From: JD Talasek
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 22:32:46 -0400
Marvin,
thank you for the comments regarding the challenge of providing venues for the type of work discussed in this symposium.
First, I would like to acknowledge how the origin of this symposim can be traced back to Paradise Now: Picturing the Genetic Revolution. When the exhibition traveled to UMBC’s Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, it provided the catalyst for dialogue between our two institutions culminating in the creation and co-sponsorship of this symposium. The exhibition introduced me to the art work of our facilitator Suzanne Anker as well as others who we have exhibited at the National Academy of Sciences.
You mentioned the “entrepreneurial spirit” it takes to create venues to show this type of work. As implied in your post, the real challenge is creating and educating an audience. After all, the work that has been discussed so far is introducing an unfamiliar dialogue and process to the community which still all too often judges the quality of work based upon what would look good hanging in one’s living room.
So within the context of this section on social and cultural concerns, I’m curious to hear from our diverse experts on the issues faced by venues hosting bioart exhibitions. If such venues are liaisons between artist and public, how can they better facilitate this connection? What is the critics’ role in this?
JD Talasek
Director Office of Exhibitions and Cultural Programs
National Academy of Sciences
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Monday, March 12, 2007
Carnie: Social And Cultural Implications Of Bioscience
From: Andrew Carnie
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:48:46 -0400 (EDT)
Re Session Three: Social And Cultural Implications Of Bioscience and Suzanne Anker's question about genetics.
In my own work on genetics making a piece for the Mendel museum in Brno in the Czech Republic, called Things Happen,
http://www.tram.ndo.co.uk/things%20happen%203.htm
I had long discussions with Bernadette Modell, Emeritus Professor of Community Genetics, UCL Centre for Health Informatics and Multi-professional Education, London, a populationgeneticist. The understanding of genetic disease and how they were passed fromone generation to another and how in some case the knowledge held by familiesand social groups was used to counter act such affects and was significantlytouching. A small understanding of this field gained from making this work made me feel very strongly that we are all interrelated and was powerful antidote to Margret Thatcher’s, I can hardly bring myself to type her name, conviction “They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society”, October 31 1987. I would hope that contact with knowledge of genes and genetics through art and science would help us realise our interconnectivity and interdependence.
Andrew Carnie
Artist and Lecturer
Winchester School of Art
Southampton University
Website www.andrewcarnie.co.uk
to post a response, click on the "comment" button below
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Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:48:46 -0400 (EDT)
Re Session Three: Social And Cultural Implications Of Bioscience and Suzanne Anker's question about genetics.
In my own work on genetics making a piece for the Mendel museum in Brno in the Czech Republic, called Things Happen,
http://www.tram.ndo.co.uk/things%20happen%203.htm
I had long discussions with Bernadette Modell, Emeritus Professor of Community Genetics, UCL Centre for Health Informatics and Multi-professional Education, London, a populationgeneticist. The understanding of genetic disease and how they were passed fromone generation to another and how in some case the knowledge held by familiesand social groups was used to counter act such affects and was significantlytouching. A small understanding of this field gained from making this work made me feel very strongly that we are all interrelated and was powerful antidote to Margret Thatcher’s, I can hardly bring myself to type her name, conviction “They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society”, October 31 1987. I would hope that contact with knowledge of genes and genetics through art and science would help us realise our interconnectivity and interdependence.
Andrew Carnie
Artist and Lecturer
Winchester School of Art
Southampton University
Website www.andrewcarnie.co.uk
to post a response, click on the "comment" button below
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Heiferman: That audience issue....
From: Marvin Heiferman
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:07:37 -0400
Getting back to the issue of audience, and the role of art-sci in the art world, I’m happy to read in posts that artists are finding their own venues and making their own opportunities to show works and to generate dialog. As Suzanne suggested, the experiences around the exhibition Paradise Now: Picturing the Genetic Revolution, (which opened at Exit Art in New York in 1999 and traveled for a couple of years) and critical responses to it helped me to understand that the art world is not necessarily the best place to go to have a discussion about images, their meaning, and impact.
