http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~swilson/
Preliminary version
"Corpus," to appear in the Abecedarius of Caroline
A. Jones, ed., _Sensorium: Embodied Experience,
Technology, and Contemporary Art_ Cambridge, MIT Press and MIT List
Visual Arts
Center, 2006. (Thought Experiment about Bioart Exhibits in the Museum
of the
Future.)
The last decades have
been
revolutionary in opening up new ways to represent the
body and its functions, with science and
technology expanding
our capacity to conceptualize, investigate, and present corporeal
information.
The arts have moved aggressively to work with these images critically
and to
question the frameworks for understanding this research.
As
exciting as this work has been, the art's involvement in this research
to date
must be seen as timid first steps.
Not only has it been limited in the narrow range of scientific research
it has
appropriated thus far, but it fails to answer the need—which has never
been greater—to provide cultural access to the often proprietary
domains
of technoscience. Art limits itself when it stays on the sidelines and
works
with the hand-me-downs of research. Culture workers have a
responsibility to
engage with these scientific and technical domains; ethical discourse
traditionally lags far behind the already active application of
research
findings, and art remains one of the most active spheres of public
debate.
Scientific research is so broad in its reach and so profound in its
practical
and philosophical impact that it should not be left to technicians and
scientists alone. This is especially true for biological and medical
research
focused on the body, which is so intimately tied to our human
existence.
Artists
need to enter into the heart of the matter, into the corpus of
research. They
need to get their hands dirty (with all the positive and negative
connotations
that phrase suggests). Artists need to undertake their own lab
research,
extending out from their pastels to the likes of microscopes,
centrifuges, and
gels. The culture could benefit from an independent zone of art-based
biological research not so tightly policed by the paradigms of
academic,
corporate, or military science. For example, artists could pursue
research
agendas that are ignored, discredited, not commercially viable, in bad
taste,
zany, or motivated by goals such as beauty, free-ranging curiosity, or
critical
opposition of mainstream agendas. The cultural debate about allowing
research
to move in challenging directions requires a delicate balance between
fear and
embrace of the unknown. The arts can scout out all parts of that
continuum.
Polemically, I would
even claim
that if a society judges it acceptable and worthwhile for researchers
to
develop inquiries and technologies for purposes such as science or
profit, then
it is also of value for the arts to open similar investigations for
more
broadly cultural agendas. The tendency of the arts to position
themselves
automatically as critical and anti-research is unfortunate. The drive
to
explore, experiment, innovate, and understand has great survival and
cultural
value. History has shown that societyÕs skepticism about
research developments
is often unfounded and unwise. What is considered unnatural, abhorrent,
and
unethical in one era is often considered commonplace in another. The
arts,
then, can produce the space for public debate around just these
questions, not
by merely commenting from the sidelines but by conducting research
itself from
the relatively unfettered space we allocate to art.
Perhaps
most importantly, artists could pose alternative futures, either
through
undertaking research no one else would or by generating speculative
paths that
need not be taken (but could blossom in collective fantasy, find
commodified
outlets in fashion or body alterations, or just live in a realm of pure
aesthetics). A thought experiment illustrates what research-based art
might
look like in the body/biology/medicine realm. Imagine a major
ÒmodernÓ museum
circa 2050, its halls filled with hypothetical future body art I will
soon
describe. From early-twenty-first century perspectives, some of these
hypothetical artworks will seem troubling. Some are in bad taste,
possibly
unethical, or at least disruptive of important cultural values. Some
are moving
in dangerous research directions, threatening to unleash biological,
bodily,
and cultural change whose future implications we canÕt predict.
I am not sure
artists should really set out to undertake all this research. I am not
sure
science or medicine should either. The point of all science fiction is
to
exaggerate the present—in this case a present-day society desperately
in
need of deepening its discussion of future implications stemming from
present-day research. [Wilson, Stephen.
Information Arts: Intersections of
Art, Science and
Technology. MIT Press. Cambridge, 2002.]
For
the 'Dancing Stem Cell' project (in our museum's 'Hall of the Near
Living'),
mid-twenty-first-century artists have developed sculptures derived from
human
stem cells, grown from their own cell lines, and coaxed to develop into
muscle
tissue forming freely gyrating limbs. These auto-kinetic entities have
been
specially cultivated to produce dancer-like hydra motions that
alternately
seduce and repel the viewer. In the 'Autonomous Neuron' installation
nearby,
visitors scrutinize a bank of standard flat-screen monitors, observing
the
differences in digital displays controlled by neurons grown from the
brains of
humans and various animals. These disembodied cells have been carefully
cultured so that they retain some of their information-processing
capabilities
to take in stimuli and output pulses, which are then used to control
the video.
[cf Symbiotica.
Oron
Catts, Ionat Zurr, and Guy Ben-Ary http://www.tca.uwa.edu.au/]
In
the psychoanalytically inspired repressed memory project created by the
Brain
Art Center's artist-researchers, visitors can volunteer for a
memory-mining
experience. Artist-researchers have discovered particular areas in the
brain
that can be stimulated with small electrical currents to call forth
repressed
memories. In the debriefing room, new 'rememberers' have the choice of
meeting
with the on-call therapist, producing narrative or visual creations at
the 'aesthetic therapy' outpost, or removing the recovered memory with
the BAC's 'AmnesiaVac' synaptic inactivation apparatus.
