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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
“the slippage of contemporary life into sci-fi”
In yet another onto-it post (from 2006) by Geoff Manaugh on his BLDGBLOG he throws up some enticing potentials about future aeroplanes printed out of plastic and the imagined potential of bio-printing. But where it gets really interesting for me, is where he starts to discuss how contemporary life is slipping into sci-fi, and "Science-fiction and social realism will become one →
Repo! The Genetic Opera
“ In the not-so-distant future, an epidemic of organ failures devastates the planet. Out of the tragedy, a savior emerges: GENECO, a biotech company that offers organ transplants…for a price. Those who miss their payments are scheduled for repossession and hunted by villainous ORGAN REPO MEN. In a future where surgery addicts are hooked on painkilling drugs and murder is sanctioned →
Dirt under the fingernails
Ok, as promised, this is the bit of text I wrote recently which I said I'd post once i got my ailing computer back. I must say that this erupted out of my morning coffee at a cafe, and while I like aspects of it, other bits irk me. The bit that irks me is that the focus is largely →
iPatch™ InfoDetox
The last few days I've been suffering from a sinus infection that's making it really hard to concentrate or give my full attention to anything because of the constant painful pressure in my head. Perhaps the glut of information we are subjected to in our media-junkie culture is similarly putting dangerous pressure on our mental capacity. TV, radio, magazines, social →
Eva Vertes looks to the future of medicine | Video on TED.com
Eva Vertes looks to the future of medicine | Video on TED.com. This is a talk by a 19yr old who is trying to find a way to approach cancer in radically new ways. It had me returning to a future fiction story I started to write in the early-mid 90s, in which the capacity to develop cancerous cells had become →
Rhinoplasty.
The first line of the algorithm streamed through his brain and he felt a burning sensation in his sinuses as the pattern formed itself in his mind’s eye. The job wasn’t going to pay, and it wasn’t particularly challenging in itself, but he felt it was a worthwhile thing to be helping these refugees. They were from London this lot. →
Life in the 40s.
A few questions about what life could be like in 2040-50: 1. Resources & Waste - What will things - e.g. food, clothing, buildings, tools - be made of in the future? How will people deal with resource depletion and waste from manufacturing and consumption? 2. Climate - Is dangerous climate change inevitable and if so how fast is it occurring? What →