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Bio-art: the ethics behind the aesthetics

Abstract

Bio-art represents a crossover of art and the biological sciences, with living matter, such as genes, cells or animals, as its new media. Such manipulations of life require collaborations with scientists and considerable financial backing. Herein, I consider bio-art that goes 'under the skin' — in which DNA, cells or proteins are used as the media and means — to highlight the ethical implications of reducing life to art.

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Figure 1: Marc Quinn, A Genomic Portrait: Sir John Sulston (2001).
Figure 2: Marta de Menezes, nature? (2000).
Figure 3: Eduardo Kac, GFP Bunny (2000).
Figure 4: Tissue Culture and Art Project, Victimless Leather – a Prototype of a Stitch-less Jacket Grown in a Technoscientific 'Body' (2008).

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Acknowledgements

This article is derived from a paper entitled From the Post-Human to the Post-Evolutionary Condition: Transgenic Art delivered to the Ph.D. seminar programme of the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology at King's College London, on 13 June 2006. I thank B. Eickholt for the invitation to speak at this seminar and subsequent discussions.

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Stracey, F. Bio-art: the ethics behind the aesthetics. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 10, 496–500 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrm2699

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