpression in new media art during the early 1970s [6]. However, artists were confronted with a code that was not written byengineers but rather was inside the process of evolution. Thus a series of works created at the beginning of the Genetic Artmovement were artificially expanding the natural DNA-code.
2.1.1. Lost upon each other: DNA code and language
Davis was one of the first practitioners of the Genetic Art movement. In 1986, he realized the work Microvenus, an Artistic
Molecule [7,8],1 in cooperation with Dana Boy from the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the Harvard
1 Trained as a sculptor, Joe Davis represents an interesting hybrid figure between art and science. In the late 1980s he swapped his studio place with a
workbench in a biology laboratory. The way towards a research institution was not an easy one however: ‘‘Walked into the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Center for Advanced Visual Studies uninvited in 1982. Secretary called the cops. Forty-five minutes later, Davis walked out with an appointment
as a research fellow’’ [9]. Eight years later, Davis is officially a research affiliate in the laboratory of Alexander Rich, a structural biologist at MIT.
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Medical School and Jon Beckwith from the Hatch Echol’s Lab at the University of California at Berkeley. Microvenus wasconsidered a living artwork and it used one of the most robust and long-lasting information carriers, the DNA codon. Theartificial molecule was meant to deliver a message that NASA forgot to transmit in its contact experiments withextraterrestrial civilizations [10]. Since 1972, the NASA equipped interstellar spacecrafts are decorated with gold-anodized aluminium plaques on which human beings are represented through the effigy of a man and a woman.However, as Davis emphasized, the human being effigy on the plaques is incomplete. The female genitals are missing.Therefore he wanted to compensate for this omission by conveying the genitals of a woman as a graphical rune. In thesearch for a code, he chose the language of the living, because neither computer code, nor the human language, norMorse code, appeared to him as universal as the genetic code would be. It is in this context that the Microvenus DNA wasfirst extracted at the Harvard Medical School (Jon Beckwith Lab) and subsequently cleaned at the University ofCalifornia in Berkeley (Hatch Echols Lab). With the aid of plasmid contained in the Microvenus DNA, the transformationof bacterial cells was conducted at the laboratory of Jon Beckwith. A few years later, in 1990, the transformation(cloning into bacteria) and the sequencing of Microvenus DNA were carried out again at MIT (Alex Rich Lab) and in 2000at the Humboldt University – Charite Hospital Laboratories in Berlin. The importance of Microvenus is not solely basedon the fact that it is the first artistic work whose material is made up of artificially modified genetic code. Davissimultaneously developed a method to store linguistic and visual information on DNA code without interfering andcompromising with areas that are responsible for the coding of DNA itself. Davis used code in order to enablecommunication – specifically with extraterrestrials – by sending his message into outer space as both bacteria andgenetic code converted into radio waves.
Perhaps aliens may be capable of understanding and interpreting the genetic code. However, many works by bio-artistspoint to the contrary, asserting the lack of an explicit correlation between genetic code and human language For instance, inher piece, ‘‘Proteic Portrait,’’ the artist, de Menezes writes the letters of her name after the description of twenty differentamino acids consisting of proteins [11]. In doing so, she creates an artificial protein, the sculptural form of which is onlyvisible through computer stimulation. In his work ‘‘Genesis,’’ Kac constructs an artificial yet naturally non-existent gene thatdepicts a translation from a biblical quote. ‘‘This gene was created by translating a sentence from the biblical book of Genesisinto Morse Code, and converting the Morse Code into DNA base pairs according to a chosen allocation’’ [12]. The biblicalquote says: ‘‘Let man have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing thatmoves upon the earth.’’ Kac points out the fragile relationship between humans and nature. What happens if he lets thebiblical quote be so fragile as the DNA of a bacterium under UV-light? Visitors of a museum as well as those of an ad hocwebsite, can activate the switch of the lamp, therefore participating in the ‘‘destruction’’ of the message. At the end of theexhibition, the DNA code of the bacterium will be read, and the text, altered. Kac sees in Genesis a work that ‘‘explores thenotion that biological processes are now literate and programmable, as well as capable of storing and processing data in waysnot unlike digital computers’’ [12].
