杏吧原创

Why would you give a cactus human hair? Orgrow wings for pigs? And as for redesigningthe butterfly. Artists are appropriating biotechnologyfortheirown ends. New杏吧原创 tracked down three of them working in this wild new place: Laura Cinti, Oron Catts and Marta de Menezes.

Laura Cinti

Laura Cinti鈥檚 transgenic cactus has been shown at the University of Hertford, UK, and Fresh Art 2002 in London. She is researching interactive art at Goldsmith鈥檚 College London, and her next art project 鈥� c-lab 鈥� in collaboration with Howard Boland will begin online. She grew up in South Africa and lives in London.

Why a cactus with human hair?

Cactuses are not known for their beauty, and they are seen as fleshy, meaty and monolithic. I鈥檓 interested in the anti-sexuality that these phallic stems with extruding spines signify. Hair is a sign of reproduction, a sign of our bodies changing, becoming or being sexual. So the cactus with hair becomes a sexual symbol. I think this perversion resonates with the cultural climate surrounding genetic engineering: transgenics is seen as anti-sexual, asexual, because it directly interferes with the natural reproductive process. The Cactus Project brings that perversion into focus and reverses it. The cactus with its hairs coming out is showing all the desires, all the signs of sexuality. It doesn鈥檛 want to be trapped. It wants to be released. The desire is to enter the world as a species from a mythical landscape. I鈥檓 interested in this desire, this wanting to come out.

What did you do to the cactus?

It is a transgenic artwork involving the fusion of human genetic material into the cactus genome. The result is a cactus that expresses human hair.

What has been the public reaction?

Bald men are particularly interested in the work. There has been lots of negative reaction. Someone described the cactus as an organic dodo. Someone else found it humorous. People confront me with, 鈥淲hat do you think you鈥檙e doing, playing God?鈥� One scientist screamed at me that my work showed an extremely negative view of biotechnology. I wanted people to be involved in the whole project so I showed the cactus, the lab reports, emails about the work. Lots of people have tried to buy them 鈥� but they鈥檙e not for sale.

What has it been like working with scientists?

The response from biotechnologists in the US was phenomenal; from those in the UK it was largely negative. They said that genetics should be used only to serve an ever-growing population. I ended up working with biotechnologists in the UK, but there are problems for an artist. I am disadvantaged by my lack of technical understanding. I have no ownership over the technical processes and my contract means I cannot name the lab, and that I have to be supervised when I want access to the cactus in the lab. I had a lot of debate with them.

There were originally eight cactuses. How many are alive?

Two. They鈥檝e been imploding, shrivelling.

What鈥檚 your ambition with this project?

I鈥檇 like to set one of my cactuses free.

Do you plan to do more work with bioengineered life forms?

Transgenesis has become an important part of our existence. Transgenic crops are part of our landscapes, transgenic animals populate farms. It was imperative for me to work in the medium of genetics. All of a sudden myths, reality and borderlines were here. I鈥檓 working with a collaborator, Howard Boland. We are planning a transplantation project, which includes planting a transgenic in the wild, not as a political work, but to highlight issues and processes by being subtle and violent.

What was going though your mind while you were making this piece.

My ideas evolved as the project evolved. At the beginning it was fascination. I was constantly documenting the work. I became very close to the cactuses. My work is about research and exploration.

Is beauty part of your artistic aim?

You can see it in some of my work. The cactus itself is soft and succulent.

Oron Catts

Pig Wings is part of Tissue Culture and Art, set up by Finnish-born artist Oron Catts and UK-born artist Ionat Zurr. TCA works out of SymbioticA lab at the University of Western Australia. Its latest project is growing victimless leather

Why pig wings?

We took the statement 鈥減igs could fly鈥�, which was typical of the kind of unrealistic biotech type stuff being said, and decided to literally grow pigs鈥� wings both as a critique and to explore the patent absurdity of it. It represents our response as artists to the near future which contains semi-living entities 鈥� objects that are partly alive and partly constructed. They raise huge ethical and epistemological questions which people haven鈥檛 begun to think about.

How did you grow the wings?

