hanna_wittmack_DESMA9_blog05

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At first glance, it is hard to see the similarities between biotechnology and art, but through this week the studies have proven that there are more than I personally ever thought. One of the first groups to introduce connections between biotech and art was a group called SymbioticA, an artistic laboratory dedicated to the research, learning, critique and hands-on engagement with the life sciences¹ Which made many advancements in both the studies of art and science

Fish and Chips, the robotic arm controlled by fish neurons. 

Pictured above is an image of a machine they built called Fish and Chips which was a robotic limb that was triggered to move by the firing of neurons in goldfish. SymbioticA is able to study a new kind of science that produces art. But combining tactics of bio manipulation and creation doesn't always please everyone, in fact there are large debates surrounding the ethics of using genes to force a certain visual outcome². In another study pictured below artist Marta de Menezes (born 1975) created biotech art by modifying designs on the wings of live butterflies. Marta explores the aesthetic opportunities ;life sciences present to her by having changing qualities³ But the project had extreme backlash when the modifications didn't go right and it caused the butterflies to have holes in their wings and rendered them useless to predators

A genetically modified butterfly wing, the blue highlights where the visual difference occurs. 

On one hand it is terrible to create into life a species that will not be able to survive on its own, but these experiments that use biology, technology, and art, have also made leaps forward in science. In the case of the glowing rabbits scientists have taken luminescent genes from jellyfish and injected them into the embryos of rabbits to use the then glowing effect of the gene to trace how medicines will move through the body⁴ The studies show that its possible to inject a protein into a specie for it to then be taken and produced by their own DNA. The entire experiment caused no harm to the rabbits, and did not decrease their expected lifespan, but opened the door to understanding how genes react to foreign proteins.⁵


The embryos of rabbits that have been injected with the luminescence of jellyfish. 




Works Cited: 


1 “Symbiotica.” SymbioticA, https://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/. 


2 Cox, George Clarke. “Ethics as Science and as Art.” The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, vol. 13, no. 8, 1916, pp. 204–19, https://doi.org/10.2307/2012920. Accessed 4 May 2022.


3 “Biography.” Marta De Menezes, https://martademenezes.com/biography/. 


4 “Scientists Breed Glow-in-the-Dark Rabbits.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 13 Aug. 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/13/glow-in-dark-rabbits-scientists. 


5 Hamblin, James. “Glowing Bunnies: Why They Matter.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 13 Aug. 2013, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/08/glowing-bunnies-why-they-matter/278621/. 



Image citations:


1 SymbioticA, “Fish n Chips”, 2004

2 Marta de Menzenes, “Nature?”, 2014

3 University of Hawaii, “Glowing Embryo”, 2013


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