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 imagery are there, the vastness of the landscape and the tiny, solitary, contemplative human figure. Woods points out the ambiguity with regard to whether the images are a vision of …

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. These ideas are discussed in this article in The Economist (Christmas 2009)) dealing with the way the concept of “progress”  has been seen throughout history.  The article proposes a generally …

A bit of whizz-bangery from the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT. It’s a 3D printer for printing food, molecule by molecule.

The NewScientist just came out with a gallery of Microbial Art or view source at MicrobialArt.com

SEEDmag’s just featured Martin Chalfie’s workbench – an interesting read..

Excerpt:
Martin Chalfie is perhaps best known for his Nobel Prize-winning work on GFP, a jellyfish molecule that glows bright green when exposed to blue light. By injecting it into bacteria more than a decade ago to create the first tool for visualizing biological processes in living cells, Chalfie transformed the life sciences. “I realized this was going to be an extremely important tool,” Chalfie says. “What I didn’t know at the time was how far-reaching the impact of this molecule was …

We’ve spent the past five days working with pipettes, petri-dishes and the semi-living in a science lab at RMIT. It may have come as a surprise to many of us that a basic understanding of genetics already existed in our minds, whether facilitated by well-informed sci-fi fantasies, a strong math background, or by a basic education in computer science.
I think this is interesting because whether or not we have formal training; the technology seems to unravel itself as our understanding increases.  But as artists, what do we hope to see …

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. The recipes consisted of varying quantities of charcoal, coconut milk, banana, sugar and other nutrients in an agar gel. These kinds of experiments are used to fine-tune the way plants are grown …

As this week ends, and many many wonderful sources/names etc were mentioned, I would like to propose that we create a running archive from our notes for items such as resources e.g. films, books, materials, researchers………
[this is a great idea. we'll be setting up a resources page that you can hopefully easily get to and add links, references, and upload pdfs.] – admins.

4 days into DNA extraction, spinal cord cell rescue, GFP transfer, and tissue culture for dummies, I still wonder what roles bioartists can play with respect to science and society? Somehow the image of the jester comes to my mind. A person on a court with powerful hierachies and strict rules that is the only one who lives outside of the hierachies and may break rules without fears of jobloss or being outlawed. While jesters have often been “natural fools” that were mentally and physically disabled persons, the “licensed fools”  were …

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 chilled to keep it fresh. The concept of ‘freshness’ actually means that cells in the meat can still be alive. Marrow cells are particularly useful for tissue culture as they are sealed …