It becomes clear in both the works of de Menezes and Kac, that language, if considered as a communication code forhuman beings, functions differently than the code of organic nature. For this reason, their works are not about interferingwith the ability of DNA to generate specific properties in an organism. Both artists work with modified proteins, or bacteria,with the aim to convert human language into the ‘‘biological language’’ of the genetic. As a result, both languages aresuffering. In Kac’s case, the text is incomprehensible, while in de Menezes’ work, a protein develops whose biologicalproperties cannot be checked. Finally, both works demonstrate an understanding of the problems that occurred with thebiological coding, though they are unreadable in a different context. These works state the misunderstanding of knowledgewithin the discipline. Even though DNA has been discovered as the language of nature, and the human genome deciphered,neither the syntax nor the semantics of the DNA are controllable.
In ‘‘Latent Figure Protocol’’ [13] Vanouse wanted to focus on this dilemma. Instead of applying gel-electrophoresis asa method of analysis, he produced images and patterns (graphical symbols) such as skull and crossbones. In Suspect
Inversion Centre, he carried out this critique to the extreme, by producing master copies of Simpson’s DNA from his owngenetic material, thereby questioning the value of the methods of analysis for DNA identification [14]. He succeeded byneglecting the standardization of genetic analysis processed in laboratories, and used exactly the same method for hispurposes. Nevertheless, and contrary to what he sought to do, he was unable to produce a qualified statement about thevalue of the genetic techniques used to identify an individual (or of genetic technology in general) with such deliberatemanipulations. By breaking down the specific techniques used in DNA-finger-printing, Vanouse clearly shows howvulnerable this process is to falsification. That the method for DNA identification was implemented anyway, causesVanouse’s critique of the power and the position of technology in social discourse to fail.
2.1.2. Guerrilla appropriations of genetic technology
In the early 1990s, several artists made a public appearance dealing with the consequences of genetic technology onecological, social, and economic structures. Pioneers of those artistic investigations are the Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), acollective of five artists who describe themselves as ‘‘tactical media practitioners’’ [15]. CAE attempts to inform thepublic about new innovations in technology and their implementation into our daily lives by operating simple and easyto carry bio-laboratories whose analyses are offered as services (for instance in the project GEN Terra [16]). The socio-political relevance of these projects was made clear, as well as the ethical implications which were brought into thebroader discussion. The methods of the Critical Art Ensemble are thereby the interpretation of the technology itself,
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in order to form a counterweight to industry and to influence from the public. The CAE Lab was founded at thebeginning of a series of Do-it-Yourself (DIY) Bio Laboratories that were established by laypersons and becameincreasingly popular. Such DIY-Labs serve to re-appropriate basic techniques from bioengineering that could bemonopolized by corporate groups. This effort to establish a real counterpart to scientific laboratories, shouldnevertheless be questioned, even though these laboratories may exist explicitly as explanatory and politicalinstruments.
The basic problem for artists as well as laypersons dealing with new technologies is the lack of access to adequatelaboratories. It was for this reason that, in 2000, the cell biologist Miranda Grounds, the neuroscientist Stuart Bund, andthe artist Catts, established the transdisciplinary research centre SymbioticA – The Art and Science CollaborativeResearch Laboratory at the University of Western Australia, Perth [4]. SymbioticA describes itself as a collaborativeresearch laboratory for art and science with its base in the Institute for Anatomy and Human Biology. SymbioticA istherefore more than a simple hobby or DIY-laboratory. It is a research laboratory, in which long-term collaborationsbetween artists and genetic technologists are possible. Zurr and Catts considered the possibility of green design evenbefore the creation of SymbioticA, in their 1996 Tissue Culture and Art Project (TC&A). They produced design proposalsfor sustainable waste reduction products. Furthermore, they claimed that, ‘‘the exploitation of living systems by variousaspects of biotechnology ‘‘should’’ be counteracted, especially in a social context of the post-capitalist forces that try todetermine the use of living systems’’ [17]. Such a project was realized in 2004 with Victimless Leather, which bredleather from a Petri dish rather than animals [18]. To this end, a bioreactor in the form of an organ perfusion pump wasinstalled in an exhibition context. In this reactor, clusters of cells were cultured from undying cell lines. When thepolymer degraded an integrated jacket appeared. The project plays on the possibilities of genetic technology andsynthetic biology, that is to breed and let products and organs grow. According to Catts and Zurr, our relationship withanimals could change fundamentally. This is also shown in another example from the Tissue Culture and Art Project:Disembodied Cuisine which presents frogs’ legs as miniature steaks farmed from a cell line of a tadpole (Xenopus laevis).This project is exhibited in the form of a hard to identify, small cluster of cells, on a plate of a tray table. The tissue mayleave the laboratory, but cannot reach the social recycling system because both Victimless Leather and Disembodied
Cuisine are thought as ‘‘dysfunctional mythological objects’’ [19]. ‘‘Calling themselves conceptual artists who createworking prototypes, they say their aim is to bring to the forefront the philosophical implications of making livingorganisms tools for our own purposes’’ [20].
