Rendering Life
Transgressive Affinities Between Bio Art and Generative Art
Dejan Grba and Vladimir Todorović
Rendering Life
Transgressive Affinities Between Bio Art and Generative Art
Guy Ben-Ary, cellF (2015). Performing in the block theatre as part of the Patient exhibition, Sydney, 2016.
Abstract
In this article, we trace the analogies, parallels and affinities between bio-inspired generative art and bio art practices with strong generative flavor. We look at the creative and expressive features in these two fields, compare their shared interests in the design and development of life, and discuss the strategies they apply to communicate and engage the audience. With respect to the existing literature, which relates bio and generative art primarily within a historical context, we compare these two fields focusing on generativity as their common poetic driver. We indicate their shared impetus for rendering distinctive visions of nature in order to identify, contemplate or provoke dramatic changes in the era when biological processes become programmable and living matter can be instrumentalized for various forms of labor. We also examine the epistemological and practical effectiveness of the two fields within a broader socio-technical perspective, which leads us to their constructive critique.
Keywords: Bio Art, Biotechnology, Evolution, Generative Art, Genetics, Nature, New Media Art.
Publications
Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research, 2022, (18), 2&3: 223–238. https://doi.org/10.1386/tear_00040_1 (forthcoming).
4th Taboo, Transgression, Transcendence in Art and Science conference proceedings, University of Applied Arts Vienna, 2021.
Full Text
Will be available upon publication.
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