BioArt

BioArt is an art practice where artists work with biology, live tissues, bacteria, living organisms, and life processes. Using scientific processes and practices such as biology and life science practices, microscopy, and biotechnology (including technologies such as genetic engineering, tissue culture, and cloning) the artworks are produced in laboratories, galleries, or artists' studios. The scope of BioArt is a range considered by some artists to be strictly limited to "living forms", while other artists include art that uses the imagery of contemporary medicine and biological research, or require that it address a controversy or blind spot posed by the very character of the life sciences.[1]

Bioart originated at the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century. Although BioArtists work with living matter, there is some debate as to the stages at which matter can be considered to be alive or living. Creating living beings and practicing in the life sciences brings about ethical, social, and aesthetic inquiry.[2] With his essay “Biotechnology and Art” from 1981, Peter Weibel introduced the term Bioart, and defined an art movement that uses biological systems as a means of artistic expression.[3]

The creation of living beings and the study of the biological sciences bring with them ethical, social and aesthetic questions. Within Bio Art there is a debate about whether any form of artistic engagement with the biosciences and their social consequences (e.g. in the form of images from medicine) should be viewed as part of the art movement, or whether only such works of art, that were created in the laboratory are classified as organic art.[4][5]

  1. ^ Pentecost, Claire (2008). "Outfitting the Laboratory of the Symbolic: Toward a Critical Inventory of Bioart". In Beatrice, da Costa (ed.). Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism and Technoscience. The MIT Press. p. 110. ISBN 978-0-262-04249-9.
  2. ^ Solon, Olivia (28 July 2011). "Bioart: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Using Living Tissue as a Medium". Wired. Retrieved 2 October 2022.
  3. ^ Peter Weibel (1981), M.E.A. Schmutzer (ed.), "Biotechnologie und Kunst", Technik und Gesellschaft. Symposion der technischen Universität Wien in Lech am Arlberg, vol. 19, Wien: Springer, pp. 158–169
  4. ^ Ingeborg Reichle (2018). "Bio-Art: Die Kunst für das 21. Jahrhundert". KUNSTFORUM International. Retrieved 2021-08-05.
  5. ^ Eduardo Kac (2007), Signs Of Life. Bio Art and Beyond, Cambridge, London: The MIT Press, p. 19, ISBN 978-0-262-11293-2