a fascinating exhibition. It is critically important that artists address
the big ethical questions of the age and take the responsible agents to
task. The question is whether they are on "target"?
I wish to pick up a point Jens makes.
> science philosopher Hans-Jörg Rheinberger
> (Director Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin)
> has recently argued that SB to him actually appears to be more a
> funding strategy than a paradigm shift (to be published in the Berlin
> Brandenbourg Academies annual) and that the term bioengineerung would
> be largely sufficicient.
To some extent this does appear to be the case. However, it is apparent, and
has been for some time, that the rationale for promoting SB over
"old-fashioned" bio-engineering is a re-branding exercise. It isn't about
funding but managing public perception.
In Europe there has been significant resistance to the development and
deployment of synthetic and transgenic organisms, especially in agriculture.
In some countries this has led to direct action against field trials and the
companies that run them. In the US and some other countries (Brasil, for
example) this technology is already pervasively deployed. In this respect
there is a clear distinction between the European and American situation -
but this is less to do with epistemological differences between European and
Anglo-American approaches to science and far more to do with the willingness
(or lack of it) of populations accepting certain technologies.
This has echoes of the nuclear energy debate of the 1960's and it is
probably going to lead to the same sort of outcomes. Deep dividing lines are
likely to be drawn that could define political realities for decades. The
probable effects of the technologies in question are so profound that it is
difficult to remain neutral about their development. Either you support the
idea that humans can (be trusted to) refashion the biological world at its
most fundamental level or you do not.
Those who have knowledge of how policy agendas are set, determining the
funding of research, have a responsibility to be transparent about who is
driving the development of that policy. Within the UK, and at the
trans-national level in the EU, it is apparent certain laws are being passed
that will make it harder for populations to resist the deployment of some
technologies whilst at the same time funding to specific research areas is
being increased and a major re-branding exercise is being mounted. This
seems to be a concerted strategy. Who is driving that? Do we want to be
passengers in that vehicle? Are we happy for those agents to determine how
we grow and consume our food?
Best
Simon
On 10/05/2011 13:35, "Jens Hauser" <jhauser@club-internet.fr> wrote:
> Dear Yasminers, hi Laura and Howard,
>
> there have been some reactions to my post announcing the SYNTH-ETHICS
> exhibition opening here at the Natural History Museum in Vienna, on
> friday 13th, and which is accompanied by the BIO:FICTION film festival
> and conferences:
>
> http://www.nhm-wien.ac.at/ausstellung/sonderausstellungen?detail_so=yes&sfe=vo
> rschau&tid=1294905097003
> http://www.biofaction.com/synth-ethic/
> http://bio-fiction.com/en/
> http://www.bio-fiction.com/pdf/biofiction_programm_web.pdf
>
> Despite the stress to actually set up the exhibition here right now, I
> want to answer some points.
>
> As I wrote, SYNTH-ETHIC is meant to be "an exhibition that presents
> art works related to the new field of Synthetic Biology and its
> historical and epistemological roots", questioning the very notion of
> the "synthetic" and exploring the areas of tension between molecular
> biology and ecology, architecture and biochemistry, cybernetics and
> alchemy.
>
> Therefore, both Laura and Howard are right to bring up the question of
> the actual art media, material techniques, and therefore the question
> of how to define what I usually call "media adequacy", when they ask:
>
>> Am I correct in understanding that the works featured in the
>> exhibition are not,
>> in a material sense, synthetic biology but relate to this emerging
>> field
>> conceptually? Could you elaborate if the exhibition includes any
>> living
>> synthetic bio artworks developed by artists?
>
>
> and:
>
>> I was hoping to also see works that not only loosely relate to
>> synthetic
>> biology... . By capitalising on emerging
>> technologies too quickly, do we end up metaphorically mapping art
>> works from
>> diverse areas onto a desired category? What artists out
>> there are currently developing a synthetic biology practice and what
>> are
>> they producing?
>
> These - valid - questions imply that it could be clearly defined what
> the "emerging field" of Synthetic Biology is exactly "in the material
> sense." If we could answer this question that it is mainly about the
> most often popularized buzzwords we hear - "biobrick, iGem, minimal
> genome... (sorry for the caricature)" - then, probably I would think
> that Tuur van Balen's artwork would probably the only art project
> among the works staged in SYNTH-ETHICS that does include SB (here: two
> biobricks) "in the material sense" of genetic circuits designed or
> used following engineering principles in order to be able to actually
> alter the functioning of a living organism - here: pigeons;
> http://www.tuurvanbalen.com/projects/pigeon-dor
>
> Now, the exhibition is thought to be an opportunity to think about the
> very notion of what Synthetic Biology actually is, out of which
> different disciplines it is patchworked together, and why we can find
> here so many historical and epistemological forerunners converging
> that let us reflect upon the very fact that the term "Synthetic
> Biology" itself is actually already 100 years old. As Ellen Fox-Keller
> has argued that Stéphane Leduc, who actually coined the term in 1910
> (with a certain focus on the growth of cristals), studied artificial
> cell division and life-like constructions, produced with inorganic
> molecules only, and showing "dramatic similitude to the growth and
> form of ordinary vegetable and marine life." According to Fox-Keller -
> and to the science historical writing of Luis Campos a little bit
> later - even Jaques Loeb's concepts in the late 19th century qualify
> already for being the "engineering standpoint" in biology.
