Changing Fates: an exploration of biomedical transformations Trish Adams
Arts Researcher & Practitioner Chapel Hill Queensland, Australia
digitalpla@telstra.com
Figure 1. The interactive installation: ‘machina carnis’ forms the practical and artistic focus of the “Changing Fates” art/science project. The installation details above show a participant lying on the couch with the modified stethoscope over his heart. He is listening to his heartbeat and watching time-lapse human cardiac cellular digital videomicrograph images on the monitor above him “beat” in response to his heartbeats. These cardiac cells were cultured in the laboratory by modifying, or changing the fates of, stem cells taken from the artist’s blood.
ABSTRACT The “Changing Fates” project investigates issues relating to first-person biomedical research, the recontextualising of scientific digital image data in the milieu of bioart and the reprivileging of the aesthetic experience of corporeality. The risks and ethics, potentials and pragmatics, of a visual artist engaging with contemporary experimental biomedical research - both practically and theoretically - are outlined and discussed. Within the matrices of an innovative, collaborative art/science research model a hybrid amalgamation of research practice and research subject occurs; featuring the artist as “human guinea pig”. This immersive, relativistic strategy contravenes accepted norms of so called objective scientific protocols and expands constructs of the “observer”. The functional and speculative framework of the project is interrogated in its artistic outcome: the ‘machina carnis’ installation. By positioning the viewer as an active participant the ‘machina carnis’ interactive installation reflects the artist’s immersive scientific processes. The installation format is also informed by the discourses surrounding genetic manipulation, living systems and the intricacies of emerging technologies; both visual and procedural.
Keywords Scientific representations, stem cell, art/science, time-lapse videomicrography, human guinea pig, living systems, biomedical engineering, recontextualisation.
1. INTRODUCTION During the “Changing Fates” project I responded to the personal and emotional aspects of the scientific experience. From this subjective perspective I framed the following questions for consideration throughout: •
On what level are my cells living, sentient beings?
• • •
What is their status in vitro outside my body? How will I feel when I observe them in vitro? How will installation participants respond to the human cellular data in the installation context?
These queries informed both my engagement in the scientific processes and the creation of the ‘machina carnis’ installation. I embraced the autoethnographic elements inherent in my dual role as an artist/researcher. My subjective personal responses were incorporated into the structure of the project. The laboratory setting of the innovative project model is outlined in relation to the investigative research. Through the experimental scientific processes my stem cells were changed into cardiac cells. These biological transformations involved recently developed scientific procedures which manipulate and redirect the development of adult stem cells so that they are in effect “Changing Fates”. The project’s scientific inquiry entails both practical and theoretical investigations into cellular responses. The innovative, first-person collaboration is discursively located within the evolving paradigm and contributes to future art/science research models. The bioart installation: ‘machina carnis’ forms the practical and artistic outcome of the “Changing Fates” project. The installation structure is described in detail with a particular focus on the rationale underlying its immersive, interactive format and the methodologies that enabled me to implicate the viewer physically in the artwork “living systems”. Grounded in the interconnectedness between biotechnical research and twenty first century perceptions of the “self” the open-ended installation encouraged each viewer to become immersed as a collaborative participant who effects its symbiosis. It generated individual engagement at the interstices between the viewers’ personal experiences and the symbolic traces embedded in the artwork. Thus these non-object based
outcomes of my research reflect the sequential processes pertaining to complex systems of biological life in layered networks of physical and emotional experiences. The efficacies of digital technologies in relation to modes of visualisation are discussed with reference to their divergent characteristics. During the laboratory experiments I observed the diverse and complex processes associated with time-lapse videomicrograph cellular image data; so fundamental to the contemporary research of a biomedical scientist. My involvement with the microscope as an empowering, prosthetic instrument of vision not only opened up a whole new microscopic world, but ultimately led to an interrogation of the epistemological status of scientific imaging, machinemediated representations and digital simulations in this context. As the ‘machina carnis’ installation progresses documentary material of participant interaction is incorporated into the artwork itself. Collective social and organisational patterns of living systems evolve. Shifting boundaries between the philosophic and scientific disciplines create nodes in a relational network associated with conceptions of humanness, living and non-living, sentience and consciousness. The expanding structure of viewer interactivity represents a dynamic residue where individual participatory experience is posited as an organic outcome. This reinscription of the issues raised by biomedical engineering as a network of multisensory participatory experiences refers to cognition as a biological phenomenon and the re-privileging of the aesthetic experience of corporeality in the discourses surrounding genetic manipulation.
reproduced, matured and began to develop characteristics of heart cells. Each cell has a signature combination of proteins with a fraction of DNA. The innate characteristics of heart cells lead them to seek each other out, to cluster and beat and then to synchronise their beating. At this stage they can be observed as a large pulsating mass. Dr Nurcombe explains that every cardiac cell has recognition modules on its surface membranes that ‘interdigitate’ or link ‘gap junctions’ like ‘open portholes’. ‘(E)ach heart cell first has to mature, then it makes the machinery to start beating, then the beating cells come together to “link hands” in ribbons...the heart is a “net” of these beating cells’ [1]. After seven days we recorded clusters of beating heart cells by time-lapse digital videomicroscopy, providing me with documentary image data of the cellular changes to recontextualise in subsequent artworks.
2. LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS The “Changing Fates” scientific research began with data collection and laboratory experiments under the supervision of my scientific collaborator Dr. Victor Nurcombe at the School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Queensland. The lengthy ethical clearance process was finally expedited when Dr. Nurcombe and I decided to use adult stem cells from my blood rather than my tissue. Subsequently a doctor took my blood sample from which we could separate and culture the stem cells under laboratory conditions.
Figure 2. The artist’s blood provides research material. After three days in culture the drug 5'AZT was added to induce the adult stem cells to become distinctive, muscleforming cells. At the same time a mixture of cardiac differentiating factors, with a proprietary molecule, were also added in order to change the undifferentiated stem cells into cardiac cells. In response to this unique chemical mix the cells
Figure 3. Digital video micrograph still images of stem cell cultures at days 1 & 3. The images of days 5 & 7 show clusters of cardiac cells developing out of the stem cells.
2.1 Observational perspectives During my earlier ‘apoptosis’ (induced cell death) project I became aware of my tendency to attribute human characteristics to observed cellular behaviours. Scientists do not escape this tendency either. In the course of our stem cell experiments I noticed that Dr. Nurcombe also made anthropomorphic references when describing cellular activities, reflecting our common experiential vocabulary. For example he spoke of the cells being “unhappy” about being removed from their familiar, warm body environment and reminded me that we would have to handle them with regard to their “likes” and “dislikes” if they were to survive in vitro. Nobel Prize winning biologists Crick and Watson used terms like “beautiful”, privileging the shared socio-cultural construct of aesthetic symmetry in their investigation and representational modeling of the DNA double helix [10 ( p 48)]. Holding containers of my own cells in the laboratory had a profound and intense effect on me. This unusual emotional and physical proximity generated an ambiguous relationship between myself and my cellular material. I examined the cellular behaviours from an essentialist perspective. Under the microscope I observed my stem cells respond to the shock and disturbance of being removed from my blood by withdrawing and shrinking into circular shapes in the culture medium. After only a short time in the incubator I was amazed to see
that they had acclimatised to the environment in the culture dish and were resuming their original shapes.
2.2 Living systems My observations of the stem cell’s evident individual “awareness” of their surroundings were a revelation to me. I had not anticipated this level of apparent sentience in such small organisms. In order to come to an understanding of these unexpectedly cognisant cellular responses I found it necessary to identify the different degrees at which living organisms can function. Evelyn Fox Keller, who worked for many years at the interface of physics and biology, points to the necessity to characterise those special properties or features that distinguish a living system from a collection of inanimate matter [23]. My subsequent investigations into revealed that biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela have formulated a model of life systems in which cognition is understood as a biological process. In their groundbreaking theory they introduced the term autopoiesis to classify the fundamental dialogue between structure (brain) and function (process). Systems theorist: Frijof Capra points to the importance of the concept of autopoiesis as a central insight within Maturana and Varela’s Santiago theory of cognition [24 (p 153)]. Here, they refer to circular, selfsustaining autopoietic processes of ‘self-organisation’ which connect the process of knowing with the process of life in even the simplest of cells: (T)he brain is not necessary for mind to exist. A bacterium, or a plant, has no brain but has a mind. The simplest organisms are capable of perception and thus of cognition. They do not see, but nevertheless perceive changes in their environment – differences between light and shadow, hot and cold, higher and lower concentrations of some chemical etc [24 (p 170)]. Therefore, through investigating the complex contemporary theories of consciousness and sentience and the status of my cells as living entities I became aware that at all levels of life mind and matter, process and structure, are inseparably connected. From my perspective as “human guinea pig” I was in fact observing at a microscopic level two complementary aspects of the phenomenon of existence. It seemed to me that the adaptability and comparative resilience of my cells in vitro did indeed constitute an affirmation of the life process itself.
