Feeling the life (original) (raw)
Related papers
2006
By contrasting selected works of contemporary art with recent scientific develop- ments, it is possible to demonstrate that art today not only serves to comment on science, but also represents a form of research and knowledge production in its own right, though one belonging to a radically different epistemological tra- dition. Moving beyond the postulated dichotomy of the objective sciences and the subjective arts, contemporary art shows us that art is no longer limited to the production of beautiful artefacts, but has established its role as a legitimate form of knowledge production in its own right. The engagement of art with science ranges from artists’ iconological handling of scientific imaging to research projects executed as artistic endeavours by artists working in the laboratory. In the last two decades we have seen a number of ar- tists leave the traditional artistic playground to work instead in scientific contexts such as the laboratories of molecular biologists. Such artistic interventions in ge- netics and biological forms have made possible new means of artistic expression and art forms, like ‘Transgenic Art’ and ‘Bio-Art’. The use of technologies from the field of current research in the life science by artists ranges from tissue enginee- ring to stemcell technologies and even transgenic animals, a phenomenon that raises ethical questions with regard to both scientific and artistic endeavours. Visual illustrations have always been used in the natural sciences to make visible scientific relationships, to visualize theories, or to graphically capture the results of scientific experiments. Today the visualizations in modern Life Sciences range from advanced image technologies that offer evermore detailed views of the mi- crostructures of the organic world, to imagebased computer simulations that are no longer based upon a physical-biological reference system and that open up a new biotheoretical space, to representations become life, such as transgenetic animals and clones.
A touching experiment: Tissue culture, tacit knowledge, and the making of bioart
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
In this paper I present an experimental project carried out at The University of Western Australia's art and science organisation, SymbioticA. The paper looks to the embodied practice of learning to make bioart through consideration of the tools and protocols required in the making process. In so doing, the paper traces through the process of “making” by attending to the sense of touch in the laboratory. As an analytical guide, I work through Polanyi's concept of tacit knowledge, which I approach through a focus on the sense of touch, to consider the ways in which proximate knowledge is generated at SymbioticA between artist, objects and subjects. This is knowledge that not only emerges to enable the experimental project, but which also re‐works it. Such an approach provides mechanisms for close consideration of the various actants with which knowledge is generated. In so doing, I offer a post‐phenomenological account of embodied practice in the space of the laboratory to think through the roles of the somatic senses and non‐human others, as well as artists themselves, in the acquisition of knowledge at SymbioticA. Deploying an experimental project as research method is, I argue, a valid methodological manoeuvre for geographic studies into experimental spaces such as the laboratory as it enables unforeseen lines of inquiry to emerge through “doing.”