Symbiotica

Last updated

SymbioticA Logo SymbioticA Logo.png
SymbioticA Logo

SymbioticA is an artistic research lab at the University of Western Australia's School of Anatomy and Human Biology. [1] The lab looks at biology and the life sciences from an artistic point of view and has been used to research, develop and execute a number of contemporary art & science and bioart projects.

University of Western Australia university in Perth, Western Australia

The University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Perth, the state capital, with a secondary campus in Albany and various other facilities elsewhere.

Biology is the natural science that studies life and living organisms, including their physical structure, chemical processes, molecular interactions, physiological mechanisms, development and evolution. Despite the complexity of the science, there are certain unifying concepts that consolidate it into a single, coherent field. Biology recognizes the cell as the basic unit of life, genes as the basic unit of heredity, and evolution as the engine that propels the creation and extinction of species. Living organisms are open systems that survive by transforming energy and decreasing their local entropy to maintain a stable and vital condition defined as homeostasis.

Contents

History

SymbioticA's laboratory was launched in 2000 by artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, biologist Miranda Grounds, and neuroscientist Stuart Bunt. [2] Catts and Zurr began working with biological materials as part of the Tissue Culture and Art Project (TC&A). Grounds, a senior honorary research fellow, researches skeletal muscle repair [3] and Bunt, a professorial fellow, researches spinal cord injury and regeneration. [4] SymbioticA was created as a transdisciplinary research laboratory for creative bioresearch that critically engages with contemporary uses of biology.

Transdisciplinarity connotes a research strategy that crosses many disciplinary boundaries to create a holistic approach. It applies to research efforts focused on problems that cross the boundaries of two or more disciplines, such as research on effective information systems for biomedical research, and can refer to concepts or methods that were originally developed by one discipline, but are now used by several others, such as ethnography, a field research method originally developed in anthropology but now widely used by other disciplines. The Belmont Forum elaborated that a transdisciplinary approach is enabling inputs and scoping across scientific and non-scientific stakeholder communities and facilitating a systemic way of addressing a challenge. This includes initiatives that support the capacity building required for the successful transdisciplinary formulation and implementation of research actions.

Academic Program

SymbioticA's academic program is available to artists, designers, architects, scientists and humanities scholars who wish to engage in creative bioresearch. Symbiotica offers multiple postgraduate degrees including Masters of Biological Arts (MBA) by coursework, Masters of Biological Arts (MBA) by research and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) by research. As part of SymbioticA's transdisciplinary ethos, students undertaking the Masters by coursework are required to engage in both art and science units. Students undertaking SymbioticA's Masters by research program develop novel research under the supervision of the academic coordinator. Both master's degrees are two year programs and the PhD program is a minimum of four years. PhD researchers work independently, generating substantial and original work in their specific field of knowledge. [5]

Residency Program

The residency program is open to practitioners from multiple fields of study including artists, scientists, designers, architects and humanities scholars. SymbioticA provides a research environment where residents engage with hands-on biological practises. Residents are provided access to laboratories and trained in scientific and technical knowledge related to their field of study. Additionally, residents are connected with mentors to ensure they can make the most of their experience. More than 60 residents have undertaken research projects at SymbioticA, including visual and performance artists, art historians, geographers, musicians, political theorists, science fiction writers and scientists. Notable residents include Kathy High, Paul Vanouse, Phil Gamblen, Orlan and the Critical Art Ensemble. [6]

Kathy High American artist

Kathryn High is an American interdisciplinary artist, curator, and scholar known for her work in BioArt, video art and performance art.

Orlan French artist

ORLAN is a French artist, born May 30, 1947 in Saint-Étienne, Loire. She adopted the name ORLAN in 1971, which she always writes in capital letters: "ORLAN."

Critical Art Ensemble award-winning collective of five tactical media practitioners

Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) is a collective of five tactical media practitioners of various specializations including computer graphics and web design, film/video, photography, text art, book art, and performance. For CAE, tactical media is situational, ephemeral, and self-terminating. It encourages the use of any media that will engage a particular socio-political context in order to create molecular interventions and semiotic shocks that collectively could diminish the rising intensity of authoritarian culture.

Workshops

In addition to the academic and residency programs, SymbioticA also conducts workshops within Australia and overseas. These workshops engage with contemporary biotechnologies in order to delve into larger philosophical and ethical issues surrounding the extent to which humans manipulate other living organisms. SymbioticA features workshops lasting two to five days, often demonstrating techniques common in synthetic biology, animal tissue culture and tissue engineering. [7]

Synthetic biology interdisciplinary branch of biology and engineering

Synthetic biology is an interdisciplinary branch of biology and engineering.

