ABSTRACT
In my 2012 essay “Confronting the Bacterial Sublime,” I wrote:
We are in the midst of a quiet revolution in biology, one that may have as big an impact on our lives as the industrial revolution had on our ancestors’ lives, and over the past few decades an increasing number of artists have chosen to engage with this field—as inspiration, method and even medium. In the area that has become known as bioart there is a strong blurring of boundaries between art and the biosciences, leading to the creation of hybrid forms of practice. It involves working with living organisms, living tissues, bacteria and cell biology and employs, considers and critically reflects on the ethics, methods and practices of biotechnology or biomedicine.1
But in practice, art does not easily fit into the traditional scientific methodology of hypothesis-driven research and artists can be expected to push boundaries, to be playful, to take risks, and to inhabit an “outsider” role. Even when artists are successfully embedded into science research groups and seem to “play the game,” their work can raise ethical issues because of their position within scientific institutions, with access to new kinds of facilities and techniques, and subject to the ethical guidelines and research governance committees of those institutions.