3. ‘MACHINA CARNIS’ The ‘machina carnis’ installation structure reflects a sensual reading of the scientific experience. It operates on the premise that the human cellular image data symbolises more than an impersonal scientific outcome of the laboratory experiments. Accordingly, the installation is structured to draw each participant into an individual relationship with the project’s underlying complexities. This occurs through their immersion in the experimental digital image data and sound environment. By carrying out the scientific processes myself and using my own cells for experimentation I have been able to complicate the discourses of vision that historian Martin Jay refers to as the ‘Cartesian dualism’ of the ‘disembodied eye’ [3 (p 81)]. I regard the time-lapse digital videomicrograph image data as being imbued with intimate traces of its human origin. Throughout this paper the fundamental conceptual importance of my own immersion in the scientific procedures is emphasised. My subjective responses during the scientific laboratory experiments led me to create an installation where
participants are also immersed emotionally in issues relating to “humanness” and living systems. The point being that the human source of the project’s scientific digital image data encourages viewer empathy with the installation outcomes, which structurally parody my scientific and physical immersion. The artwork ‘machina carnis’ theoretically and visually articulates the processual, pioneering, immersive model in which I undertake the dual roles of researcher and “human guinea-pig”. The installation configuration fosters an interrogation of the nature of “self” in relation to expressions of corporeality and probes the role of new media art installations in crossing the consciousness divide. In relation to this, new media theorist and artist Simon Biggs suggests that perhaps the most important questions regarding artists’ use of digital media are those of ontology. He asks ‘(H)ow this medium impacts upon and problematises the old certainties of how the self (singular and collective) is understood to come into being?’ [20 (p 2)]. My decision to position myself, my personal scientific image data, and subsequently the individual participants, literally at the core of the installation fosters a connection beyond the “self”, and also an interrogation of the emergence of the “self”. When adopting this model I was also building upon my interrogations of endophysical systems that explore immersive constructs and observer relativity. Furthermore, a symbolic connection can be made between the clustering behaviours exhibited by the cardiac cells in the culture dish and the generative evolution of a ‘machina carnis’ participant group. Through the collection of each ‘machina carnis’ participant’s digital image frame grabs and accompanying heart beat sounds the emerging installation “community” is documented in material form. The daily collection of frame grabs is combined into a composite digital video which creates a residual, relational outcome of the artwork. This digital video is streamed via the Internet as an informational feedback loop where comments can be posted and documentary data of participants who comprised the integrated ‘machina carnis’ living systems can be viewed.
3.1 Interactivity in ‘machina carnis’ The impact of the theory of so called ‘self-making’ on the structure of the ‘machina carnis’ installation is apparent in the open-ended methodologies. These encapsulate manipulable systems where boundaries between the body in relation to the environment are in a constant state of interplay and flux. The interactive digital technologies are selected to promote and facilitate this flexible approach. When an installation participant observes the human cultured cardiac cells beating in synchrony with their own heartbeats it is as if a microscopic simulacrum of their own beating human heart - the vital, functioning, interior engine of their body - were laid bare before them, so deeply are they implicated in the installation systems. The ‘machina carnis’ installation is accessed by only one participant at a time, although this interaction may be viewed by others in the gallery space. The participant lies on a couch beneath a computer monitor, encapsulated in a proscribed relationship with the installation. Here he/she experiences an intimate, personal interaction with the available digital technologies. In order to bring the installation to life he/she takes the specially modified stethoscope and places it on the bare skin over his/her heart. When the participant locates their heart in this way the sound of their heartbeats resonates around the gallery. At the same time the programmed installation technology responds by
synchronising the “beating” of the time-lapse digital videomicrograph cardiac cellular image data with the individual participant’s heart rate. This cardiac cellular digital
simulates or projects their own virtualisations, fantasies and memories in consort with the artwork [21 ( p 1)] Consequently, in the ‘machina carnis’ installation, interactive digital technologies are employed with the specific intention of augmenting individual viewer engagement, responsiveness and the overall level of participatory involvement. When structuring and analysing my use of interactivity I have, in the words of Erkki Huhtamo, considered ‘its modes of address i.e. the ways in which an interactive artwork establishes and maintains its relationship with the viewer’ [22].
3.2 Participant responses
Figure 4. A‘machina carnis’ participant locating her heart with the modified stethoscope & watching the cardiac cells. image data is visible on the monitor above the participant. In addition a webcam, appropriately situated, overlays an indistinct digital image of the participant’s face in the cellular image frame visible on the monitor. This is intended to increase the sense of immersion experienced by the participant. Participants are free to experiment with this projected webcam digital image, as seen below right, when a participant inserts his hand image into the monitor digital image frame:
Figure 5. Close-ups of the ‘machina carnis’ monitor image frame showing participant’s facial & hand images incorporated in the cellular image via the webcam. The monitor image view is also projected on a large screen in the main gallery area where those waiting to participate in the installation can view it.
In the interactive artwork ‘machina carnis’ individual viewers are more appropriately described as participants since the installation is structured to encourage their immersion in it. Moreover the artwork depends on each viewer to effect its symbiosis through their participation. The term “immersion” is not used here in the sense of a technologically mediated engagement with programmed digital virtual worlds. It connotes the privileging of the human physical entity as an essential component-conduit-exponent of the artwork system itself, without which the network does not come into being. This methodology is an outcome of my engagement with the biological sciences and my inquiries into the status of living organisms during my laboratory experiences. I reflected upon the theory of autopoiesis that interrogates observer relativity and traditional scientific objectivity by acknowledging that cognition is a self-sustaining biological process. In her extensive study of virtual bodies N. Katherine Hayles points out that, in autopoeisis, feedback loops do not actually contain messages, or genetic codes for that matter. These constructs are interpretations introduced by the observer to explain what is seen. They are consequently related to the observer, who is thus implicated within the system itself [9 ( 139)]. In the light of this I positioned the observer as an active participant rather than a passive discerner of pre-existing systems. From my observations of audience responses, I deduce that the content and structure of the installation made a powerful impact on participants. The minimum period of engagement with the artwork was approximately five minutes duration. In fact most participants lay on the couch for ten minutes or more, absorbed in their encounter with the artwork. Although the installation was designed for only one participant at a time couples usually entered the intimate interactive space together and took it in turns to experience the work. They compared each other’s heartbeats and personal responses to the artwork.
