Biotechnology as Mediality: Strategies of organic media art

Fringe biotechnology

“…The DIY De-Victimizers, Urine Journey and other artworks, like Stranger Visions, are also received differently from biohackers' innovative products due to their status as art, and reach a different audience (see e.g. Hauser, 2006;Mitchell, 2010;Wohlsen, 2011). Fringe biotechnology encompasses a wider array of projects, approaches and events than the ones I have shown in these pages.…”

“…Just as most accounts of DIYbio mention art practices only briefly, the numerous scholars writing about bioart have not discussed it in relation to other cultural engagements with wet biology (with the sometime exception of design), but rather focused on the material process of creating the artworks (Reichle, 2009), their ethical issues (Levy, 2006), their status as living, material objects (Bakke, 2008;Hauser, 2006) and how the potentialities of the biotechnology in question might be explored through the artwork (Andrews, 2007;Anker and Nelkin, 2004). Artists active in this field see themselves first and foremost as working with art, and often work with multiple media, also outside of the biotechnological range.…”

“…Delfanti, 2013); researchers' need for cheap and available equipment and corporations' drive to make a profit through patented essentials; stakeholders' wish to advance the technology and worries about biosecurity risks (Schmidt, 2008) -to mention just a few. In diverse ways, fringe biotechnologists engage with the issues at hand in the field, both through materialising possibilities and through discussing them with a wider public (Hauser, 2006;Meyer, 2014).…”

Amplifying Ambiguities: Art on the Fringes of Biotechnology

“…Since the mid-2000s, theoreticians have referred to a "rematerialization" of bioart (Hauser 2005(Hauser , 2006Karafyllis 2008). As Jens Hauser has pointed out, "The former fascination with the 'codes of life' in computer art inspired by biology is receding and making way for a phenomenological confrontation with wetwork" (2008: 87).…”

“…As expressed by Benjamin Forster, "artists are given the right to think", 32 and they make that thought manifest in their artworks. Bioart is often described as "presentation", rather than "representation", of the living and of the concepts it engages with (Capucci & Torriani 2007;Hauser 2006Hauser , 2008.…”