“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”
(Via BoingBoing) The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a new book by science writer Rebecca Skloot explores this famous story and the ethical minefield that often lies between the expectations and assumptions of the scientific community and those of the public, as well as the confusion and anger felt by members of Henrietta Lacks' family when the truth was uncovered. "Henrietta Lacks →
Plastic Futures 2 Framed
Here's that review in of the Plastic Futures 2 exhibition in FrameMag: http://www.framemag.com/news/857
little people / black and white future (?)
From the blog of Lebbeus Woods comes an entry entitled "Utopia Redux" which features a series of images by Cooper Union student Daniel Meriador. They depict a strange and silent technological architecture of humankind, juxtaposed, or floating whimsically, against degraded or hostile-seeming landscapes. Using photo-montage, the images are disarmingly simple, and almost iconographic. The typical elements of classic science fiction →
iPatch™ revisited
Last year I presented the iPatch™ (complete with ironic trademarking) as a satire on the way we look to technology to solve problems often caused by technology. In this case the vast amount of information we recieve via a growing number of technological media. At the same time the iPatch™ is a recognition that the pace of technological change and →
The Perils of Progress
There is often a moral dimension to the popular fear and resistance associated with technological, social and environmental change. This kind of fear ("future-shock" immediately comes to mind) involves the struggle to cope with new modes of living, as well as a sense of loss for the old. We can never go back to the way things used to be. →
Digital molecular gastronomy.
A bit of whizz-bangery from the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT. It's a 3D printer for printing food, molecule by molecule.
Day 5 – Friday 20 November
by Girish Sagaram The final day of the SymbioticA Biotech-Art workshop began with a session about plant tissue culture and cloning with Dr. Tien Huynh from RMIT Applied Science. We were given tiny ‘daughter’ plants cloned from a Chinese orchid species and separated them in sterile conditions before planting them in individual sealed jars containing 6 different mixtures of growing media. →
Day 4 – Thursday 19 November
by Girish Sagaram The first exercise of the day was a practical session in the art of tissue culture. This is where live tissue is grown from cells extracted from either plants or animals. The group was asked to bring in samples of animal tissue to use for this purpose. When animals are killed for human consumption the meat is kept →
Synthetic Death
I'm in a strange emotional space. I'm used to an inner life that's a zigzag ride between certainty and uncertainty. But during these last few intense days these uncertainties are of a different colour. For me the only difference between cooking a chicken curry and working with animal materials in labs is that one activity is labeled 'science' and the other →
Day 3 – Wednesday 18 November
by Girish Sagaram During this week we’ve been learning that many of the popular beliefs about DNA, how it works and how scientists work with it aren't completely accurate. The familiarity we have with the idea of DNA and its association with identity has been formed in part by concepts such as 'DNA fingerprinting' which is used in forensics and mostly →
Day 2 – Tuesday 17 November
by Girish Sagaram Whilst the science of genetics has solved many puzzles about living things and how physical characteristics are passed from generation to generation, there are a great many mysteries still to be solved. As the "Ghost in Your Genes" video illustrates, there are epigenetic factors that influence how genes work, meaning DNA and genes aren't the whole story of →
All your base pairs…
If you google 'DNA portrait' you get 3,110,000 results. The concept of DNA as 'fingerprint' has taken its place within our culture (TV cop shows for instance) and we've come to accept the idea that it's the key to our existence. The mystique surrounding DNA was the hot topic today as we isolated our DNA and held our very 'identity' in our hands (well those of us that →
DNA & Plasmid Vectors
As a traumatised sparrow flew frantically about our heads we spent this morning's session learning about DNA extraction, restriction enzymes and electrophoresis (that is an awesome link - click it, go on). It involved a lot of metaphors: 'nature's scissors' and a rather amusing reference to the equisite corpse. As I write we're about end our discussion of the theory and →
Just another Monday at the bio-art lab
So, after an evening of robust debate, kimchi and sake, an update on the happenings on Day One of the RMIT SymbioticA Workshop. As discussed in the two previous posts, the major task of the day was the construction of 'laminar flow' hoods within which various bio-science activities can be conducted in a sterile micro-environment. We self-organised into groups of about 6 or 7 to →
Day 1 – Monday 16 November
by Girish Sagaram Throughout the world, a growing number of artists and designers are investigating science and technology and its implications for society and the environment. Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr of SymbioticA are leaders in this field. Together they created the Tissue Culture and Art Project which is concerned with combining scientific knowledge with artistic practice and revealing "inconsistencies in →
Nature/Culture: The Tissue Culture King
In preparation for the SymbioticA Workshop over the weekend I read 'The Tissue Culture King' a short story by the evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley. The story concerns an English biologist held prisoner by a 'lost tribe' somewhere in darkest Africa who, motivated by the desire to experiment, convinces the ruling elite to use biotechnology to reinterpret and transform the religious →
Built Systems: 2040 City Exhibition
The Plastic Futures project was exhibited as part of the Design Laboratory 2009: Built Systems/2040 City presented as part of the 2009 State of Design Festival
NeuroLogica » Memes and the Singularity
As I've discussed before, blogging (and reposting the content of other blogs - dubbed "re-tweeting" on twitter) is an example of how technology has affected culture - specifically the miriad ways we now access information and how integrated we are becoming. The idea of the meme as a unit of culture that is self replicating really came into it's own in →
The Adaptation Workshop @ SymbioticA
As part of Plastic Futures 2 we had the opportunity to travel to Perth, Western Australia and participate in a workshop hosted by Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr at SymbioticA (a centre for excellence in bio-art research within the Department of Anatomy & Human Biology at UWA). This involved a loose set of investigations around the theme of "adaptation" with →
Nellie McKay: “Clonie”
I think I'm in love with Nellie McKay. Not sure if it's her sense of humour, her adorable outfit or her cute 50s American accent (that's 1950s a la Shirly Temple, not 2050s). http://www.ted.com/talks/nellie_mckay_sings_clonie_1.html
Lucy Irvine
Some work by local artist Lucy Irvine. She explores biomimetic organic forms using inorganic and industrial materials such as fishing line, nylon cord and cable ties. sources: http://www.abl.com.au/default.asp?p=2,199,200 http://www.redgallery.com.au/2006Shows/2006Show13.htm
Clouds, Crochet and Plastic Fields
Plastic Futures 2 was a project exploring the intersections of bio-art and contemporary field-based design practices in the context of ‘speculative futures’. It was run over a five week period between 19 June and 26 July 2009, including a one week intensive workshop in Western Australia with SymbioticA (UWA) and based around a colony of thrombolites, bacterial ‘growing rocks’ found →
The Angriest Dog in the World
Earlier this week I was alerted to the existence of this comic created by David Lynch and published in a number of independent newspapers in the U.S. during the 80s and 90s. The Angriest Dog in the World comic strip always features the same four frames depicting a weird looking dog in a backyard and speech bubbles containing overheard conversations →
A good heart is easy to find.
Interesting article in New Scientist. "The idea is fairly simple: take an organ from a human donor or animal, and use a mild detergent to strip away flesh, cells and DNA so that all is left is the inner "scaffold" of collagen, an "immunologically inert" protein. Add stem cells from the relevant patient to this naked shell of an organ and →