The exhibited objects of the Tissue Culture and Art Project attempt to bring the laboratory culture of Life-Sciencetechnology into the public sphere, while the impact of the artefacts stagnate in the artistic genre of the ‘‘nature morte’’.It is arguable as to whether the sarcastic provocation – Genetic Art as Cynical Design [21] – succeeds in opening upconversation or not. In fact, the works take little consideration of the well-established discourse on the cultural risks ofnew technologies, as has been explored by Haraway. In her work, Haraway uses the example of an interspeciesrelationship between her and her dog, to illustrate how culture deeply influences our relationship to life and production[22]. The relationship between genetic determinism and culture is a subject of interest in contemporary genetictechnology. However, it is important to note that the aforementioned works of art lack a clear aesthetic value as wecannot recognize aesthetic differences between laboratory equipment and the works themselves. Not only are theproducts reduced to their essence, – flesh, leather, organs – but the elements of a traditional gentech laboratory becomeapparent in the installations as well. Thus, the products find themselves in a peculiar position, between life and death,as they cannot survive outside the laboratory.
2.1.3. A critical design approach to synthetic biology
Another field that examines biotechnological influences has been framed by Critical Design. Critical Design usesspeculative design proposals to challenge the restrictive preconceptions, prejudices and facts about the role of products inour daily life [23]. This approach departs from the assumption that the product culture of a society always stands in relationto its values, and that it therefore represents and influences those same values. Products can thus be affirmative andconfirm existing values [24]. On the contrary, Critical Design seeks provocation by researching the ways in which newproducts are changing our daily lives. Following this method, Kerridge cultures wedding rings from the bones cells of histhen partner for his project Bio Jewellery, 2005. His intention was to broaden the audience for issues concerningbiotechnology by drawing attention to the field’s aesthetical and emotional potential. In his project Pigeon D’Or [25],designer van Balen suggests the modification of organisms in the intestinal tract of city pigeons such that their excretionsadopt soap-like features. Van Balen develops two devices to use the cleaning properties of the excrement in the cityscape.The first is a kind of dovecote for private housings that can be put on the windows, and another as a fixture for parked cars toclean the windshields. Van Balen aligns his proposed modification with the tradition of pigeon breeding, which has been,for a long time, optimizing animals for certain purposes including beauty, competition, race, sending messages, andespionage.
The projects presented above have garnered public attention at festivals, conferences and in the context of scienceexhibitions. But do those projects manage to engage a discourse with scientists? Furthermore, do such projects takeeffect not only in the cultural sphere, but also within scientific practices (and not through a market in tediousfeedback)? This question can be pursued through an examination of contributions of art and design projects to the iGEMcompetition.
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3. Super Cell – a project for the iGEM competition at MIT
3.1. The International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM)
Since 2004, this competition organized at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston is addressed toundergraduate synthetic biology student teams from across the world.2 The main objective of the competition is to designexchangeable biological systems with accurately defined functions and properties from standardized, exchangeable geneticbricks, in a three-month period. These biological bricks (Biobricks) are managed by the Registry of Standard Biological Partsat MIT [26]. The participating teams have access to all the registered Biobricks and can use them for the realization of theirprojects. Furthermore, the teams are asked to design new bricks and to add them to the registry. Hence, the registry grows byhundreds Biobricks each year. While iGEM offers a unique, ‘open source’ approach to advancing biological research, theRegistry of Standard Biological Parts is viewed by many as an experiment at best, as it has yet to gain traction within thebroader research field of synthetic biology. One reason for this is that, in spite of increased quality control at MIT, many of theBiobricks stored in the Parts Registry are either constructed incorrectly or are characterized as insufficient to be used reliablyin other contexts. Hence, laboratories in the field of Synthetic Biology use their own catalogues of genetic Biobricks, whileothers do not even access such a catalogue.
