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 →
lab things
This post is a collection of 'things' that play a role in the laboratory work. I will add to this. photos by Pete Waters.
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 →
Antrhropocentric Sterile Hood
How predicatble humans are. The silliest group attempt to create a sterile hood today couldn't help itself animating the otherwise very rational scientific instrument with human characteristics. What started with a pair of goggles inserted into the protective cover to overcome the problem of not being able to see through cloudy plastic quickly evolved into arms, hands and teeth. Even the holes →
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 →
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 →