The term “New Media” is expanding,
since its emergence out of Pop Art, Fluxus, and other earlier movements,
to mean many things. It is digital, it is interactive, it is dynamic,
it is animated, it is dangerously hactivist…it is an expression of
changing times and cultures, of the horizon called the future coming
closer to us. One particular instance of New Media which has branched
out into its own discipline is “Bio Art,” such as that practiced by
British artist Jane Prophet in her project Silver Heart, seen below.
Bio Art relates not only to biological
sciences, but to engineering, robotics, and architecture, which follow
the same structural principles in building complex forms. One example
of architectural influence in Bio Art is the work of Macoto Murayama, a
graduate student from Miyagi University of Education who uses his
expertise to create beautiful, fluid forms like flowers. In speaking of
the relation between the plant and digital technology, he notes:
“[The flower] is organic and is rather different from architecture
[in that way][...][But] when I looked closer into a plant that I thought
was organic, I found in its form and inner structure, hidden mechanical
and inorganic elements.” (The Scientist, p.1). The two worlds
are, after all, not so separate. Nature and technology merge ever more
seamlessly with the integration of various disciplines into New Media
Art.
The term Bio Art was first coined by
Eduardo Kac, an American artist born in Brazil. Kac is well versed in
the fields of biotechnology and genetics, and employs his expertise in
various art projects to critique said fields of study, along with
scientific techniques in general. A good example of this strategy is
Kac’s first “transgenic” piece, “Genesis.” This work is not only an
expansion of the realm of Bio Art, but of art as a complicated series of
processes leading to a perhaps far less complicated end result. In
Genesis, the “art” lies mainly in the concept and execution: the display
is merely gloss. Kac takes this quote from the Bible: “And God said,
Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and
over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing
that creepeth upon the earth,” and turns it into Morse Code.
He translates that information into the base pairs, A-T, G-C of the
fundamental double helix DNA structure, then turns them into the
theoretical genetic sequences which would be created from that
data, then implants that genetic material into bacteria and swabs the
entire amalgamation onto a petri dish.
Viewers (via webcam) are given the option
to turn on a UV light above the dish, triggering mutation and
destroying the fragile links between the quote and the organisms if they
disagree with the statement therein expressed. However, in doing so
they themselves exert dominace over nature, contradicting their initial
perspective. The art lies in the dichotomous choice a viewer must make,
whether to change what he does not agree with, or conversely, be passive
about that which he holds true (for those accepting the statement would
not wish to manipulate the bacteria and destroy the statement). It
addresses the gap between human reason and action. For instance, how
does one uphold pacifism? One cannot force an invading army to stop
killing, while upholding a rule of no fighting.
Such questions, and many other interesting dilemmas, are at the forefront of exploration in Bio Art.
It is a strange direction to take, and a
strangely inverted view of the world: that the internal workings and
functions of objects such as flowers or the human body should be their
celebrated components, rather than the outer forms so praised by artists
of the past, is a perspective not merely strange, but contentious to
many. It will be interesting to see where Bio Art, and the rest of the
broadly expanding behemoth that is New Media, goes next.
References:
http://www.janeprophet.com/2011/09/rapid-prototype-sculpture-art-3d-printer-polymer-algorithn-silver-heart-2004/
http://the-scientist.com/2012/02/16/building-flowers/
http://ekac.org/geninfo2.html
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