The advantage for participating students is that they gain a unique insight into creative scientific processes that isdifferent from the traditional academic discourses at universities. Consequently, iGEM developed itself as a platform forrather unconventional projects, which, unlike those carried out at research and academic institutions, are in the luxuriousposition of not needing to be marketable. Hence many of the iGEM projects stand out and attract the attention of theestablished scientific research community. The spectrum of projects submitted to the iGEM in the past several years rangesfrom the development of novel therapeutic approaches, such as a tumour-fighting bacteria [27] to new vaccines [28], to thedesign of modern Biosensors that detect contaminants in both the earth and in drinking water [29]. The projects of all theteams are presented by the students at the so-called Competition Jamboree, a conference held at MIT every November.
The team presentations are not comparable to the factual presentations usually given at established biology conferences.The project presentations are creatively explained via elaborately designed slides, video-animations and humorous teamsongs.
Therefore the iGEM represents a new approach to the way scientific projects are developed and communicated. Theconference culminates in an award ceremony in which the best team is awarded the main prize in the form of a Biobrick.
3.2. Designers and artists at iGEM
The iGEM competition has seen several participants being recognized from the fields of art and design alongside teamswith scientific interests. In the year 2009, the team Art Science Bangalore competed for the first time with a project realized ina DIY-manner that synthesizes the smell of rain. Art Science Bangalore won the first prize in the category Best Presentation.
That year’s top winner, a team from Cambridge, also realized its project E. chromi in cooperation with designers Ginsberg andKing [30]. E. chromi was composed of a series of genetic constructs that allowed a cell to produce different colourants. Theproject was conceived from a design perspective as a medical indicator system introduced into the human digestive tract inthe form of bacteria that colours the secretions depending on the disease pattern. While the project was originally designedto motivate discussion, Ginsberg and King insist that technology be designed not just on a technical, but also on a humanscale: ‘‘This collaboration has meant that E. chromi is a technology that has been designed at both the genetic and the humanscales, setting a precedent for future collaborations between designers and scientists’’ [31]. This requirement formulated byGinsberg and King is sometimes in opposition with the working realities of scientists, engineers and designers.
While natural scientists work on highly specialized questions and engineers develop new technologies closely tied toscientific knowledge and economic challenges, designers are using existing technologies to make new products. Theinfluence of science on art and design is undeniable. However, the exchange of information between the disciplines wouldbenefit from increased reciprocity, such that artists serve an integral role in scientific/cultural innovation. In the field oftechnoscience and especially with regard to synthetic biology, research closely relates to concrete technologicaldevelopments. As Nordmann says, ‘‘Technoscience knows only one way of gaining new knowledge and that is by first makinga new world.’’ [32]. Thus these technologies are developed as specific visions, sometimes in order to secure research funding.In the case of synthetic biology, research is often settled in the fields of medicine, world food, or energy consumption. It iswhen scientific activity leads to the development of technology, specifically in the context of projects with social relevance,that questions arise concerning its societal implications. Those questions deal mostly with aspects of state security, theethical principles of research, and possible uses [33]. However, many of those relevant questions will only become apparentthrough their application, which leads to the possibility that scientific development will be dragged out or take place only inwell-informed circles of experts.
2 iGEM began in January of 2003 with a month-long course at MIT during their Independent Activities Period (IAP). The students designed biological
systems to make cells blink. This design course grew to a summer competition with 5 teams in 2004, 13 teams in 2005 – the first year that the competition
grew internationally – 32 teams in 2006, 54 teams in 2007, 84 teams in 2008, 112 teams in 2009, 130 teams in 2010, and 165 teams in 2011 (iGEM 2011).
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In the evolution of scientific research as it is carried out today, the question of ‘‘What do we want to research?’’ quicklybecomes ‘‘What do we want to develop?’’ which leads us to ask ‘‘How do we want to live’’? This last question requires inputfrom all sectors of society and begs even more questions: First of all, how can a wider audience be involved in the discussion?How can scientists make research decisions that consciously consider societal implications? As a scientific competition thatsituates itself outside the regular scientific mode of operation, the iGEM competition can act as an experimental platform inorder to draw us nearer to such interrogations. As our thesis underlines, designers and artists can develop collaborationswith scientists in the form of speculative products that make the daily impact of future technologies understandable forlaypersons. ‘‘Designers stand between revolutions and everyday life’’, says Antonelli and shows the designer as an expert inthe translation of technical possibilities into daily practice [34]. Beyond the technical knowledge of the actual means ofproduction, Antonelli describes artists’ and designers’ communicative, performative, capacity, to make technologicalpossibilities understandable in everyday life. Creatively seen, this approach follows the tradition of the previouslymentioned Design for Debate [35] that uses exactly these features in order to trigger a debate about solicited and unsolicitedresults through the design of possible products. Furthermore, it provides the designer with the possibility to reflect upon thetechnological conditions of his/her products while scientists should think about the possible real-world usages of theirresearch.