Yes the exhibition got a fair amount of attention; it was a novel project we were lucky enough to have some foundation money to fund, market and promote it. What was interesting to me about Paradise Now—and particularly in its first and full iteration in New York--was the opportunity to see how art and science could co-exist in an exhibition space--whether and how, for example, scientific data and information could be passed along to viewers; how for instance displays of genetically modified foods could be juxtaposed with art works speculating about how similar products might impact our lives, the environment, etc. The exhibition included objects including the packaging for a porn tape entitled “Designer Genes,” one of Dr. Watson’s original models for DNA from the early 1950s, images from science fiction films, bumpe! r stickers from organic farming groups, as well as very provocative art works that directly or not so directly eluded to the relationship of genetic research to race, eugenics, and profiteering. The more than 40 artists in the exhibition ran the gamut from scientists-turned-artists to conceptual provocateurs to artists who aestheticized science. And that, I think, is what made the exhibition interesting. Exhibitions that have tackled similar subject matter since seem, to me, to have taken a more predictable, one-sided, accusatory approach to the subject matter, genetics is bad/art is good.
I had hoped the exhibition would trigger discussion. And it did. And it didn’t. It did among the art-sci crowd because the project was big, visible, eclectic, and gave credit to the artists who had been working, unheralded, in the area for years. The exhibition proved enormously popular for school groups--lots of students came, from elementary school age kids to groups of interns from NYU Medical School. The exhibition space was almost always crowded. One of the most interesting events was an evening in which artists from the exhibition met with research fellows at Rockefeller University and after a few drinks some lively discussions kicked in, an! d some interdisciplinary collaborations that started that evening are still ongoing.
The show got lots of press, but what it didn’t get was “serious” attention in the art press. To the art world, the exhibition seemed like a novelty event, perhaps a little too in-touch with the real world for comfort. “Serious” critics had a hard time getting serious about the work in the show. Because much of the work dealt directly (sometimes analytically, sometimes fancifully) with pressing, specific, and sometimes disturbing issues, I think it was easy for some critics to dismiss the art as being illustrative. Which is not to say that some of it wasn’t. But with over three-dozen artists, there were a lot of history, ideas and images (some pretty spectacular) flying around. I suspect that one problem I saw in the art world’s response to this, and to similar projects, is that the art world likes to set and control its own agenda, and to select the issues that it thinks are important. And for the most part, those issues--while they are often provocative, engaging, pleasurable, critical, whatever—are not often or terribly consequential.
The art world gets its power by creating a little distance between itself and the real world. I think the science part of the art-sci equation makes people nervous. Which is why (in addition to logistical issues) the exhibition, when it traveled, was pretty much stripped of its scientific and popular culture components. It became, more clearly, an art exhibition. And even so, it tended to travel not to stand alone arts institutions, but to university galleries, where it engendered interesting inter-disciplinary programming. But I still can’t forget what it was like to sit on a panel at Carnegie Mellon, where the show traveled to, and listed to the director of a local contemporary art mu! seum who just dismissed the whole art-sci endeavor--the engagement of dozens of artists in scientific images and issues--as silly, and never felt the need to explain why.
For me, the opportunity to work with scientists on exhibitions has been, and continues to be eye-opening and rewarding. I’m working on a major exhibition project now for the Smithsonian, about how photography has not only been used by, but has changed every discipline that makes use of it. I’ve been lucky enough to meet and talk with astronomers, natural historians, physicists, historians from the Air and Space Museum, keepers of the earliest known daguerreotypes of the moon. The images and the conversations are incredible. I feel lucky to meet and work with people in the sciences, where imagination and thinking routinely create and bounce off of images. Which brings me back to the art ! world. The commercial art world is, despite it’s own hype, pretty parochial. And really, most collectors and/or museums don’t want to hang what they believe are scary pictures up over the couch or the admissions desk.
The point is that images of all sorts that are being made in laboratories and in the course of research are (a) interesting and revelatory to look at and (b) may actually change the way we understand our lives (all of our lives) and the world we live in. I don’t think those are the kinds of ambitions that fuel the art world of the 21st century. That said, I know there’s lots of artists out there with a genuine interest in the issues and images of science, and I support their interest and their work. I also applaud the dedication and entrepreneurial spirit it take to create venues to show that work and opportunities to discuss it, like this conference.
