b-ecologies: -bio art lab – sotware . hardware . wetware

As every aspect of biological life, from food to medicine presents the potential of being manipulated, cloned, created and constructed through scientific processes, society moves away at a further distance in understanding the nature of itself and all life around it. The ‘biological’ language, processes and effects of closed, corporate or commercial systems are largely uncontested for these reasons and likewise the {possible} benefits are also placed in the same pot. Groups and individuals working in parallel to bio-institutions have taken a hands-on and pragmatic approach to these methods helping to foster a more informed, critical, transparent and novel way of understanding some of these processes for the self, society, human-kind and all biological life … as we know it.

Brian Degger and Sneha Solanki both follow the ‘hands-on’ approach and work with biological materials, tools and artifacts which discuss life. Sneha will be presenting from two points in her work; on hypothetical synthesis and culturing your own ‘Test Tube food’ from plant tissue including, a brief introduction and demonstration on the wet lab processes involved in plant tissue culturing and cloning. Brian Degger will be giving a demonstration of his protoype DNA photocopying machine during the lab. Also known as a thermal cycler, the DNA photocopying machine amplifies segments and strings of DNA. To extract DNA for his photocopying machine Brian proposes a variety of methods and means which will talk through as an introductory guide to setting-up a DIYBio Lab, using FLOSS, educational kits and auction sites.

Things to think about..

• Scale of the construct

• Technologies: material and ancillary components)

A few photos from the night.