3.3. Super Cell – an interdisciplinary project
The team Weimar-Heidelberg Arts 2010 was an interdisciplinary team (as opposed to the ASB team) composed of halfscientists and half artists. The question posed by the team was whether the visionary potential of artists and designers couldcontribute to practices in and products of Synthetic Biology. The team – composed of students from the University ofHeidelberg (Systems Biology) and the Bauhaus University Weimar (Art and Design) – submitted a project entitled Super Cellto be considered in the ‘‘Best Human Practices Advance Track’’ category at iGEM. The project idea was to design speculativefuture Biotechnology products for a plausible daily routine that could be incorporated into a broader scientific discourse.
The team developed a fictitious supermarket called Super Cell, presented in the form of a web-shop for Synthetic Biologyproducts. The products available at the supermarket were informed by current patterns of food consumption, but they hadalso adopted characteristics of Synthetic Biology. At the same time, the presentation introduced new possibilities for thefuture of Synthetic Biology far removed from currently established practices. The project attempted to harness potentialdevelopments in the field of genetic engineering in order to imagine the expression of genetically engineered technologies inthe social and cultural spheres of society. It should be noted that the products – designed for a possible near future scenario –were not manifested physically (synthetically) but were explained and mediated via texts, videos, and illustrations. Theproject avoided discussion of the traditional biological, medical, and ecological consequences of Synthetic Biology. Instead, itexamined the possible future ramifications of these products, their impact on society, and the relationship between peopleand the natural environment. Super Cell’s aesthetic and social model challenged the perception of Synthetic Biology assomething carried out explicitly within a laboratory by demonstrating the application of its methods in other contexts.
The webshop offered exaggerated yet seemingly believable products that were meant to raise suspicion. The commentsassociated with the products are testament to the project’s controversial nature. In combination with each other, thecomments and products provide a platform for discussion. This type of discussion will be further demonstrated by means oftwo examples: Perfect Body and Sustainable Luminosity.
Perfect Body offers synthetic body parts that can be fixed to your own body and be made invisible via an Active-Bacteria-Lotion. The promotional video makes use of found footage from erotic online portals and offers the consumer a collection offemale buttocks to choose from. This artistic rendering of ‘body enhancement’ products characterizes body parts ascommodities. The possibility of continuously ‘beautifying’ oneself in an effort to conform to some kind of social idealunderlines the extent to which such an ideal is merely projection onto the partner’s possible desires. The project ironicallyconcludes that technologies offering body enhancement encourage narcissistic tendencies and other image-relatedcomplexes.
The goal of Sustainable Luminosity is to invent an energy-efficient way to light the city. Luciferin, a natural substance,generates light in the body of a lightning bug that is superior to any other technical light source in both efficiency andintensity. The project suggests depicting the courting ritual of the lightning bugs on billboards and signs across various cities.Instead of electrical lighting, luminous advertising will be transported via midges that are (genetically) equipped with alightning-gene and that have received special flight training. ‘Breeding’ is introduced as a method of designing natural spaceand in addition to the field of genetic engineering, points to Epigenetics and its influence on the expression of geneticdisposition. The breeding process emphasizes the sensory apparatus of the midges and represents a serious change in theoverall rhythm of the organism’s life. Sustainable Luminosity broaches the problem of replacing conventional technologieswith ‘‘natural’’ bio-organic ones, making artistic use of aesthetically pleasing organisms as opposed to bacteria – traditionallyused in Synthetic Biology experiments – to elicit human emotion, namely empathy. Simultaneously, the project posits theextent to which such organisms might be utilized for future human purposes.