Marvin Heiferman
mheiferman@mindspring.com
to post a response, click on the "comment" button below
to return to the main page, to go www.visualcultureandbioscience.org
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:07:37 -0400
Getting back to the issue of audience, and the role of art-sci in the art world, I’m happy to read in posts that artists are finding their own venues and making their own opportunities to show works and to generate dialog. As Suzanne suggested, the experiences around the exhibition Paradise Now: Picturing the Genetic Revolution, (which opened at Exit Art in New York in 1999 and traveled for a couple of years) and critical responses to it helped me to understand that the art world is not necessarily the best place to go to have a discussion about images, their meaning, and impact.
Yes the exhibition got a fair amount of attention; it was a novel project we were lucky enough to have some foundation money to fund, market and promote it. What was interesting to me about Paradise Now—and particularly in its first and full iteration in New York--was the opportunity to see how art and science could co-exist in an exhibition space--whether and how, for example, scientific data and information could be passed along to viewers; how for instance displays of genetically modified foods could be juxtaposed with art works speculating about how similar products might impact our lives, the environment, etc. The exhibition included objects including the packaging for a porn tape entitled “Designer Genes,” one of Dr. Watson’s original models for DNA from the early 1950s, images from science fiction films, bumpe! r stickers from organic farming groups, as well as very provocative art works that directly or not so directly eluded to the relationship of genetic research to race, eugenics, and profiteering. The more than 40 artists in the exhibition ran the gamut from scientists-turned-artists to conceptual provocateurs to artists who aestheticized science. And that, I think, is what made the exhibition interesting. Exhibitions that have tackled similar subject matter since seem, to me, to have taken a more predictable, one-sided, accusatory approach to the subject matter, genetics is bad/art is good.
I had hoped the exhibition would trigger discussion. And it did. And it didn’t. It did among the art-sci crowd because the project was big, visible, eclectic, and gave credit to the artists who had been working, unheralded, in the area for years. The exhibition proved enormously popular for school groups--lots of students came, from elementary school age kids to groups of interns from NYU Medical School. The exhibition space was almost always crowded. One of the most interesting events was an evening in which artists from the exhibition met with research fellows at Rockefeller University and after a few drinks some lively discussions kicked in, an! d some interdisciplinary collaborations that started that evening are still ongoing.
The show got lots of press, but what it didn’t get was “serious” attention in the art press. To the art world, the exhibition seemed like a novelty event, perhaps a little too in-touch with the real world for comfort. “Serious” critics had a hard time getting serious about the work in the show. Because much of the work dealt directly (sometimes analytically, sometimes fancifully) with pressing, specific, and sometimes disturbing issues, I think it was easy for some critics to dismiss the art as being illustrative. Which is not to say that some of it wasn’t. But with over three-dozen artists, there were a lot of history, ideas and images (some pretty spectacular) flying around. I suspect that one problem I saw in the art world’s response to this, and to similar projects, is that the art world likes to set and control its own agenda, and to select the issues that it thinks are important. And for the most part, those issues--while they are often provocative, engaging, pleasurable, critical, whatever—are not often or terribly consequential.
The art world gets its power by creating a little distance between itself and the real world. I think the science part of the art-sci equation makes people nervous. Which is why (in addition to logistical issues) the exhibition, when it traveled, was pretty much stripped of its scientific and popular culture components. It became, more clearly, an art exhibition. And even so, it tended to travel not to stand alone arts institutions, but to university galleries, where it engendered interesting inter-disciplinary programming. But I still can’t forget what it was like to sit on a panel at Carnegie Mellon, where the show traveled to, and listed to the director of a local contemporary art mu! seum who just dismissed the whole art-sci endeavor--the engagement of dozens of artists in scientific images and issues--as silly, and never felt the need to explain why.
For me, the opportunity to work with scientists on exhibitions has been, and continues to be eye-opening and rewarding. I’m working on a major exhibition project now for the Smithsonian, about how photography has not only been used by, but has changed every discipline that makes use of it. I’ve been lucky enough to meet and talk with astronomers, natural historians, physicists, historians from the Air and Space Museum, keepers of the earliest known daguerreotypes of the moon. The images and the conversations are incredible. I feel lucky to meet and work with people in the sciences, where imagination and thinking routinely create and bounce off of images. Which brings me back to the art ! world. The commercial art world is, despite it’s own hype, pretty parochial. And really, most collectors and/or museums don’t want to hang what they believe are scary pictures up over the couch or the admissions desk.
