During week 2 of this course we enjoyably had Mick Lorusso lecture as a guest speaker. He graciously spoke about some of the work he has done as an artist and introduced the class to many more artists who have done some great work. One of his projects that really touched me was the Museum of Endoluminosity. He spoke to us about the passing of his father to leukemia. He linked this transcendence of departure to the phenomena of diamonds. “Contemporary scientific writings, including publications by Dr. Dean Ho, Dr.

It was a pleasure having Mick Lorusso come give a guest lecture! Much of his work overlaps with my own BioArt interests including using biotechnology in conjunction with art to 1) develop new approaches to help the environment, and 2) to develop resourceful pieces that have practical, meaningful, and relevant applications in society.  

In Mick Lorusso's guest lecture this week, he spoke of an inspiring character, Buster Simpson. Simpson was an artist who manifested his artistic renderings from scavenged pieces of trash, debris, or forgotten materials. His take on art was that it should always come with a message, but not just any message, an inspiring and eye-opening one. He prided himself on bringing attention to environmental and political issues with his artwork, and sending a message that social changes were in dire need.

Mick’s lecture opened my eyes into how wide the actual spectrum of Biotech + Art really is. It is not defined by strict parameters, but rather it has mass opportunity to exploring a new world. We discussed acts of poetry and the examples of which we can combine items and create poetry with its resemblance to the BioTech and Art field. One example we gave was adding florescent lighting to bees and tracking their bee dance in which they all communicate together.

Classifying BioTech Art brings about questions about the performative aspects of the manipulated living systems.  At what point is BioTech Art separate from the natural processes of everyday living organisms? What is important to keep in mind is the context and intention behind each BioTech Art piece and the political ideologies they address. Artists which work in wet labs address issues of ethics in science but manipulating living organisms at the cellular level. 

When I first enrolled in this course, I really was unsure of what to expect, so I ended up spending a good deal of time exploring biotechnology and its relationship to art on the internet.  What I mainly came across were the more controversial things, like growing extra ears on rats and human forearms, engineering glowing bunnies, and the artist suspending himself with an array of hooks and wires attached to his body.

   Before listening to the lecture video and reading the assigned readings, I was expecting Bioart to be mainly focused on an aesthetic level. For instance, producing beautiful images by using various biotechnology, just like the image of brain neuron dyed by muti-fluorescent color shown below.

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/magazine/issues/summer13/images/brain.jpg

I’ve always been taught that there’s a meaning behind everything. There was always some sort of message or lesson to learn in every book, movie, piece of art, and even every day experiences. I remember looking back on my day and trying to come up with a way to wrap everything that had happened to me into one neat little catch phrase that I could write into my journal. The goal in life seemed to be to collect as many of these phrases as I could and learn as many lessons at possible.

       I came to this class with no idea what Biotechnology and Art (or BioArt) is. I have asked myself many times if I will get anything out of this class at as a South Campus Major, and I was doubtful of the significance of BioArt. This feeling stayed with me as I watched the first introductory video – I struggled to understand what significance can playing Jazz to E.Coli or sending images encoded in DNA to outer space make in the world.

My area of study at UCLA is focused on examining scientific topics from a wide range of academic perspectives including anthropology, sociology, political science, and psychology. My exposure to art during my course of study, however, has been fairly limited in its scope, so learning about the various interactions of art and artists with biology and biotechnology was incredibly eye opening. To me, the greatest similarity of biologists and artists at the most basic level is that they are both in the business of creating.

            The class title “Biotechnology and Art” was enough to make me jump up and down in my seat. I have spent four years of my life taking a million different classes across campus – from north campus to south campus. Despite this, I have never been able to study anything I have been passionate about one hundred and ten percent.

When I first heard of a topic attempting to bridge the gap between art and science, I couldn't imagine what such a field could bring forth. However, after watching several intro videos and attending Pinar Yoldas's guest lecture, I have a whole new respect for this expansive and creative field of study.

The majority of the classes I have enrolled in to date have been fairly predictable. That is to say that I typically have a good sense of what the class has in store for me just by glancing at the title. Needless to say that this was not the case for this course. My preconceived notions had me thinking that biotechnology and art were two completely separate subjects and therefore could not effectively be meshed together.  If such an action were possible, however, I wondered what its significance would be.

As a science major, I never believed that the worlds of science and art were purposefully combined. Sometimes, I would stumble across some pretty picture in a textbook of something biological, such as a map of the 23 human chromosomes, each highlighted with a different colored fluorescent marker, but I never thought of it as art.