hi everyone my name is fat hamidi and
i'm going to present our paper entitled
turning the invisible visible
transdisciplinary bioart explorations in
human dna interaction
on behalf of my colleagues lydia
astamato lisa shaifeli
ryan hammond and nissa azkarali hoffman
bioart is an art practice in which
artists work with living organisms
including animal plants fungi and others
for artistic and creative purposes
some examples include alba in which the
artist
genetically modified a rabbit
to glow in the dark and nature in which
the artists work with the development
process of butterflies to create
patterns on their wings
and a contest run by the american
society of microbiology in which
contestants
can draw on agar with colorful
microorganisms the contribution of this
paper is too false
first we investigate the current
perspectives of bioartists
on working at the intersection of
science and art and also
second we report on a first-hand account
of how to creatively interact with
living organisms
on a molecular level through current
do-it-yourself synthetic biology methods
these contributions add to the
conversation at the intersection of
human computer interaction and bioart
for the first part of our paper we
interviewed
six spy artists we found
that bio artists often describe their
work in terms that invoke skills and
epistemologies that cross disciplines
towards a shared collaborative goal a
quality that we identify as
transdisciplinary fluency
for example p1 said i wanted to develop
an art piece that was in effect a
biosensor
a meter of whether the genes had been
synthesized
we're trying to do it in e coli and
we're working with designing the genetic
constructs to create the different steps
of that pathway another finding
was that bioartists pointed to a sense
of familiarity
including through cultural symbolism and
the shared quality of being alive or
supporting life
with the organisms that they work with
this quality contrasts with the dna as
code metaphor
that sometimes is used in synthetic
biology for example
p5 said as i told you you're working
with another living organism
you're also a living organism
finally we found that bioart often
requires a specialized knowledge and
equipment
necessitating artists to work together
with scientists to negotiate access
and that this negotiation in turn
increases access to biology for diverse
audiences
in the second part of the paper we
describe in
our experience with human dna
interaction
through creating transgenic
poetry-infused wine
the project revolves around the famous
line of sufi poetry by hafez
the 14th century persian poet that
revolves around teams of transformation
and persistence through love
[Music]
in this project we first encoded the
poem into morse code
and then into a viable dna code
we then fabricated this dna code and
inserted it
into a plasmid backbone
after amplifying the dna and verifying
that the resulting plasmid included the
sequence with the poetry
using an enzyme digest on an
electrophoresis
gel we transform the linearized dna
with living yeast cells and selected for
yeast cells that contain
the poetry sequence we then grew the
yeast overnight
and combined it with grape juice to make
transgenic
wine roz pays homage to the resilient
spirit of persian mystic poets
who use the power of metaphors and
linguistic transmutations
to capture vivid experiences of personal
and spiritual transformation
additionally its engagement with the
process of winemaking
which is taboo in this cultural context
parallels the ethically ambiguous
practice of genetically modifying living
organisms
in conclusion we found that bioart
offers exciting modes of inquiry
for human computer interaction that are
inherently transdisciplinary
and can be characterized as art research
additionally we found that interacting
with living organism
at a molecular level can provide insight
on structures of access and power
that surround our relationship with them
and the environments
we live in thank you very much i'm happy
to answer questions via email
and please see the paper for more
details