When artists attack...

bioart Artists blur the line between genetics and biological research and art these days reports the NY Times (registration required.) In some installations, the results are quirky but fairly benign. But artists who work with living organisms and get into the fuzzy area of live meeting artistic imperatives are coming up against anti-terrorism laws and prosecutors who may end up making them martyrs. "Called bioart or wetware by some of its practitioners, the field is growing rapidly in the United States and Europe, and it is producing bizarre and sometimes disturbing work that seems sprung right from the pages of Philip K. Dick or Koji Suzuki, except that the science involved is not fiction." My friend Eduardo Kac has done transgenic art for years, including his project to make Alba, the glow in the dark bunny (see his site for Alba's saga.) Eduardo's work is provocative and meant to make people think about the science in their lives but it has never been toxic. But as this article points out "... much of the work is provocative and, depending on your Brave New World tolerance, disturbing: creating "victimless" meat by growing tiny steaks from biopsied frog cells and then eating the steaks; using bone cells from pigs to grow wing-shaped objects, a play on the "when pigs fly" trope; coaxing cactuses into sprouting humanlike hair; growing tissue in a petri dish that could theoretically be marketed as a hymen replacement." And some of the artists are releasing organisms out into the world or trying to produce uber-weeds. This seems kind of quirky, but signals a direction in science and art that is not going away.