{"id":34205,"date":"2017-09-20T09:31:30","date_gmt":"2017-09-20T13:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/?p=34205"},"modified":"2017-10-10T11:24:58","modified_gmt":"2017-10-10T15:24:58","slug":"bioart-draws-bees-cigarette-butts-dna-change-way-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/bioart-draws-bees-cigarette-butts-dna-change-way-think","title":{"rendered":"BioArt Draws on Bees, Cigarette Butts, and DNA to Change the Way We Think"},"content":{"rendered":"

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We’ve featured\u00a0biologists who 3D print<\/a>, and we’ve seen the artists who 3D print<\/a>. But do you know about the 3D printing BioArtists who combine the best of both worlds?<\/p>\n

The term ‘BioArt’ was coined by Eduardo Kac, who is known for the genetically modified Alba<\/a>, a rabbit implanted with a Green Fluorescent Protein gene that is normally found in jellyfish. As the name would suggest, this would have caused Alba to glow green when exposed to blue light. While it is not confirmed if the photos that exist are real or modified to show the green glow, the significance of Alba is the idea behind it.<\/p>\n

You may have inferred from just this one example that BioArt is often seen as controversial for the involvement of living things. While that debate will no doubt rage on, what is certain is that this art practice raises important questions about identity, sustainability, and ethics. It then takes these questions from the lab to the public, allowing scientists to benefit from unique perspectives and outside-of-the-box advances in research.<\/p>\n

Today we will introduce you to three BioArtists who take advantage of 3D printing to maximize their practices. They all share their research and processes online, so should you feel inclined, you too can try your hand at these interdisciplinary practices.<\/p>\n

Heather Dewey-Hagborg<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Probably Chelsea, courtesy of Heather Dewey-Hagborg<\/p><\/div>\n

Consider cigarette butts and chewed gum wads on the streets of NYC. They might be trash in the eyes of passersby, but in Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s eyes, they are genetic material. By analyzing these items, she is able to extract DNA and generate 3D portraits. As frightening as this sounds, the accuracy of it for identification is actually still highly unreliable. This is a result of not only the technology itself, but also personal subjectivity and stereotypes. What happens when these data get into the hands of policy makers, police, and other powerful actors? Dewey-Hagborg and Chelsea Manning set out to examine all these ideas in their collaborative installation “Probably Chelsea”<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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Manning, a transgender artist, advocate, and columnist for The Guardian, was imprisoned for leaking top secret documents from her time at the American military. Paper Magazine<\/em> commissioned Dewey-Hagborg to create a 3D portrait of Manning for their profile of her, since there was only one photo of Manning pre-transition on the Internet. The two clicked, and began collaborating on projects including “Radical Love,”<\/a>\u00a0“Suppressed Images,”<\/a>\u00a0and “Probably Chelsea.”<\/a><\/p>\n

“Probably Chelsea” portrays 30 very different faces, all generated from Manning’s DNA. The artist aims\u00a0to demonstrate the role of that racial and gender stereotypes play in the creation of portraits. By highlighting the different potential identities of DNA-based portraits of one person, Dewey-Hagborg refutes the “outmoded notions of biologically inscribed identity” to expose “a molecular solidarity that is clearly present even at the cellular level.”<\/p>\n

For this exhibit, Dewey-Hagborg entrusted the 3D printing to Shapeways. She tells us that the faces are “generated algorithmically and printed out in full color<\/a> and full detail by the Project 660 powder printer.” The precision and realistic rendering supplied by 3D printing creates a certain physical presence that allows for a “kind of encounter with another, looking them in the eye, seeing and viscerally feeling this face which is imaginary and yet real.”<\/p>\n

Despite Dewey-Hagborg telling us that her work is positioned “more as a warning than as something I would encourage other people to do,” she has made her\u00a0self-developed system of DNA phenotyping public on her\u00a0blog<\/a>\u00a0with multiple available resources<\/a>, and gives detailed interviews<\/a> about her process. Hear from Heather directly in last year’s National Geographic<\/em> film profile of the artist:<\/p>\n