mixed mediA digital
When we think about artists engaging with technology,
we tend to focus on the technologies that we are most familiar
with: computers, mobile phones or RFID systems. But what
about biotechnology? Why should an artist’s comments on
the world stop at the doorstep of research laboratories?
Today, artists and activists are seeing biotechnology
not only as a theme but also as a means of expression. Some
are collaborating closely with science centres. Others are
buying biology hobby kits, which evoke the early computer
models of the late 1970s. They are getting their hands into
the material of life itself to reflect upon some of the most
disturbing and complex questions society has yet dealt with:
what will happen when biotechnology steps out of laboratories
and into everyday life? What might be the ethical, cultural
and even political consequences of these groundbreaking
discoveries? Is our biologically enhanced future going to be
as effortless, clean and under-control as some of the media
and research centres – not to mention the corporations that
fund some of this research – would have us believe?
Perhaps the most iconic of all the artistic works dealing
with the advances of biotechnology is the Victimless Leather
Jacket project (2004), developed by the Tissue Culture &
Art Project at the University of Western Australia. The work
is exactly what its name claims: a cruelty-free jacket made of
skin. Most people, though, would think that it comes straight
out of Dr Frankenstein’s lab, and it’s not hard to blame them.
The garment was grown inside a bioreactor using
animal cells that formed a living layer of tissue supported by
a polymer matrix and fed with regularity. The artefact is tiny,
but it does look like a jacket. The skin seems to breathe, and
while the idea that no animal has been killed to facilitate the
dictates of fashion is certainly fascinating, many think that the
Genetically
mere existence of the Victimless Leather Jacket is upsetting
and distasteful.
The objective of the artists was not to shock, but to
Modified art
provide the public with a very tangible artefact and use it as
the starting point for cultural discussions. It’s one thing to be
sitting on the train reading about the advances of technology.
It’s another to be confronted in such a graphic way with what
Oh yes, it’s here! can be done with the most fragile, precious and unpredictable
material of all: life. You might think that electronic wires made
words Regine Debatty
of bacteria have nothing to do with your daily life, but a jacket
is something waiting in your wardrobe when it gets chilly
outside. The work raises questions about our exploitation
b r a i n -i n -a-d i s h f l i e s p l a n e ; alive and clicking, the computer of the living creatures that already surround us; and beyond
made from life itself; women may be able to grow their own that, it invites us to reflect on the relationship we will one day
sperm; bio-sensor puts slime mould at its heart; first designer have with the living and semi-living entities that are being
babies to beat breast cancer; bacteria that grow nanoscale engineered inside research centres.
electronic wires; race to be first to ‘hibernate’ human beings; If you still believe that all of the above is something
skimmed milk direct from the ‘magic cow’. that belongs in sci-fi novels rather than a contemporary art
These catchy phrases haven’t been pulled from magazine, think again. Some of the artists who developed
a science-fiction novel: they come straight from recent the Victimless Leather Jacket were awarded the prestigious
newspaper and science magazine headlines. Each of them Golden Nica at the latest edition of Ars Electronica.
suggests that what physics was to the twentieth century, Liverpool’s FACT centre will soon host a series of events
biology will be to the twenty-first. titled SK-Interface; curated by Jens Hauser, the exhibition
and conference will explore the idea of skin as a technological
interface. Meanwhile, the new New Museum, opening this
month in Manhattan, has invited a series of artists to come
and share their views on bioart with the public in March.
Photo: Bruce Murphy
Artreview 108
Mixed Media_Digital.indd 108 2/11/07 13:22:55
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