3.3.1. The presentation and reception of Super Cell
When the Weimar-Heidelberg Arts team planned their presentation, they expected that the judges would be awaiting theresults of scientific experiments. The team rehearsed a special performance that focused on aspects of synthetic biology
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related to human experience, aspects that have hitherto been overlooked in the competition. Led by a speaker, the groupappeared dressed as salesmen and employees of the supermarket. The speaker introduced the supermarket, presented aselection of products via video sequences, and finished the presentation with a ribbon cutting ceremony. Meanwhile,students in exaggerated costumes standing in front of ironic advertisements, recited excerpts from an informational andpromotional text [34]. Through this approach, the team tried to elude the judges and the audience, in a matter of avoidingbeing judged prematurely or labelled too easily.
3.3.2. The reaction of the judges and the audience
While the audience expressed amusement – indicated by their resounding laughter – the judges seemed to find thepresentation rather controversial and called it ‘‘very provocative.’’
The judges criticized the Weimar-Heidelberg Arts team for dealing primarily with non-scientific information.Furthermore, it became clear that the fictitious nature of the concept was misconstrued and the irony was lost, when thejudges questioned the viability of such products: Are the projects competitive? Is there a marketing strategy behind them?The students refused to answer these questions, insisting that only the customer can determine the success of the products.Super Cell, they claimed, was merely the purveyor of the products.
The team did not respond to questions regarding strategies for the market implementation of Super Cell’s products.Similarly, the team ignored a question regarding the products’ introduction into the market. Instead, elaborating on theirprevious statement, the team maintained that Super Cell was a platform for individuals to make market decisions concerningthe future of Synthetic Biology and its uses. Consequently, the judges welcomed this neutral position and expressedappreciation for the project’s consideration of Synthetic Biology’s social and cultural relevance. The audience, on the otherhand, was apprehensive about both the viability of the products, and worried that risks of innovation, in this case, mightoutweigh the benefits. In the event that a product should backfire, it could severely limit, or even preclude technologicaladvances in the area of Synthetic Biology. One student from another team supplemented this opinion, claiming that PerfectBody was a kind of Frankenstein allegory that would likely fuel prejudices against research in the field of Synthetic Biology:‘‘This is exactly what people think we are doing! And now you are showing them on the Internet: ‘We are doing this and yeswe’ll be selling this in a few years.’’’ Additionally, there was a consensus concerning the need for enlightenment in scientificpublications. What the audience found most troubling was the likelihood that consumers would fail to make educateddecisions towards the products due to a lack of sufficient knowledge concerning their safety. In the final critique, the juryissued a statement echoing this concern, claiming that the public ‘‘may not be able to make the right decision in the end.’’ Atthis juncture, it was clear that neither the judges nor the audience had caught on to the fictional nature of Super Cell, and thatthe intensity of the discussion had eclipsed the opportunity for the artifice to unfold. One of the judges emphasized that itwould be ‘‘irresponsible’’ to initiate a debate without increased scientific understanding among the public.
IGEM judges and audience
Team Weimar Heidelberg artsThe presentation dealt primarily with non-scientific questions
which were neglected by the other teams at the iGEM competition.
The jury questioned whether the products were marketable: Do
the products have a marketing concept? Are they competitive?
� The students refused to answer these questions claiming that
Super-Cell was only a ‘‘platform for products’’ and that
the decision about its success is up to the consumer.
� The jury asked for a concept to counteract the negative reputation
of the green genetic engineering or GM technology.
� The jury argued that the presentation of the fictional and sometimes
provocative products and their implications could lead to a backlash
in the public’s acceptance of the synthetic biology.
� The jury stated that on the basis of the presentation ‘‘the public may
not be able to make the right decision in the end.’’
The students argued that they preferred to produce
acceptable products than to work on the
acceptability of products.
� The jury presumed that the project was a commission from the
scientists – executed by artists.
The project was conceived and designed following
a free, artistic process.
� The jury asked the group to provide more information to help the
public make educated decisions.
Just providing information does not help to increase
the acceptance of technoscience.
Both the judges and the audience were making a crucial mistake by making this suggestion. Controversies surroundinggenetic engineering in the 1990s led to studies on the topic of ‘‘acceptance of technology through information,’’ andultimately concluded that there was at best, a weak correlation between positive public perception of a technology andscientific knowledge [36]. Thus, a false association was revealed: it was reaffirmed that public understanding of science andits risks, does not result in increased confidence in biotechnology. Wiedemann und Hennen make a similar argument:‘‘Informational strategies that are up to instruction and conviction to correct the alleged irrational risk evaluations areuseless. Fear and concern cannot be talked out of the people.’’ [37]. ‘‘Nevertheless’’, Panke, leader of the working group at theEidgenossiche Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zurich, hopes that through synbiosafe.eu, an initiative of the European Unionthat promotes safe and ethical practices in synthetic biology, ‘‘unpleasant communication problems’’ of Biotechnology canbe avoided.