We harvested pig bone marrow stem cells left over from scientific experiments. Then we either grew them into two-dimensional layers for around four months and then wrapped them around biopolymer constructs, or we grew them in tissue flasks and created cell suspensions that were seeded onto constructs in a microgravity bioreactor, which allowed them to grow in three dimensions. Once we had the semi-living tissue wings we took them and fixed them with formalin, then dried them and coated them with gold to preserve them.

Don鈥檛 you kill them when you dry them?

That is one of the many ambiguities of the whole project. We are showing both 鈥渓ive鈥� and 鈥渄ead鈥� pig wings in galleries. We allow the audience to take part in our 鈥渇eeding ritual鈥� by cleaning out the old nutrients and adding new ones to the bioreactor. We also involve people in a 鈥渒illing ritual鈥� where we let them take the pig wings out. These are both extreme acts of violence and of care.

It sounds as if you had to learn a lot of practical biotechnology.

We did. While I was at Harvard I was lucky enough to work with Joseph Vacanti, one of the pioneers in tissue engineering. We also worked on new techniques with the artist in residence at MIT, Adam Zaretsky. These involve using vibrations from music as a method for dynamic seeding.

You played music to the pig cells to make them grow?

Oh yes! Before Napster collapsed we downloaded lots of pig songs 鈥� from Looney Tunes to heavy metal 鈥� and played them to the cells while they were seeding in the bioreactor. We did seem to get better distribution of the cells when we played the music.

What do the scientists 鈥� and your audiences 鈥� make of all this?

Many of them are very interested. We don鈥檛 work like many artists, who tend to commission scientists as if they are artisans. We work with them as equals. Other scientists don鈥檛 like what we鈥檙e doing at all, they are insulted by it, they don鈥檛 think it is reverential enough, too tongue-in-cheek. As for the lay public, they often feel challenged by the discrepancy between our cultural view of what life is, and by what we can now do with bioengineering. This is at the core of the revulsion and fear they feel.

Why are your pig wings these particular colours and shape?

Historically and culturally, the kind of wing represented a creature as either angelic, like the bird wings used for angels, or evil, like the vampire鈥檚 bat wing. But there is a third option which is mostly culture-free: the pterosaurs. We created all three shapes and added the cultural colours that go with them: so blue for angelic, red for evil and green for the dinosaurs.

Marta de Menezes

Marta de Menezes has spent the past few years in research labs 鈥減roving that labs can be art studios鈥�. Portuguese-born, she is artist-in-residence at Imperial College London

Could you describe what you鈥檝e done here?

I became incredibly excited at the idea that I could create an art-piece in a butterfly. It would have the characteristics of a painting, but also something more important because the butterfly was already a life form itself. My butterflies have wing patterns never before seen in nature. I created them by interfering with their normal developmental mechanisms with a very thin needle while the butterfly was still in the cocoon. You can do this to a high degree of accuracy.

What gave you the idea?

I read an article in Nature about the technique, in which the scientists said they could predict the outcome of the manipulation. The crucial part was knowing I could control the outcome because then I knew I could design something. It鈥檚 like learning a technique in painting: you need to master the technique to get what you want out of the painting.

Why did you alter only one wing?

Butterfly wings in nature are symmetrical. By changing one wing I would be changing the butterfly into something that was definitely not natural. That was the game: was it natural or not natural? Everything in the butterfly is natural because I didn鈥檛 add anything: I just changed the pattern. But that is not natural. It makes you wonder exactly what 鈥渘atural鈥� is.

Are your butterflies beautiful?

They were already beautiful. I wasn鈥檛 interested in making them more beautiful. Art is not really about that today. It鈥檚 about questioning, and what you can do with what you鈥檝e got.

Did people like your work?

People were very shocked at first. They didn鈥檛 think it a good idea. But a lot depends on how you present work and how people perceive it. The first time I showed only photographs. People didn鈥檛 understand that the butterflies were alive. The reaction was a lot more friendly when I exhibited them for real in a greenhouse.

What鈥檚 next?

Next year I plan to make the stripes of zebrafish vertical instead of horizontal so that they look more like zebras. I鈥檇 do this through selection and breeding, so the changes would be inherited.

Is that art?

Yes, I鈥檓 not trying to answer anything or find out why or how it is happening. I鈥檓 just trying to get the visual result. My aims are different from those of a scientist. That鈥檚 what makes my work art.