The point is that images of all sorts that are being made in laboratories and in the course of research are (a) interesting and revelatory to look at and (b) may actually change the way we understand our lives (all of our lives) and the world we live in. I don’t think those are the kinds of ambitions that fuel the art world of the 21st century. That said, I know there’s lots of artists out there with a genuine interest in the issues and images of science, and I support their interest and their work. I also applaud the dedication and entrepreneurial spirit it take to create venues to show that work and opportunities to discuss it, like this conference.
Marvin Heiferman
mheiferman@mindspring.com
to post a response, click on the "comment" button below
to return to the main page, to go www.visualcultureandbioscience.org
Mironov: How to train BioArtists?
From: Vladimir Mironov
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 14:10:40 -0500
We have similar problem in tissue engineering at the beginning.
The question was - Do we need to teach engineering to biologists or biology to engineers? The answer was - biologists and engineers must jointly teach new generation of scientists to new evolving profession - tissue engineering. May be artists and bioscientists can jointly teach bioartist.
Learning of anatomy and anatomic drawing is already an integral part of classic artist training. Who knows may be bioartist training program based on seamless integration art and biology training will be very popular and successful. At least from my perspective there is definitely something to explore. It is interesting to know are there any demand or room for such specialists in art and entertainment industry?
Vladimir Mironov
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Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 14:10:40 -0500
We have similar problem in tissue engineering at the beginning.
The question was - Do we need to teach engineering to biologists or biology to engineers? The answer was - biologists and engineers must jointly teach new generation of scientists to new evolving profession - tissue engineering. May be artists and bioscientists can jointly teach bioartist.
Learning of anatomy and anatomic drawing is already an integral part of classic artist training. Who knows may be bioartist training program based on seamless integration art and biology training will be very popular and successful. At least from my perspective there is definitely something to explore. It is interesting to know are there any demand or room for such specialists in art and entertainment industry?
Vladimir Mironov
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Carnie: Jill response
From: Andrew Carnie
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:58:44 -0400 (EDT)
Dear Jill
What I had in mind was that one actually needed training to undertakecollaboration. That both parties, scientists and artists alike needed tounderstand better the nature of collaboration what it might mean and how tonegotiate the pitfalls. Then after this you are right both parties needtraining on what the respective domains of each area are. Then you can get into the experience of what the particular areas of each discipline are and theexchange of specific knowledge. A three-stage process at the least?
yours
Andrew
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Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:58:44 -0400 (EDT)
Dear Jill
What I had in mind was that one actually needed training to undertakecollaboration. That both parties, scientists and artists alike needed tounderstand better the nature of collaboration what it might mean and how tonegotiate the pitfalls. Then after this you are right both parties needtraining on what the respective domains of each area are. Then you can get into the experience of what the particular areas of each discipline are and theexchange of specific knowledge. A three-stage process at the least?
yours
Andrew
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Duster: some core issues -- session 3
From: Troy Duster
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 11:37:30 -0500
It is daunting to try to come up with an account of core issues in a few paragraphs, but fools do rush in, so here goes:
1) The relationship between bioscience and society is contingent on the particular society in which the bioscience is translated into practice and policy. Here are two easy examples. Genetic screening and testing of a population in a society with universal health care is much less of a contentious issue than gene screening and testing in a society in which insurance companies can root out and exclude those with asymptomatic “genetic” conditions – from late onset disorders such as Huntington’s to likely risks of those with BRCA genes. Or second, imagine the different rate of acceptance by Ashkenazic Jews for Tay-Sachs screening done by Michael Kaback in the last two decades of the 20th century (a near complete success story) versus a similar hypothetical program in the Third Reich.
2) Two kinds of national DNA databases are in our future. The Portuguese government has already approved “everybody in the DNA bank” legislation in early 2005. The British now have over 4 million samples from their population in a databank, with an explicit goal of getting a quarter of the population in by 2010. One such database is designed for forensic purposes. As in my brief note above, acceptance, compliance, or strong resistance will depend upon the kind of society. The British were primed and ready for expanding DNA databanks from 30 years of acceptance of what in the US would be resisted (ACLU) as draconian counter-terrorist activities spinning out of the northern Ireland conflict (cameras, cameras, cameras everywhere… DNA dragnets were pioneered in the UK, etc.). But a health-inspired national DNA databank is also a likely development in some societies… again, note the conditions from the first entry above.