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3.3.3. Closing statements by the Team Weimar-Heidelberg
While Bayer of the Weimar-Heidelberg team argues: ‘‘Saying ‘we have to create acceptance in people for syntheticbiology’ is wrong. [. . .] it should be about the acceptability of the products.’’ The problems of biotechnology and syntheticbiology are that they advertise for research and products with a claim to ‘‘the truth’’ which is only valid in the area of science.The resulting tendency towards paternalism needs to be revised. It has to develop from open communication in order toestablish trust, an important precondition for acceptance according to Renn and Hampel [39]. This has precisely been themotivation for Super Cell. The feedback of the judges and the audience called attention to an interesting misconception. Theproject was regarded as the scientists’ ‘‘commissioned order’’ to the artists. In reality, the project was based on an agreementbetween the involved biologists and artists to develop a socially and culturally relevant statement resulting from a free,artistic debate within synthetic biology. The project is as much an expression of each artist’s motivation as it is proof of thetechnological potential of synthetic biology. Super Cell not only aims to prepare humankind for the chances and risks ofsynthetic biology, but also what the judges recognized as ‘‘Bringing ideas sort of ahead of time to people so they can start tothink about them.’’
Super Cell introduces possible synthetic biology products into the daily life of the consumer in order to include alayperson’s opinion on products usually reserved for a conversation about science and risk. Super Cell went away empty-handed when the awards were given, but commended as an exceptional presentation during the award-ceremony. Becausethe iGEM-competition expects the realization of a Biobrick, it was not surprising that the team was not recognized in anyform at the competition.
4. Concluding discussion: a perspective for art and science
The art projects described in this article can be distinguished following two different artistic strategies:
� A
n historically older attempt, via the genetic code, to ascertain the character of genetic technology as a coding technologyand on this basis, assess it from an artistic point of view. � T he Design for Debate skips the methodical questioning of techno science and embeds its discourse into a daily exposure toexisting and speculative products of the technology itself.
Dealing with the first strategy would have been too demanding for undergrads of an iGEM Team. Therefore, as acontribution to the competition, a project following the discourse of Design for Debate was deemed more suitable. What hasbeen achieved? What remains a challenge for the future?
The team Weimar-Heidelberg-Arts tried to ask questions about social life in the context of science via their ‘speculativesupermarket’ Super Cell. At the presentation at the iGEM Competition it was made clear that the willingness to discuss thosetopics was missing. The judges restricted themselves to the problems of acceptability in the field of synthetic biology. Basedon the reasoning of the iGEM judges during the questioning of the students, the role of art and design was relegated to ameans by which technoscience inventions could be delivered to an uninformed consumer [36]. This may be anunderstandable position for a scientific competition, but in a larger context it is quite ignorant. Scientists and designers onthe Weimar-Heidelberg Arts iGEM team held a more positive perspective and openness and the willingness to learn weredeclared objectives of the collaboration. A two-way flow of information featured theoretical as well as practical units.Finding and gathering ideas was a collective process. At the outset, the goal of the collaboration was to examine theproduction process – rather than produce new inventions – and to emphasize communal reflection. The following exampleexpounds on this premise:
When the question arose of whether to make a Biobrick, Eils, the mentor of the Heidelberg students, opted to invent a‘‘philosophic/strategic’’ equivalent to the biotechnical production of a Biobrick. The social and philosophical relevance of theBiobrick could be addressed through this metaphor. Although this proposal was taken into consideration and positivelyreceived, it was not fitting in the concept of the supermarket. A similar form of reasoning can be seen in Art ScienceBangalore’s 2011 iGEM project:
UGEM deals with the future of the Biobrick. Unlike 2009 [40], the Team Art Science Bangalore completely waived theproduction of their own Biobrick, and used instead Biobricks from the iGEM registry for a ‘‘hack’’ with which they created asimple ‘‘analysis tool’’ for farmers who could prove the presence of genetically modified organisms in processed soil [41]. ArtScience Bangalore succeeded in uniting biotechnology and design concepts and the team was awarded the prize, ‘‘BestHuman Practices Advance’’ for their project. Art Science Bangalore is the only team consisting of designers and artists thathas been participating continually in the iGEM competition; furthermore the team won a prize in the competition on twooccasions (2009 and 2011).
