Archive for the ‘ethics’ tag

BIOLOGICAL REMIX: Project draft

When remix culture enter nature

Man seem to be in a constant struggle against nature. We don’t want to wait for natural selection and evolution to present changes we have imagined. Some fights have been more successful than others, and the last decade have fostered initiatives that aim to work more closely with or build upon principles of nature. Science is turning to nature to deocde the source of various functionality that then are implemeted in human design.

For my academic paper in my Remix Culture class, I want to see to what extent remix culture as an activity has entered the natural domain.

This means that I need to find way to define remixing as a cultural activity, and for this I will draw on the curriculum and research we have explored in class (particularily the work of Jenkins, Barthes, Dawkins, Foucault, Lessig)
Based on these works and various discussions in class there seems to be some elements connected to this activity:

¤ Deconstruction: The ability to see new elemental pieces in a work, that carries their own specific beauty, intent or meaning.

¤ Reconstruction: The ability to choose specific parts for their meaning to construct a new narrative or context.

¤ Referral to the original work/s: The extent to which, and the various ways the remixed work is referring to the original.
Here I will explore the definitions provided by Eduardo Navas on his Remix Theory site, and Zachary McCune’s suggestion for a remix taxanomy. Both rely heavily on music as their source for definition and it is interesting to see how these definitions work in a greater realm of remix culture.

¤ Mixed media: with digital technologies, we see a a rise in mixed media remixes as well.

¤ Spreadability: the connection between the new narrative in a remix and its referral to the original seems to

¤ Amaterus and professionals: New media technologies have lowered the threshold for creation. Production equipment is not longer controlled and owned by professionals, and Internet has provided us with a forum for sharing that is unpresedented.

¤ Ethical framework: attribution, economic compensation, respect for the original work.

Having created a framework for understanding what “to remix” can entail, it is time to look into whether the current activity that exist in bio technology, bioengineering, gene technology etc. can be translated into remix.
I have found the best sources for exploration in the realm of biological art, where artists move into a domain previously occupied by specialised scientists, and will look into how their work introduces permanent or cosemtic changes in the biological setup of simple bacteria, plants, insects, animals and even humans.

DECONSTRUCTION

In terms of looking at deconstruction as an element of a remix activity in an biological realm, I have turned to the
various genome projects, especially the Human Genome Project, which is the highly ambisious scientific goal to identify the 20-25.000 genes in the human DNA, and their functionality, as well as tranferring this knowledge and technology to the private sector.
Scientists have already identified large parts of the genome of various animals (fully utilized in breeding technologies), insects (the fruit fly’s genome is now fully sequenced), even the neanderthals.

RECONSTRUCTION

Reconstruction in biological remix has to do the ability to bringing already isolated elements or qualities into a new composistion or maybe even narrative.
The performance artist Stelios Arcadiou aka Stelarc is preoccupied with the identity of the body, and in 2006 he comitted to surgery to have a third ear attached to his left arm. As he describes it “a facial feature has been replicated, relocated and will now be rewired for alternate capabilities”. This ear has the functions of the normal ear, and in one stage of the project (althoug now removed) a microphone was attached at the end of the ear (inside the arm) to transmitt the sounds caught by the ear.

REFERRING TO THE ORIGINAL

Here I am still looking for concrete sources to work from, although one can say that most reconstructions seem to be heavily relying on the source material. From works based on pure appropriation (e.g the DNA portrait visualizing your individual DNA sequences as visual art pieces, that you can buy, or Gary Schneider’s Genetic Self Portrait) to complete reformations of original intent of the building blocks, elements earlier viewed as part of a biological whole, are set together in new, cultural constellations based on the specific sets of functionality. One example is the student project led by assistant professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at UCSF, Chris Voigt, creating living photographs produced through genetically re-engineering e.coli bacterias to respond as pixels in a SLR camera, the amount light exposure will trigger the production of pigment in the bacteria, thus producing the levels in a picture.

MIXED MEDIA

In terms of the question of mixed media, it might be frutiful to discuss interspecies mixes versus cross-species creations, or transgenic works basing itself in recombinant DNA technology – the composition of DNA sequenses that do not occus naturally together in a cell. This technology have been used to create insect resistant crops, to introduce genes from fireflies in tobacco plants for the plants to glow in the dark, to the latest creation of Eduardo Kac – the Natural History of Enigma, that he proudly names a plantimal – as this cross-hybrid Petunia (labeled the Eduania) expresses the genes of Kac in its red blood veins. There are discussion as to whether this is a true plantimal, as various bacteria and virus from different species explode and crash with our own human DNA (causing small, but often unimportant mutations). Here I need to find some good sources for discussion.

SPREADABILITY

Spreadability in biological remix might be transferred to the question of fertility. Whether the new work/creation is fertile and will live beyond its single appearance, or it the alteration is cosmetic, even superficial.
In case of the Eduania, this “plantimal” is fertile, its seed will give rise to a new series of Edunias.

AMATERUR/PROFESSIONAL

Biological engineering is no longer an activity reserved scientists. Although there are strict ethical guidelines framing the practise of biological research and engineering, off-lab organisations and networks of artist, hobby-biologists are forming, e.g. DIYBio who just held their DNA extraction Party and present themselves as:
“DIYbio is an organization that aims to help make biology a worthwhile pursuit for citizen scientists, amateur biologists, and DIY biological engineers who value openness and safety”
or the more open source activist group Hackteria. Many of the projects in these groups are still simple in concept, and often concern with building the equipment required to work with micro-organisms in an off-lab setting. Still, they give an indication of bringing the technology, ethical guidelines and knowledge required to take nature’s potential in their own hands.

ETHICAL FRAMEWORK

I also want to look more closely into the ethical guidelines and discussion arised in the human genome project and will use discussion material presented in the project as a starting point.

Research material

I have benefitted from the article Gene Culture – The Molecule Metaphor in Visual Art by Suzanne Anker.
This article presents Anker’s research on how biological metaphors are appearing in visual arts, and how cultural hybrids (or “chimera’s” as she labels them) are appearing in biology through work of both scientists and artists. Particularily she is interested in how “genetic imaging operates as aesthetic signs” – and looks at examples of replication in art vs cloning (and other methods of copying gene material) and immaterial copyrights vs gene-patents. Of particular interest her presentation of bioartist George Gessert whose work have been labeled as genetic grafitti – where he let “fictional” genomes intervene in an ecosystem dominated by natural selection. (2000). She also touches upon the application of ethics that quite automatically seems to enter the conversation when biological engineering is focused on augmentation of man (e.g in the principles behind breeding versus eugenics).