The interactive digital technologies have been integrated discretely into the ‘machina carnis’ installation. This facilitates user-friendly access to the artwork so that there is no complex digital interface to distract participants from the phenomenological impact of the human cellular data or emotive responses evoked by the sound of their heart beats. It is proposed that this structural relationship embodies the viewer as a network participant and fosters receptivity to the multi-sensory impact of the artwork environment. Germane to my proposition is film and video professor Timothy Murrays’ succinct appraisal of the promise of digital aesthetics as an: enhanced zone of “interactivity” through which the users’ entry into the circuit of artistic presentation
Figure 6. Husband and wife share participation.
Mothers who came with children took the initiative and engaged with the installation whilst their children stood beside them and discussed what they observed.
Figure 7. A mother and daughter observe the digital video micrograph cardiac cellular image data respond to the mother’s heartbeats. An informational documentary video of the experimental processes and handouts detailing the factual scientific issues underpinning the research were available at the entry to the gallery space. Each participant took the time to familiarise themselves with these prior to entering the installation and connecting emotionally with the artwork. Due to the intimate nature of the ‘machina carnis’ experience there was no formal system of evaluating participant responses. Nevertheless, from my personal observations, I concluded that the open-ended artwork design succeeded in engaging participants by fostering flexible individual responses that generated empathy in the interactive installation context.
4. BIOMEDICAL TRANSFORMATION My first human cellular laboratory experiments were with ‘apoptosis’ (induced cell death). After this I looked for another opportunity to immerse myself in contemporary biomedical research. I was particularly interested in the wideranging socio-cultural significance of processes that have the potentials to precipitate and engineer bodily change. Since the projects’ experimental constructs contravened accepted norms of customary scientific practice it was essential to find a scientific collaborator who was willing to implement this methodology. Fortunately leading biomedical scientist Dr. Victor Nurcombe was prepared to become involved; showing his appreciation of the underlying rationale when he remarked: ‘(Y)ou have entered into the heart of a research project as a core participant. You were at once subject and object, forced to be objective about your very “ground state” – your own material… [1]. With Dr Nurcombe’s support I was in a position to focus on the implications of stem cell research, a ‘new phase’ of biomedical science in which he states that biomedical scientists are:
…slowly pulling together work from genomics, cell biology and developmental biology, we are entering a time where we are starting to control the shapes our bodies take. We are much more rapidly than in the past unshackling ourselves from the natural laws of evolution… [1] With such widespread implications for concepts of “humanness” and perceptions of the structure of the human body itself current groundbreaking adult stem cell research is a controversial topic. It prompts an enquiry into the complexity and ambiguity of the term “human” and characteristics of living systems which can only be touched upon in this paper. An extension of the philosophical and scientific relationship between human and machine has been central to my research. These slippery boundaries and epistemological ambiguities fuel widespread debate as to how we can differentiate between the machine and the human being if some attributes are shared by both. The iconic concept of the Cyborg, developed by Donna Haraway, has famously blurred the boundaries between human and machine, leaving the body behind still further in favour of a metaphoric technical amalgamation of human and machine [2 (p 12)]. More recently, calling upon her training as a biologist, Haraway selects stem cells as a symbol for pathways, connections and articulated systems that resemble the rhizome construct. Her use of technoscience as ‘materialised semiosis’ and her stimulating question: ‘ how do technoscientific stem cells link up with each other in expected and unexpected ways…?’ [2 (p 130)] has informed my interrogation of the status of my stem cells during culture in the laboratory. It has also impacted on the multidisciplinary links and open-ended structures of my art/science research model and installations.
4.1 Artistic focus By embracing notions of boundary figures and the destabilisation of pure categories my exploratory research interrogates what it might mean for a visual artist to leave the esoteric confines of “The Studio” - to instigate an interdisciplinary collaboration and move beyond the status of a mere observer by adopting the risky and unconventional position of a first-person participant. My participatory role of artist/researcher involved a hybrid amalgamation of research practice and research subject which contributed to the emerging paradigm of productive art/science collaborations. I planned a strategy of engagement which would allow me to explore the technology from within. In other words, through the use of my cells as a research site, myself as researcher and my human cell image data in the artworks, I would be entrenched in the entire process. The scientific digital image data from my experiments that is incorporated into the artworks is interpreted from an aesthetic and emotional perspective rather than a scientific one. This approach constitutes a sensual reading of the scientific experience, a purposeful re-introduction of the Baroque aesthetic: (i)t is precisely the baroque’s subversion of the dominant visual order of scientific reason that makes it so attractive in our postmodern age…in its disparagement of lucid clarity and essential form, baroque vision celebrated instead the confusing interplay of form and chaos, surface and depth, transparency and obscurity [3 ( p 47)] This espousal of a contemporary shift in “readings” by professor of aesthetics: Christine Buci-Glucksmann encouraged me to recontextualise scientific digital image data
in an artistic context with an appreciation of its emotive impact.