Still, one wonders if, from a designer and artist’s point of view, these examples can be counted as successes. The iGEMteam from Bangalore chose a different route than that of the Critical Design suggested by Ginsberg and King. The aim here isnot to tell the scientists which social, political, and environmental requirements should be taken into account in the futureDesign of synthetic biology. The ASB-team operates rather from a consumer’s perspective whose daily life is alreadydominated by a foreign technology. This attitude offers considerably less criticism of the technology itself; instead, byincluding the consumer and entering into a dialogue, problems of the already existing technology come to the surface. Unlike
U. Damm et al. / Futures 48 (2013) 55–64 63
other teams, the team of designers from Bangalore were not content with surveying only the level of knowledge oracceptance of technology. When asked about the perception of art in the context of iGEM, Shetty, artist and mentor of theteam Art Science Bangalore, stated: ‘‘Since 2009, there has been a slight change in the way we are perceived at iGEM. The firstyear was a more formal exploration (for example the exploration of the smell of rain and many other projects). So everyonewas slightly amused. In the second year, it was more critical of synthetic biology itself, so I guess they [the judges] were notprepared for a critique of synthetic biology. So in the second year, everyone at IGEM was confused (including ourselves.)’’
This expression of confusion not only describes the response to the Team Art Science Bangalore, but also the one directedupon the team Weimar-Heidelberg Arts. In both instances, the discussion diverged from the intended messages andattendant discourses of each team’s project. Shetty mentions a development in 2011 that affected the conception of his owniGEM-team as well as the quality of the judging by the iGEM jurors: ‘‘I felt that with the 2011 team, we made some giant leapsfor ourselves, conceptually in the sense of what interventions in Synthetic Biology we wanted with our ‘‘art’’. For example,when we were collecting samples and data in the cities, we managed to explore the performative aspects of ‘‘doing science’’.We also engaged with farmers who had a very different approach to biotechnology and getting them interested in our workwas very valuable. The project itself is very funny (It uses Biobricks to detect Biobricks) so it worked in the sense of a cleverhack. In fact, the 2011 team built less scientific instruments than the teams from previous years. They managed to build onthe work of prior teams, removing these tools from the context of a ‘‘science laboratory’’ and incorporating them into thecontext of the discourse around environmental activism. With the iGEM teams from Bangalore, we were more interested tosee, if we could build a community of young artists and designers talking to young scientists (the PhD-students) and get themto build a sustainable relationship and dialogue – so we are happy that there is some sort of community being built. I thinkthe judges at iGEM were very happy that we managed to present these aspects of the project this year.’’
As suspected by Shetty, it is unclear whether the judges followed this development. It must remain open for debatewhether these artistic views will have repercussions on the scientific development of synthetic biology. Scientists expectdesigners and artists to prove their value in representing the results of art and science collaborations. It seems that as soon asartists attempt to investigate scientific questions at their core, their work is measured by scientific standards. In spite ofexisting scientific barometers, the iGEM competition reveals that scientists can benefit from an artist’s approach: artistscontribute new perspectives to official scientific discourse and are accepted by the scientific community as such. Bothaward-winning ASB-projects serve as examples of this development.
We can only speculate about the reasons why the two fields are largely insecure in their relationship with each other,however, two possible reasons seem plausible. On the one hand, the participants are mostly students who, having juststarted their careers, are not established professionals and are unfamiliar with the rules and mechanisms of the game. On theother hand, synthetic biology is a science that can change the fundamental nature of life. Therefore, one must ask: What doesthis mean for us? And where will it lead us?
Until today, these questions were only raised in museums and galleries and not in scientific venues. It is particularlypleasing that especially synthetic biology shows the promise of integrating the research of artists and designers. Theexamples in this text illustrate an effective dialogue as well as fruitful collaborations. The potential of future collaborationsbetween artists and scientists will be determined in three ways: first, by whether or not technoscience considers the culturaldimensions of their tools and methods; second, at which level are artists willing to become familiar with scientific tools andmethods; and third, by the accuracy with which the risks and consequences of synthetic biology are assessed, and bywhether or not scientists and artists reflect on the socio-cultural climate in which they act as citizens.
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