>
> I'm probably not telling you something very new, as you seem to dive
> quite deeply into the epistemological groundings of SB in your own
> research, but: In a very influent and much discussed paper from 2008,
> Victor de Lorenzo and Antoine Danchin have actuelly questioned whether
> "synthetic biology can really be called a new field" or if it is "just
> the intensification of the genetic engineering of organisms that
> biologists have been carrying out since the 1970." They also analyse -
> quite ironically - the anglo-saxon emphasis on the "newnessfactor" of
> SB as a trendy and funding-worthy discipline, and a more continental
> (European) approach to see it actually as a chance for an
> interdisciplinary approach of converging technoscientific fields that
> include engineering, computing, modelling, molecular biology,
> evolutionary genomics, more traditional biotechnologues, orthogonal/
> artificial and origins of life research, protocells, protein modelling
> etc, going much beyond the vision that MIT's Registry of Standard
> Biological Parts (since 2003) would represent the status quo of the
> difinition of this still quite unclear field.
>
> Following the same veine, science philosopher Hans-Jörg Rheinberger
> (Director Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin)
> has recently argued that SB to him actually appears to be more a
> funding strategy than a paradigm shift (to be published in the Berlin
> Brandenbourg Academies annual) and that the term bioengineerung would
> be largely sufficicient. He pointed to John Pickstone's book "Ways of
> Knowing" to encourage strategies of long-term historical analyses that
> would allow to avoid the "newness trap".
> http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo3683122.html
>
> Now, SYNTH-ETHIC does not want to go too deep into these polemics but
> raise awareness that - despite the very interesting developments such
> as the iGem or the mentioned "Synthetic Aesthetic" initiatives etc -
> apparently "older" disciplines may be those which 'make up' SB. In
> this sense, and given (as a prominent example) Craig Venter's
> synthesis of a completely functional bacteria genome in 2010, we may
> ask for example inhowfar even late 19th century studies of Bütschli's
> protoplasmic structures still feed - conceptually as well as
> materially - nowadays protocell research as a starting point to
> actually create a cell itself that could serve as a "chassis" for the
> most often mentioned 'genetic circuits' - and even this vocabulary is
> already inherent of Jacob's and Monod's from the 1970.
>
> Actually curating and organizing an exhibition with art works only
> that exclusively use synthetic biology as living devices in a gallery
> setting is certainly a a challenge to be undertaken, hoping that the
> current experimentations - which, as we know, still most often stay in
> the evocative, metaphorical realm or in that of fictious design - give
> rise to a "critical mass" of art projects with though-through critical
> potential and aesthetic qualities beyond that of being able to catch
> up fast with a new trend. Here, I fully join Howard's argument, I guess.
>
> Now, indeed the artworks in SYNTH-ETHIC do "in the material sense" use
> and stage, and not only metaphorically refer, to those pratices that
> may converge in the SB approach today. Some examples:
> Adam Brown restages an origins of life experiment that stage a
> miniature model of the earth today. Roman Kirschner¹s "Roots"
> materializes principles central to the precursors of synthetic biology
> and their concept of programmable circuits and biological information
> modules, by employing a model of British cyberneticist Gordon Pask,
> who in the 1950s attempted to build a chemical computer on the basis
> of iron crystals formed in an iron-oxide solution under exposure to
> electrical current, resulting in dynamic crystal genesis alludes to a
> time in the early 20th century when the growth of crystal formations
> was often compared to the origins of organic life forms. Rachel
> Armstrong adresses the issue of protocells and stages live the
> formation of precursors of living cells formed by the innate chemistry
> of molecules existing at the interface between oil and water. Tuur van
> Balen uses ³biobricks² to lower the pH level and other to make
> bacteria express lipase to, as a desired effet, turn pigeon's faeces
> into a biological soap. Joe Davis' (right now still living - we may
> have to kill it as it is transgenic) brand new Bacterial Radio
> exhibits bacterially-grown platinum/germanium electrical circuits to
> listen to AM stations. James Tour and Stephanie Chanteau's NanoPutians
> (materially present in Vienna) use tools of chemical synthesis to
> design anthropomorphic molecules, and remind us that synthetic
> chemistry and systhetic biology are linked.
>
> Thanks for the remarks, hope to see the discussion going on - and to
> see some of you in Vienne this weekend,
>
> Jens
>
>
> PS: Some of the papers mentioned above:
>
> Victor de Lorenzo and Antoine Danchin: Synthetic biology: discovering
> new world and new words. EMBO reports Vol. 9 No. 9, 2008.
> Fox Keller, Evelyn: What does Synthetic Biology have to do with
> biology? BioSocieties 4/2009, p.291-302.
> Matthias Heinemann and Sven Panke: Synthetic Biology - putting
> engineering into biology. Bioinformatics Vol. 22 No 22/2006, p.
> 2790-2799.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Simon Biggs
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http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
s.biggs@eca.ac.uk
http://www.elmcip.net/
http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
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