4.2 First-person experimentation I encountered bureaucratic resistance as soon as I proposed using human tissue as a medium for my art, regardless of the fact that it would come from my own body. This methodology was fundamental to my lines of enquiry and I was not prepared to give it up, although ultimately the pursuit of ethical clearance took over a year. I was also encouraged to continue with my use of human experimental material because earlier viewers of time-lapse digital videomicrograph images of my cells had been so fascinated and intrigued by them. Self-experimentation is not unknown within scientific circles and scientists are driven towards it for various reasons. Perceived reliability in processes and analyses, dependability and convenience may lead them to disregard potential problems such as presumed loss of objectivity, limited research design and cumulative exposure [4 (p 3)]. Amongst the earlier precedents of scientists who abandoned the thirdperson perspective and used their own bodies for scientific research is the nineteenth century English neurologist Sir Henry Head. When he became ‘frustrated with the difficulties he encountered in testing sensory loss in patients with peripheral nerve damage’ he went to extreme lengths and ‘persuaded his colleague, the surgeon James Sherren, to divide two cutaneous nerves in his (Heads’) left forearm’. Heads’ personal study of the loss and restoration processes he experienced led to a reclassification of the sensory pathways [5 (p 5)]. More recently the Nobel Prize winning Australian physician Barry Marshall drank bacteria to prove his controversial theory that bacteria, not stress, cause peptic ulcers [6 (p 2)]. Therefore scientific precedents do exist for my first-person research model. In addition, the recent attempts in feminist discourses and the humanities to broaden disciplinary parameters and patterns of knowing may impact even further on future scientific research practices. Of the many protocols regarding the use of human tissue for laboratory experimentation, from a hygiene perspective, there is a danger of transmitting life-threatening diseases when unscreened human material is put into equipment and cultured in the laboratory. The complexities inherent in ownership and informed consent that surrounds the current worldwide use of HeLa cells in laboratories also highlights the intricacies of the ethical and moral issues involving experimental research on human biological material. Briefly, in this 1951 landmark case, cells were cultured without permission from the biopsy of a low-income, black American woman, Helena Lacks [7]. During the elapsing decades these cells have become so common in standard laboratory experiments that it is suggested that some biologists regard them as no longer human but merely single-celled microorganisms [8]. This is a significant reflection upon the fragile and permeable constructs of “humanness” from which it is only a small step towards notions of the posthuman. These speculations, extensively interrogated by Hayles, instantiate the material body to such an extent that it is seen as informational patterns in which biological embodiment becomes accidental rather than inevitable [9 ( p 2)]. Recently various artists have begun to make inroads into the traditional domain of the scientific laboratory from a firstperson stance. English artist Keira O’Reilly proposes creating lace ‘which is at the centre of her work, and which she now plans to grow from her own skin’ [33]. Stelarc has followed his high-profile pioneering biotechnical critiques and
performance works with a collaborative “Tissue Culture and Art” project at “SymbioticA”, the art/science centre at The University of Western Australia [34]. This resulted in the production of the work: “Extra Ear”, a quarter-size ear cultured from human cells [35]. The French duo Art Orienté Objet collaborated with an American skin production laboratory for their work: ‘cultures de peaux d’artistes’ [36 (p 1)]. The artists described the process thus: (W)e presented genuine pieces of ourselves, submitted to biotechnology. In this way, we are working with ourselves and no other living organism. This role as guinea pig is essential to our personal ethic. [36 (p 5)] This personal ethic contrasts with that of Edouardo Kac who appropriates scientific techniques to create ‘transgenic works of art’ that are intended to raise ‘uncomfortable issues’ related to biotechnology [27 (p 118)]. In the famous case of “Alba” the bioluminescent bunny, Kac took a routine cellular marking process and appropriated it to create a bright yellow rabbit. When genetically modifying an animal he became ethically responsible for his manipulation of a sentient being. Subsequently Kac was obliged to care for “Alba” when it was rejected by its peers and consigned to the realm of “other” as a result of his interventions. In spite of the difficulties inherent in gaining ethical clearance I specifically position myself as a “human guinea pig” in the “Changing Fates” project. The project is further differentiated from the artworks mentioned above by the fact that it relies on the individual participants for its completion. There is no object based outcome in the gallery but rather an interactive, immersive environment which is brought to life by each visitor.
5. VISUALISATION How an artist might re-interpret and recontextualise scientific research data in ways that would retain its impact, whilst moving away from the documentary context, has been of primary concern during the “Changing Fates” project.