Tissue culture growth of tissues or cells in an artificial medium separate from the organism

Tissue culture is the growth of tissues or cells in an artificial medium separate from the organism. This is typically facilitated via use of a liquid, semi-solid, or solid growth medium, such as broth or agar. Tissue culture commonly refers to the culture of animal cells and tissues, with the more specific term plant tissue culture being used for plants. The term "tissue culture" was coined by American pathologist Montrose Thomas Burrows.

Tissue engineering

Tissue engineering is the use of a combination of cells, engineering and materials methods, and suitable biochemical and physicochemical factors to improve or replace biological tissues. Tissue engineering involves the use of a tissue scaffold for the formation of new viable tissue for a medical purpose. While it was once categorized as a sub-field of biomaterials, having grown in scope and importance it can be considered as a field in its own.

Awards

In 2007 the lab won the inaugural Golden Nica for Hybrid Arts in the Prix Ars Electronica. [8]

Prix Ars Electronica one of the most important yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music

The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the best known and longest running yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music. It has been awarded since 1987 by Ars Electronica.

Related Research Articles

Salk Institute for Biological Studies life sciences research institute

The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is an independent, non-profit, scientific research institute located in the La Jolla community in San Diego, California. It was founded in 1960 by Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vaccine; among the founding consultants were Jacob Bronowski and Francis Crick. Building did not start until spring of 1962. The institute consistently ranks among the top institutions in the US in terms of research output and quality in the life sciences. In 2004, the Times Higher Education Supplement ranked Salk as the world's top biomedicine research institute, and in 2009 it was ranked number one globally by ScienceWatch in the neuroscience and behavior areas.

Marine Biological Laboratory international center for research and education in biology, biomedicine and ecology

The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is an international center for research and education in biological and environmental science. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution affiliated with the University of Chicago. After being independent for most of its history, it became affiliated with the university on July 1, 2013. It also collaborates with numerous other institutions.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Private, non-profit institution with research programs focusing on cancer, neuroscience, plant genetics, genomics and quantitative biology

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) is a private, non-profit institution with research programs focusing on cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, and quantitative biology.

The Office of the Provost at Indiana University Bloomington oversees the academic programs, research, and policies of 16 schools on the Indiana University Bloomington campus. Together, these units offer more than 550 individual degree programs and majors.

Honor Harger New Zealand artist

Honor Harger is a curator and artist from New Zealand. Harger has a particular interest in artistic uses of new technologies. She is currently the executive director of the ArtScience Museum in Singapore.

Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography

The Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography is a natural science college at Nova Southeastern University in Florida. The college offers programs in subjects like biology and mathematics and conducts oceanographical research.

BioArt artform in which artists work with living organisms and life processes

BioArt is an art practice where humans work with live tissues, bacteria, living organisms, and life processes. Using scientific processes such as biotechnology the artworks are produced in laboratories, galleries, or artists' studios. The scope of BioArt is considered by some artists to be strictly limited to "living forms", while other artists would include art that uses the imagery of contemporary medicine and biological research, or require that it address a controversy or blind spot posed by the very character of the life sciences.

University of Minnesota College of Biological Sciences

The College of Biological Sciences (CBS) is one of seven freshman-admitting colleges at the University of Minnesota. Established in 1869 as the College of Sciences, the College of Biological Sciences is now located on both the Minneapolis Campus and the St. Paul Campus. CBS is a college that focuses its undergraduate and graduate attention towards research. The dean is Valery E. Forbes. The Associate Dean for Graduate Education is Carrie Wilmot, the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education is John Ward, the Associate Dean for Research is Thomas Hays, and the Associate Dean for Faculty is Marlene Zuk.

Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory

The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory is a high-altitude biological field station located near Crested Butte, in the West Elk Mountains in the state of Colorado, United States. The laboratory was founded in 1928 on the site of an abandoned mining town. Research areas include the ecology of the region, climate change, pollination biology and a long-running study of the yellow-bellied marmot. The laboratory offers courses for undergraduate students, including National Science Foundation funded REU students, and provides support for researchers from universities and colleges.

Sarah Jane Pell is an Australian artist, researcher and occupational diver. Her works combine the traditions of Performance art and human factors with Underwater habitat and Occupational diving technologies. She is best known for pioneering "aquabatics" that is performed underwater or shown in museums as films and artefacts. She designs civilian space-analogues and produces speculative fiction, live art, and novel experiments.

