Bio-art
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bio art is one of the most recent developments of contemporary art; it takes biotechnologies as a medium. Transgenics, tissue culture, morphologic modifications, are some of the many techniques those artists use, posing technological, ethical and social questions.
Those experimentations may involve the artist's own body (implants, skin culture, animal blood transfusion), and often embody traditional fears and hopes linked to the technology.
Works that do not use actual biotechnology (ancient or contemporary) or the processes of life are not bio art. For example, images or websites that reflect social concerns or make social commentaries on biotechnology are not bio art.
Bio art does not have many precedents, but an important one is the work of Edward Steichen, primarily known for his photography. Steichen exhibited flowers of his own creation (delphiniums) in 1936, at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York.
While Bio art can be said to have several originators, Eduardo Kac is considered by many as the emblematic bio artist and a leading figure in the field. He is best know for his living work, the rabbit Alba, and for his "Genesis". Kac originally introduced the term "bio art" in relation to his work "Time Capsule", in 1997. Another fundamental name is George Gessert, who started to hybridize and create new flowers already in the early 1980s. Joe Davis is also a bio artist whose recent works include the Microvenus, where the artist embedded messages into a bacterial genome. His Audio Microscope was able to translate light into sound and this allowed you to hear living cells to reflect on their unique acoustic signatures. SymbioticA is a group founded by Oron Catts and Ionatt Zurr and located at the University of Western Australia in The School of Anatomy & Human Biology. They use living tissue as a sculptural form while engaging the ethical issues surrounding this often controversial art form.SymbioticA's latest exhibition created by Guy Ben-Ary, BioKino: The living screen. Nano movies are projected over living canvas' (cornea, blood and skin), via a Bio projector (The projection is 500 microns in size). Shown in recreation fairground and vaudeville houses of earlier cinema, with costuming by award winning designers ericaamerica. Heather Ackroyd & Dan Harvey used photosynthesis to create "photographs" on grass. Natalie Jeremijenko has cloned trees to confound common understanding of the notion of the individual. Marta de Menezes has created butterflies with wing patterns produced by herself.