3) In both China and India, there is the beginning realization that sex selection practices now assisted by technological breakthroughs (from expensive amniocentesis, all the way to cheap ultrasound) are dramatically distorting male and female relations, potential mating opportunities, and will have profound effect upon social and economic policies that few could have been imagined. The book, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population, is a harbinger as ominous as global warming scenarios (e.g., for Polar Bear extinction) about the myriad of possible spinoffs from sex selection. The Chinese government is now trying to initiate some “correctives” and incentives, but 30 years of female infanticide via selective abortion is not so easily “corrected” – thus, for contemporary China – and for the next decades, lots of “bare branches.”
Troy Duster
to post a response, click on the "comment" button below
to return to the main page, to go www.visualcultureandbioscience.org
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 11:37:30 -0500
It is daunting to try to come up with an account of core issues in a few paragraphs, but fools do rush in, so here goes:
1) The relationship between bioscience and society is contingent on the particular society in which the bioscience is translated into practice and policy. Here are two easy examples. Genetic screening and testing of a population in a society with universal health care is much less of a contentious issue than gene screening and testing in a society in which insurance companies can root out and exclude those with asymptomatic “genetic” conditions – from late onset disorders such as Huntington’s to likely risks of those with BRCA genes. Or second, imagine the different rate of acceptance by Ashkenazic Jews for Tay-Sachs screening done by Michael Kaback in the last two decades of the 20th century (a near complete success story) versus a similar hypothetical program in the Third Reich.
2) Two kinds of national DNA databases are in our future. The Portuguese government has already approved “everybody in the DNA bank” legislation in early 2005. The British now have over 4 million samples from their population in a databank, with an explicit goal of getting a quarter of the population in by 2010. One such database is designed for forensic purposes. As in my brief note above, acceptance, compliance, or strong resistance will depend upon the kind of society. The British were primed and ready for expanding DNA databanks from 30 years of acceptance of what in the US would be resisted (ACLU) as draconian counter-terrorist activities spinning out of the northern Ireland conflict (cameras, cameras, cameras everywhere… DNA dragnets were pioneered in the UK, etc.). But a health-inspired national DNA databank is also a likely development in some societies… again, note the conditions from the first entry above.
3) In both China and India, there is the beginning realization that sex selection practices now assisted by technological breakthroughs (from expensive amniocentesis, all the way to cheap ultrasound) are dramatically distorting male and female relations, potential mating opportunities, and will have profound effect upon social and economic policies that few could have been imagined. The book, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population, is a harbinger as ominous as global warming scenarios (e.g., for Polar Bear extinction) about the myriad of possible spinoffs from sex selection. The Chinese government is now trying to initiate some “correctives” and incentives, but 30 years of female infanticide via selective abortion is not so easily “corrected” – thus, for contemporary China – and for the next decades, lots of “bare branches.”
Troy Duster
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Thacker: Living Removable Tattoo as a BioArt?
From: Eugene Thacker
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:23:59 -0400 (EDT)
A friend of mine - who wrote free-lance for biotech industry journals - oncesaid that the "killer app" for the biotech industry would not come frommedicine but from an unrelated or spinoff industry - e.g. food, detergent,household cleaners, toys, fashion, computers, even pets. He also said that thiswould serve to "cushion" the introduction of biotech into the everyday. Iassume he was thinking about the prior example of computers - from militarymainframes, to IBM business machines, to our "personal" laptops, pods, andberries...
-Eugene
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Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:23:59 -0400 (EDT)
A friend of mine - who wrote free-lance for biotech industry journals - oncesaid that the "killer app" for the biotech industry would not come frommedicine but from an unrelated or spinoff industry - e.g. food, detergent,household cleaners, toys, fashion, computers, even pets. He also said that thiswould serve to "cushion" the introduction of biotech into the everyday. Iassume he was thinking about the prior example of computers - from militarymainframes, to IBM business machines, to our "personal" laptops, pods, andberries...
-Eugene
to post a response, click on the "comment" button below
to return to the main page, to go www.visualcultureandbioscience.org
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