Biotechnologies announce the emergence of major breakthroughs and fresh insights into various fields of knowledge in the near future: new medical treatments, improvements in agriculture, the mapping of the genomes of various species, the customized reconfiguration of bodies. Such potent promises are both fascinating and disquieting, raising many uncertainties and posing questions difficult to resolve.

For already 15 years now, artists have illustrated their interest in this domain. Readopting thy Pygmalion myth, certain artists seek to reinvent life, to create new hybrid life forms or to animate matter by creating intelligent automata. Other artists raise important questions as to the manipulation, reification, instrumentalisation and commodification of life. Situated at the intersection of science, technology, and artificial systems, this emerging art form necessitates serious consideration. In this colloquium, artists and theorists will explore various issues by presenting their research and art practices. The presenters will address four broad themes:

Intersections of Biology, Aesthetics and Ethics

Artificial Life

Genetic Art / Hybrids

Representational and Critical Strategies

Intersections of Biology, Aesthetics and Ethics
Biotech artworks are produced within a contemporary art context, employing materials and techniques that cross over into the realm of new media art. Also based on genetic engineering and other biotechnologies, many art practices are direct interventions into living matter and can be interpreted as material manifestations of postmodern notions of hybridity.

These emerging art practices produce new aesthetics that deal with important theoretical, cultural and ethical issues, considered by the presenters: What is the nature of the art experiment and its theoretical framework? How does such art practice relate to science? What changing contexts motivate these art practices? What are the problematics underlying such artworks? What is the significance of art practices that seek to reinvent life or to animate matter by creating artificial intelligence?

Artificial Life
Artists working in the field of artificial life follow through on an age-old dream found in the ancient practices of Egyptian priests who sought to amaze crowds with statues that spoke and moved. Since then, we have witnessed numbers of attempts to simulate life: the golem, automata, robots and a whole spectrum of increasingly intelligent electronic gadgets. Contemporary artificial life artworks continue to astonish and prompt one to reflect upon the nature of artifice and life, on intelligence, communication, and on the evolution and the uniqueness of the human species. While many artworks strive for a certain physical, physiological or psychological resemblance to human life, others explore innovative adaptational behaviors, oftentimes casting insights into the nature of human conduct. Artists and theorists will present their artworks, research and reflections on an array of artificial life works.

Genetic Art / Hybrids
The number of genetic artworks produced in the last few years has significantly increased, revealing a changing relationship with nature. Employing diverse living organisms (bacteria, animals, plants, human cells and tissue), artists invent new kinds of life forms. Sometimes these are grounded in a search for a new aesthetics, as in the creation of beautiful hybrid flowers or plants, or in the manipulation of phenotypes of certain animals; others address ecological, ethical and political concerns. The most controversial manifestations of this new realm of art are those based on bioengineering techniques, as they often trigger critical reaction, even indignation on the part of the spectator. For example, transgenic art employs genetic engineering techniques to create synthetic genes or to transfer natural genetic material from one species into another, in order to create unique living beings. Tissue art, based on cloning and tissue-engineering techniques, produce semi-living entities by means of cell or skin cultures. Such art practices create new hybrid life forms, often fusing the organic with the non-organic. Certain hybrids are intermediaries between biological interventions as such and research into artificial intelligence. They are, at times, organisms implanted with nanotechnologies whose behaviors are influenced by a particular program. Such practices also enter into the realm of architecture whereby smart materials, made of organic tissue cultures, are employed to render architecture both receptive and interactive. Artists and theorists working in these emerging fields will present their artworks and ideas.

Representational and Critical Strategies

Through imagery (photographs, films, Internet and other traditional media), performances, interactive and multi-media installations, as well as the employment of living matter, artists deal with the aesthetic, cultural and ethical implications of scientific interventions into life. New conceptions and perceptions of the body and of nature emerge. Some artists create images of chromosomes, the DNA helix, genetic blueprints, including genetic self-portraits; or they address issue relating to the human genome and to heredity. Certain artists incorporate cultural codes into their creation of synthetic genes. By so doing, they cast fresh insights onto the relation between biology, culture and signifying processes. Others ground their work on the interconnections between biotechnological research and socio-cultural attitudes, particularly on the debates regarding the instrumentalisation and commodification of life by corporate powers. Many such artists bring to the fore the serious problems relating to eugenics, reproductive technologies, gene patenting, and issues of biowarfare. The artworks of such artists serve to deconstruct and to demystify readymade ideas on biotechnological practices.