Figure 8. One of the series of digitally modified videomicrograph still image of clustered cardiac cells used in ‘machina carnis’. For me it involves speculation on how I could creatively effect disruptions to the habitual proscription inherent in the perception of representations. In thinking through the reinterpretation of scientific image data, I have been mindful of Foucaults’ assertion that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ‘scientific discourses’ were ‘received for
themselves, in the anonymity of an established or always redemonstrable truth’ [19 (p 149)]. His argument that knowledge and the notion of discovery itself are socially situated constructs supports a deconstructive imperative. Scientific “discoveries” could be understood as contingent upon the ways in which they were reported and discussed in the public domain, or, as I observed in the laboratory, in the shared vocabulary of researchers. Located in signifying systems and cultural practices all representations, including scientific data and images, reflect their sources. In response to this my contentions are that empathy exists between viewers and the human cellular image data. I propose that this empathy is engendered by both our common, generic biological characteristics and by our reciprocal constructs of “humanness”. There are examples of scientists in the past, such as Robert Hooke or Michael Faraday, who were also competent artists and illustrated their own research texts [11] [12]. They were the exception rather than the rule however and artists have a long involvement in scientific representations of the body. Historical records show that from the fifteenth century to the nineteenth century a primary role of the artist was the creation of anatomical images and wax sculptures. These appear to fall into the category of medicine rather than art. Nevertheless - as the catalogue for the exhibition Spectacular Bodies at the Hayward Gallery, London, points out - this classification ignores the cultural location of the practice of medicine and its related imagery at that time:
Live cells were used in the “Changing Fates” experimental scientific procedures; however they are not included in the artwork itself. I propose that incorporating scientific image data of the cells within the specifically immersive ‘machina carnis’ installation structure gives individual participants the opportunity to reinterpret the cellular image data from an emotive, personal perspective.
5.1 Scientific representations According to academic and artist Anna Munster ‘digitality provides a set of lived circumstances in which our senses encroach upon us in a different way’ [14 (p 5)]. The ‘machina carnis’ installation incorporates such a premise in its concentration on the impact of the human cellular digital image data, recontextualised for inclusion in artworks, as a site for identification and empathy between the research data and the viewer. During my art/science practice I have had the opportunity to associate with the advanced digital imaging technologies incorporated into scientific research and documentary processes. I first engaged with visual imaging in the laboratory when I investigated mould on disintegrating newspaper sculptures. I began by using light microscopes but eventually, under expert guidance, I “drove” the JSM Scanning Electron Microscope. This machine produces images by detecting secondary electrons which are emitted from the surface of the coated sample due to excitation by the primary electron beam.
The purpose of anatomical images during the period from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century had as much to do with what we would call aesthetics and theology as with the narrower intentions of medical illustrations as now understood…Rather, the disclosing of the ‘divine architecture’ that stood at the summit of God’s Creation remained the central goal of anatomical representation across at least three centuries [13 (p 11)] No longer constrained by historical conventions, artists are free to explore and critique the socio-cultural impact of contemporary scientific developments such as bionic body parts, mapping the human genome and nanotechnology. Based at the dedicated art/science residency centre: “SymbioticA”, artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, use tissue culture and tissue engineering as a medium for artistic expression. Their practice confronts the challenges involved in finding a balance between ambitious process - taking living cells beyond the confines of the laboratory – viewer engagement and aesthetics [34]. Canadian collaborators, artists Shawn Bailey and Jennifer Willet entered the world of biotechnoscience by creating a fictitious corporation BIOTEKNICA which purported to ‘produce designer human organisms based on human demand’, which were in fact imaginary [28]. Bioartist David Kremmers paints genetically altered bacteria on agarcovered acrylic plates where the bacteria interact with dyes to produce complex stains. The plates are sealed from moisture, arresting growth, so the works stabilise whilst remaining alive [26]. Kremmers’ works follow a painterly imperative using live material, in contrast to ‘machina carnis’, where the cellular image data is recontextualised for reinterpretation by the viewer in the interactive installation context. The “Changing Fates” project can be distinguished from these examples of bioart by its non-object based focus on firstperson human cellular experimentation as an aesthetic inquiry into representations and emotional expressions of corporeality.
Figure 9. Digitally modified JSM scanning electron microscope image of mold. At this level the position of the observer involves extensive prosthetic dependency and arguably a leap of faith. It necessitates trusting in the veracity of the machine with all its potential epistemic and technological limitations. Reliance on machinic interpretations prompts speculation about the status of scientific imaging. In this context the relationship between machine and observer are particularly problematic if, in the words of Hayles, ‘the observer…does not so much discern preexisting systems as create them through the very act of observation’ [9 (p 131)]. As arts researcher Beth Jackson suggests in her catalogue essay for my interactive installation: “Temporal Intervals”, ‘of particular consideration was the manner in which technologies of seeing became mechanisms for believing in the otherwise invisible layers of the microscopic’ [15]. Scanning, tunneling microscopes are in fact referred to as “endo technology” and the science of Endophysics addresses such issues as observer-relativity, representation, and non-locality; exploring what a system looks like when the observer becomes part of the system. Consequently, according to media historian Peter Weibel [16
(p 342)], endophysics ‘emphasises the extent to which supposed “objective reality” is necessarily dependent on the observer’ – or in this case the perspective of the machine – giving scientists a ‘view from within’. In seeming to reveal the so called ‘many worlds in this world’, referred to at the advent of microscopy by Renaissance poet and scientist: Margaret Cavendish [17], light microscopy generated curiosity and wonder about previously invisible worlds. This excitement about unknown “territories” is redolent with parallels to the utopian notions initially attributed by some commentators to contemporary virtual realities.