Recognizing
their responsibility to support biological research as well as show its
results, community art museums include advanced technology
artist-access
research labs. Visitors can drop in to view research in progress and
talk to
artists about ongoing projects. During a special community session,
visitors
are invited to debate what projects the new designer drug system should
focus
on. The labs are also used by a joint PhD/MFA program in body-biology
arts and
research and made available to community health activists as well.
The
Web has become a major outreach tool in contemporary museums, in their
attempts
to penetrate popular culture. A consortium of museums, owned by
entertainment
conglomerate Rove Media are inaugurating a "reality" show called the
'Right Stuff.' The program maintains a sperm and egg bank stocked with
germ
lines from famous artists. Contestants compete to get the right to use
the
material for their next reproductive episode. Web audiences vote on
which
contestants seem most likely to cultivate the creative capabilities of
the
person to be born and palliate the offspring's associated emotional
disorders.
Pfizer
Pharmacology artist–drug researchers have introduced Version 4 of their
aesthetic response tune-up (ART) drug, which enhances responsiveness to
art
experiences. Virtual reality–based documentation of subjects'
experiences
with the drug during the two-month trial is presented together with
appropriate
psychotropic art. In related exhibits, the 'Sexstim Telecommunications
Project'
allows visitors to hook themselves up to the body sensor/activator
suit,,which
in turn is linked to similar suits in art spaces in Beijing and Rio de
Janiero.
Based on artists' research on the physiology of touch, these suits
allow
visitors to give and receive erotic tactile stimulation.[ Cf
Stahl Stenslie and Kirk Woolford.
CyberSM.
"http://iaaa.nl/home.html" http://iaaa.nl/home.html] Another
project, the 'Sex-change-for-a-month' intervention, allows visitors to
sign up
for short-term reversible pharmacological and physical modifications
that allow
them to experiment with switching gender for a month. Counseling and
wardrobe
consultations are included.
In
a joint venture with the athletic industry, the art group Bionics''
'3-S
Fashion Show' offers the newest prostheses, created to optimize the
speed,
strength, and stamina of the wearer. The ongoing 'Human Variability'
exhibit
features documentation of extreme human capabilities achievable without
bionics
or drugs and a display on cultural differences in facial expressions
and the
limits of sounds the human voice can produce. [Cf Arthur
Elsenaar, Remko Scha Huge Harry.
http://www.stenslie.net/stahl ]
In
the 'Nikon Microscopes Micro-organism Communication Project,' visitors
suck on
a candy-stick probe. The probe is inserted in the automated microscope
imager
and immediately all four walls are filled with live, wall-size digital
images
of micro-organisms living in the mouth of the user. Museum-goers are
invited to 'play' with the creatures by aiming sound, light, and
chemical messages at
particular organisms.[
]Cf Adam Zaretsky. E-coli
experiments
["http://www.emutagen.com//" http://www.emutagen.com//
Also, Stephen Wilson, Protozoa Games and Introspection.
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~swilson/]
Artists
working in Genentech's Bioengineering Studio and its 'Ethnic Diversity
Preservation Project' have been systematically collecting DNA from
endangered
cultures around the world. The exhibit presents the DNA 'library' in
its
current state, displaying sample DNA in cryogenically protected vials
with a
projected virtual screen in the liquid showing video documentation of
the
people, art, music, and dance of the culture whose DNA has been sampled
for the
project.
Tactical
Media Workers present two intervention reports. Artist-researchers in
the 'Human Power Recovery Project' have developed technologies for the
Third World
that allow people to use body temperature changes, methane from
flatulence, and
capacitance changes from walking to power digital devices. In the
second
report, artists imprisoned under Patriot Act 7 for unauthorized
biological
experimentation are interviewed and their projects documented on the
Web.
Like
many hip museums in 2050, a newly refurbished Museum of Modern Art
includes the
Cafe Bio-Hot, which explores the interface between entertainment and
body-based
art research in a relaxed lounge atmosphere. This month features the
'Bio-signals Dance Generator.' Each attendee is asked to wear a
wireless
bio-signal sensor that reads brainwave, pulse, perspiration, blood
chemistry,
and portable petscan technology, all matched against standard databases
of
brain area activity during dancing of various types. The music/video
generator
bases its media composition on the averaged signals from all the people
in the
club. In the shop near the checkout, a number of gifts are available.
The 'Pill
Camera' allows you to broadcast from inside your gastro-intestinal
tract and
comes boxed with a DVD of broadcasts from inside various celebrities.[ Cf Stelarc. Stomach Sculptures. http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/]
Nikon's Coolscope 8 automated
microscope
for real-time inspection of your body's microorganisms and the
educational 'Array-Pro Desktop Gene Analyzer and Recombinant Experiment
Set' get your
children started in bioengineering. [Cf Critical Art
Ensemble,
HYPERLINK "http://www.critical-art.net/" http://www.critical-art.net/ and Natalie
Jeremijenko.
http://entity.eng.yale.edu/nat/]
The
scientific and technological research featured in the art world of 2050
required significant changes in artistic skills, willingness to engage
non-validated media, institutional support, and risk-taking by members
of the
audience and critical establishment. The experimental traditions of the
arts
proved perfectly adapted for creating this alternative research zone,
with
ethics and aesthetics merging in the new corpus of bio-based art.