The College of Natural Science (NatSci) at Michigan State University is home to 29 academic units serving 5,000 undergraduate majors and nearly 1,000 graduate students in the biological, physical and mathematical sciences.

California NanoSystems Institute organization

The California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) is an integrated research center operating jointly at UCLA and UC Santa Barbara. Its missions are to foster interdisciplinary collaborations for discoveries in nanosystems and nanotechnology; train the next generation of scientists, educators and technology leaders; and facilitate partnerships with industry, fueling economic development and the social well-being of California, the United States and the world.

Do-it-yourself biology is a growing biotechnological social movement in which individuals, communities, and small organizations study biology and life science using the same methods as traditional research institutions. DIY biology is primarily undertaken by individuals with extensive research training from academia or corporations, who then mentor and oversee other DIY biologists with little or no formal training. This may be done as a hobby, as a not-for-profit endeavour for community learning and open-science innovation, or for profit, to start a business.

Hybrid arts

Hybrid arts is a contemporary art movement in which artists work with frontier areas of science and emerging technologies. Artists work with fields such as biology, robotics, physical sciences, experimental interface technologies, artificial intelligence, and information visualization. They address the research in many ways such as undertaking new research agendas, visualizing results in new ways, or critiquing the social implications of the research. The worldwide community has developed new kinds of art festivals, information sources, organizations, and university programs to explore these new arts. Hybrid arts is also the name of a non profit Arts education company in the United Kingdom. Set up in 2003 after a four-year development period to create a new species of training and arts engagement provider in the cultural industries...see Hybrid:arts

Victimless Leather – a prototype of a stitch-less jacket, grown from cell cultures into a layer of tissue supported by a coat shaped polymer layer.

The College of Science at Virginia Tech contains academic programs in biology, chemistry, economics, geosciences, mathematics, physics, psychology, and statistics. In 2010-11, the College of Science consisted of 339 faculty members and 4,370 students. The college was established in July 2003 after university restructuring split the College of Arts and Sciences, established in 1963, into two distinct colleges. Lay Nam Chang has been acting dean of the College of Science since its inception in 2003.

Radhika Nagpal is an American computer scientist and researcher in the fields of self-organising computer systems, biologically-inspired robotics, and biological multi-agent systems. She is the Fred Kavli Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University and the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. She is also a Core Faculty Member of the Harvard Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. In 2017, Nagpal co-founded a robotics company under the name of Root Robotics. This educational company works to create many different opportunities for those unable to code to learn how.

Oron Catts is an Australian artist and researcher currently residing in Perth, Australia where he has been employed at the University of Western Australia since 1996. He works as an artistic director of SymbioticA, which he is also co-founder of. Together with Ionat Zurr he founded the Tissue Culture & Art Project. From 2000–2001 he was a Research Fellow at the Tissue Engineering and Organ Fabrication Laboratory at Harvard Medical School. He has also worked with numerous other bio-medical laboratories in several different countries.

Carl H. Johnson American biologist

Carl Hirschie Johnson is an American-born biologist who researches the chronobiology of different organisms, most notably the bacterial circadian rhythms of cyanobacteria. Johnson completed his undergraduate degree in Honors Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, and later earned his PhD in biology from Stanford University, where he began his research under the mentorship of Dr. Colin Pittendrigh. Currently, Johnson is the Stevenson Professor of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University.

The William J. and John F.Kennedy College of Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Lowell is so named for the Kennedy family and their contributions to the campus. John F. Kennedy is an alumnus of the Lowell Technological Institute Class of 1970. The Lowell Technological Institute merged with the Lowell State College to become the University of Lowell in 1972. It joined the UMass system in 1991 to become Umass Lowell.

References

  1. ↑ "Culture: Art That Touches a Nerve." Anthony King. Nature 470, 334 (17 February 2011) doi:10.1038/470334a
  2. ↑ "Culture: Art That Touches a Nerve." Anthony King. Nature 470, 334 (17 February 2011) doi:10.1038/470334a
  3. ↑ 'UWA Staff Profile' (2012) The University of Western Australia. http://www.uwa.edu.au/people/miranda.grounds
  4. ↑ 'UWA Staff Profile' (2012) The University of Western Australia. http://www.uwa.edu.au/people/stuart.bunt
  5. ↑ 'SymbioticA Courses' (2014) SymbioticA, UWA. http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/courses
  6. ↑ 'SymbioticA Residents' (2014) SymbioticA. http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/residents
  7. ↑ 'SymbioticA Workshops' (2014) SymbioticA. http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/activities/workshops
  8. ↑ Prix Ars Electronica#Hybrid art

Sources

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.