Figure 10. Temporal Intervals home-page webcam view of the real-time installation. My interactive installation: “Temporal Intervals” responded to these issues through a parody of the experimental nineteenth century scientific search for a human “vital force”. “Temporal Intervals” explored virtual realities, the status of the human body and materiality through the invisible flow of disembodied data and remote access to a real-time space via the installation website. On-line visitors were able to operate a dot-matrix printer in the real-time installation space and “communicate” with participants there through a networked circularity supported by the Internet. Thus the entire installation reflexively problematised notions of human embodiment in relation to sets of informational processes [18].
Figure 11. ‘dolly00121’ : digital video still. Here time-lapse digital micrograph human cellular data is integrated with 3D animation. Investigations into cellular changes to tissue in culture during apoptosis marked the beginning of my first-person immersion
in scientific processes. This was also my introduction to timelapse digital videomicrography, the imaging technique with which the cellular changes were recorded. I became absorbed in creating hybrid video combinations of the time-lapse digital videomicrograph cellular image data and 3D animation. The digital video: ‘dolly 00121’ employed this experimental methodology. It explored constructs relating to the cloning of Dolly the sheep and the machinic (re)production of human female “dollies”, rolling off the factory assembly line. This hybrid, experimental process is in keeping with Munsters’ proposition that digital art ‘does seem to allow for particular modes of composition that can create zones through which the organic and machinic become approximate to each other’ [14 (p 3)]. In contrast to the generic, commercially available software which was used in ‘machina carnis’ sophisticated computer software is often developed specifically for individual projects. Responsive digital environments are created that explore a world driven by behavioural processes rather than by objects. The viewer interacts with the art work which, in the words of interactive media artists: Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, is ‘characterised by complex interrelations of real and virtual entities’ and can ‘engage in a dialogue…of different expressions of mind and matter’ [37 (p 159)]. Installation artist George Khut, who has been investigating biofeedback in relation to the heart, uses an complex interface especially designed by John Tonkin in his “Cardio-morphologies” project [30]. Artist Char Davies has developed a computer software that she describes as an ‘embodying interface which tracks breath and shifting balance, grounding the immersive experience through the participant’s own body’ [38 (p 3)]. Her influential works “Osmose” and “Ephemere” encourage an intimate individual reading from the viewer who responds imaginatively to the ambiguous, translucent imagery of the works.
5.2 Interrogating corporeality The emergent use of the body to critique developments in biotechnology has added to the tradition of artists who have used their own bodies as a source and resource for art-making. Whether employed as a subject, muse or in a performance the human body is charged with significance. In addition to the artist methodologies already mentioned, the carnal art of “Orlan” has impacted on the contemporary debate about the status of the body in contemporary society [31]. Her extensive use of plastic surgery transforms her appearance. This approach contrasts with the laboratory procedures employed in the “Changing Fates” project where my cells were changed in vitro outside my body. Artist Justine Cooper subjected herself to an MRI scan to obtain source material for her video: “Rapt” [29]. Although the medical procedure was invasive its effects were not long lasting and her appearance was not changed. Moreover the artwork outcome interrogated corporeality in a seductive and mysterious way. Melinda Rackham focuses on the fate of the organic body with her interactive Internet based artwork: “Carrier”, which movingly humanises her encounter with the Hepatitis C virus. [32]. The selected artists referred to in this paper are examples of the discursive and procedural exchanges taking place in contemporary bioart. Through these wide-ranging approaches artists mediate between scientific research and the sociocultural issues it raises. By incorporating cutting-edge technoscientific interventions into their practice artists are in a position to interrogate its impact on twenty-first century perceptions of the “body”. Such engagements may also have the potentials to influence the directions of further research. For an artist such as myself primary motivators for my
immersive research methodology were the creative tensions generated by first-person experimentation on my own human cells at the interstices of art and cutting-edge biomedical research; and curiosity about levels of emotional engagement - both mine and that of future installation participants. The “Changing Fates” collaboration explored the conceptual and technical challenges of an artist entering the scientific laboratory. It echoes the broader perspective of the nineteenth century natural philosophers and, in the words of Dr Nurcombe: (W)e set out to do something quite “other”, something more open-ended. Research with other scientists is usually extremely focused and conducted within tight parameters; it’s not about possibilities so much as progressively excluding as many possibilities as possible. Our work was conducted much more in the spirit of “what if?” [1]. “Changing Fates” is a successful, productive prototype which contributes to the emerging paradigm of art/science collaborations. My interests lie in developing its interrogations of consciousness and cognition. For this I hope to be involved with the ground-breaking investigations taking place in contemporary neurology which are being facilitated by rapidly advancing technologies. I have heard scientists remark that there are many unresolved issues that support a view that the brain is the last great frontier of science. During my next collaborative project I anticipate carrying out my explorations in this radical area of research.
