Team:Osaka/ETHICS
From 2009.igem.org
ETHICS
Overview
The use of Biology, its protocol and tools in art has considerable effect on bioethics, and science and technology. This work is actively pursued in these days. And this type of work are categorized into bio-art that is a crossover of art and the biological science[1]. Although bio-art is one of contemporary art, the origin of it can be linked to two former originators. The one is an artist, photographer Edward Steichen, and the other is a scientist, the discoverer of penicillin, Alexandr Fleming. We don't intend to elaborate their works, meanings and effect. But the important things are that their works didn't attract much attention and, more importantly, were reductively defined only in the terms of beauty[2].
Recent bio-art is more controversial and can't be judged only in the term of beauty. For example, by using transgenic technique, they created transgenic organism that raised issues of how we should consider care for a bioengineering life. Artists try to criticize a number of issues related to current biotechnology such as gene recombination, gene diagnosis and cloning technology. These bioethical issues are closely linked to synthetic biology. To tackle these issues, interdisciplinary work between scientist and artist must be needed.
This year, our iGEM project is strongly oriented to Bio-art (See PROJECT for overview our project). As a ethical project, herein we discuss bio-art from the view of "media (expressing something)" and "Bioethics". Both aspects are highly affected by recent advance of synthetic biology and cross each other. Considering synthetic biology in art and the reverse offers a new insight on both science and art.
Biomedia
Bioethics
Conclusion
Reference
[1]Kac, E. Signs of life: Bio Art and beyond. MIT Press, (2007).
[2]Stracey, F. Bio-art: the ethics behind the aesthetics. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 10, 496-500 (2009).
[3]Kubota, A. & Iwasaki, H. Biomediaart. (2009).
Acknowledgment
This ethics was birth from valuable discussion with A. Kubota and H. Iwasaki at the second annual meeting of the Japanese society for cell synthesis research. We all appreciate their encouragement of our art work.