I'm missing biopunk art.

There is proto-biopunk "what is this mortal coil" art like Gunther von Hagens and others. Art that's kin to the art of Leonardo da Vinci. "Isn't the body marvellous? But hey, remember we are but a hull and what's the point of it all then." and so on.

A lot of things have happened in biology since da Vinci... where is that art?

Where is the art about evolution and synthetic biology? About how it redefines what we are and shapes the societies of tomorrow? A fluorescent rabbit doesn't really cut it. Moving something out of lab into an art setting doesn't make something art. It just makes it news to an uneducated art community.

A while ago I read a book where the author described what makes a good DJ. A good DJ doesn't give his audience what they want but what they need. He feels the floor, captures it and takes the crowd gradually into something they haven't seen before. Something new and unexpected that leaves them with a new experience and a feeling of wonder. An experience they could not have asked for because they didn't know it existed.

This is the sort biopunk art I'm missing. Where are the visionaries? There is plenty of territory to claim. Few will be remembered as being in the avant garde.

Art community; you lazy f**cks... do due diligence, study your biology, lead and give me some art.

- dR

What is art?

I disagree on moving things outta the lab being not art, because it is not easy to move procedures out of the biomedical enviroment, many things can be done only if one claims medical use, but if you wanna use them for other reasons, no way.
I had that. More than not.

This?
http://www.daisyginsberg.com/projects/n ... ogies.html
http://www.ekac.org/
http://www.fishandchips.uwa.edu.au/
http://www.genpets.com/index.php
http://www.critical-art.net/biotech/index.html

I'd like to see something that captures the zeitgeist. Like the demo scene did in the beginning of the computer revolution. There is purity there, it's not something plastered on previous art but something self contained. An art form that pleases the artists as well.

I'm not sure these pure art forms can be foreseen. Maybe the artist community wouldn't even recognize it as art for a long time. Maybe the pure art forms necessarily have to be created by young people not tainted by what art is supposed to look like. Producing art out of an understanding of and love for the technology.

- dR

Current relatively lackluster practices of the bioart movement in part can be attributed to the seriously broken public education system most people are subject to, like how arts and sciences are considered innately different from each other by people who understand neither of them.

Yet the biggest reason I think, is that we still do not know what bioart is/should be. Is it a beautiful biological creation? Is it a creation that creates other works of art through its biological processes? Is it something that has the *will* to create or pursue something we should consider to be arts? Is it a replica of the humanity? No one knows what a bioart should be and how to make them using realistic materials and protocols.

The field of bioart, if we can even call it that, lacks method and goal. I think it is safe to say that at this moment, there is no such thing as bioart. We just have a lot of interesting attempts at bioart.

I don't know what the indigenous bio art would look like either. When I think about what a biopunk demo scene would look like it becomes something very strange indeed.

Biotech stands to change everything we know so much that there is a distinct divide of how we understand the world before and after. And the world after feels like a very strange place, almost unimaginable except for glimpses.

And yet it's bound to happen.

This is the way it feels to me now. I think if I made art now it would be based on this feeling.

- Splicer

I've noticed a lot of bio inspired art more and more around the net lately. It's been posted a few times on the board but Hackteria has a pretty good for keeping up with bioart.