6. CONCLUSION Throughout the many months of project development and creative thought, digital technologies were an essential resource which enabled me to develop my imaginative artistic vision in ways that would not have otherwise been possible. In the ‘machina carnis’ installation I acknowledge the active position of the observer and foreground installation participants. The flexible, interactive methodologies are comprised of organically evolving systems that reflect my non-authorial voice. Roy Ascott, an early opinion setter on art and technology through the international journal Leonardo, refers to viewer complicity in interactive new media art and suggests that technology: sets creativity in motion, within the frame of indeterminacy, building new ideas, new forms, and new experiences from the bottom up, with the artist relinquishing total control while fully immersed in the evolutive process. The viewer is complicit in this, interactively adding to the propositional force that the artwork carries [25 (p 3)]. Reflecting my own immersion in the scientific processes, the points of confluence in the interactive installation: ‘machina carnis’ occur between the individual viewer and the timelapse digital videomicrograph cardiac cellular image data. During an immersive engagement with the interactive artwork each participant is placed in the position to combine their knowledge that the cardiac cells were cultured from human stem cells - much the same as their own - with the individual emotional and interpretative responses evoked by the installation. From my perspective, the digital technologies were imperative; not only within the initial experimental scientific contexts, but also through their empowerment of the systemic energy flows required for the realisation of the innate, non-object based participant/artwork relationships.
In the “Changing Fates” project I have charted the development of my innovative, productive art/science collaboration and its potential contributions to the emerging paradigm. The project research is groundbreaking; both in its collaborative engagement with cutting-edge biotechnology and the use of my unscreened human material as a source for experimentation and recontextualisation from an artistic perspective. Located within the domain of new media art the “Changing Fates” rationale focuses on notions of aesthetic interpretation and embodied participation in an interactive installation. I have explored issues relating to the observer in both digitally mediated scientific processes and in my artworks. Digital technologies facilitated the creation of an open-ended interactive environment which privileges the participant. The project artwork: ‘machina carnis’ employed what I consider to be appropriate digital technologies for immersive strategies that accentuate notions of corporeality in order to implicate the viewer as a vital component within the processes of the artwork living systems.
7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Dr. Victor Nurcombe: my invaluable scientific collaborator. School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia: extensive in-kind support and laboratory facilities. The Brisbane Powerhouse: generous provision of a venue and in-kind support for the “Temporal Intervals” and ‘machina carnis’ installations. A.P.A.: through Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. Laboratory still images courtesy Dr. V. Nurcombe. ‘machina carnis’ still images courtesy Ben Wickes. “Temporal Intervals” technology Jeff Sams. ‘machina carnis’ programming James Bullen.
8. REFERENCES [1] Nurcombe, V. E-interview by Patricia Adams, in Adams, P., The Implications for Artistic Expressions and Representations of Corporeality of the Experimental Techniques of Biomedical Engineering, Doctor of Visual Arts Thesis, Griffith University, 2005, appendix v. [2] Harraway,D.Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse™, London & NY, Routledge, 1997. [3] Jay, M. Downcast Eyes: the Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century French Thought, Berkley, University of California Press, 1993. [4] Van Der Weyden, M. Researchers as Guinea Pigs www.mja.com.au/public/issues/178_02_2000103/Vander weyden_201003.html, accessed 10 June 2006. [5] Enerson, O.D. (2001) Sir Henry Head, www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/705.html, accessed 10 March 2003. [6] Sobel, R. A Gutsy Gulp Changes Medical Science, www.usnews.com/usnews/doubleissue/heroes/marshall.h tml, accessed 10 March 2003. [7] Black, R. The Cell that Changed Science, www.hclc.sailorsite.net/HistoricalWebpages/Hlacks/HLa cks.htm, 1995, accessed 6 August 2002. [8] Gold, M. A Conspiracy of Cells: One Woman’s Immortal Legacy and the Medical Scandal it Caused, New York, State University of New York Press, 1986. [9] Hayles, N. K. How we Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature & Informatics, Chicago & London, University of Chicago Press, 1999.
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[35] “Extra Ear”, Stelarc, www.stelarc.va.com.au/quarterear/index.html accessed 12 March 2005. [36] Magazine on European Research, March 2004, ec.europa.eu/research/rtdinfo/special_as/article_814_en.h tml, accessed 11 September 2004. [37] Sommerer, C. & Mignonneau, L. (eds), Art @ Science, New York, Springer/Wein, 1998. [38] Davies, C. (1998) “Landscape, Earth, Body, Being,Space & Time in the Immersive Virtual Environments Osmose and Ephemere” in Women in New Media, Malloy, J. (ed), Boston, MIT Press, 2001, pp. 118-119.
SELECTED SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES: “Art of the Biotech Era” Pandilovski, M. http://www.ekac.org/melentie.html, accessed 19 May 2005. “Converge” – examples of art/science artworks http://www.adelaidebiennial.com/cocoon/adelaidebiennial/abo ut.xml, accessed 12 June 2003. Fusion 04: art in the cultural environment of science - Swiss art/science conference & collaborative residency project www.artistsinlabs.ch, accessed 10 October 2004. Heartinabox - discussions on stem cells cultured into cardiac cells and growing a whole heart http://biomed.brown.edu/courses/B1108/B1108_1999_Groups /Heartinabox_Team/build.html, accessed 25 June 2004. Lozano-Hemmer, R. –interactive, often architecturally located, artworks - www.lozano-hemmer.com, accessed 24 May 2003. “New Constellations: Art, Science & Society”, conference Proceedings, Rye, D. & Shedding, S. (eds), Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2006. Vesna, V. – an artist/researcher who has a long-standing collaboration with a scientist - http://vv.arts.ucla.edu, accessed 5 November 2003.