Unit 6 DESMA 9 Blog

For this week, the topic is biotechnology and art.  Within this, artists will work directly with scientists in labs, or with geneticists, working with and around living cells.  One such artist, creator, and inventor, Joe Davis, believes that genes and genomes are a new palate for the artist.  He has developed such things as the Audio Microscope, which allows the user to view particular living cells while also listening to their amplified, species-specific micro acoustic signatures.  He has, on top of that, performed experiments in sound and cell structures, with his next project being how E. Coli responds to jazz and other sounds.  He is interested in such questions as what sound waves prove stressful to bacteria, and if primordial clocks can self-assemble.  His most esoteric project may be the "info-gene", with which there would be genetic engineering of the sign of human intelligence within a translated meaning, which could be sent to extra-terrestrials in a space-bound message.  

Joe Davis = typical "mad scientist"

Artist and scientist Davis with an exhibit of his work

In the "Meanings of Participation: Outlaw Biology?" article by Chris Kelty, the type of scientist called the "Outlaw", or DIY Scientist, was examined.  These innovators are the ones living and working outside the system, outside the boundaries, the "Robin Hoods" in "no man's land".  Joe Davis strikes me as a definite Outlaw, since he certainly isn't as clean-cut as a "Victorian Gentlemen Scientist", who is able to 'impress everyone' with their work.  And he is not a "Hacker", since while Davis manipulates the information he works with to have self-designated meaning, he sees the world so differently from the social norm, that he does not control the system, does not reconfigure it altogether.  He is known to be in the shadows, a non-commercial creator.  

This is a very short 3-minute video presenting the viewer with an introduction to Joe Davis' documentary.  It will cause one to raise the question of if he is crazy...but to do that, you might have to call all innovators who believed in something that no one else really did some sort of crazy as well.  We all have ideas; as he says, "we are all artists and scientists and philosophers"...it is the acting on these ideas that is the reason we have any notable art and science in this world to speak of.  



A Final Thought:
One thought-provoking question brought up in the blog prompt was "Should there be limits to human creativity?"  I want to end my blog with this kind of discussion question because it strikes near to my heart.  I am a vegetarian and would consider myself to be an animal-rights activist.  I have a very hard time finding the moral justice in using animals to test them for human consumer products, or to mutate them to become transgenic.  Joe Davis said he used frog legs to power an aircraft; this means he killed many frogs for their legs, in an artistic and technological venture.  While I understand the upsides of using animals for scientific gains, especially ones that may save human lives, I disagree with using them in art.  Altering the genetic makeup of animals when they have no voice of their own to speak out against it, using recombinant DNA and inserting foreign genes into the organism, is disturbing and distressing to me.  However, everyone has different ideas when it comes to the use of animals in experiments.  I happen to take a very libertarian approach in my belief that living and sentient animals should not be sacrificed for human gains--we are also animals, yet with the often-abused power to take advantage of other species.  Therefore, I do think that creativity should be limited to personal gains only, not ones that involve taking or mutating the lives of other beings.  

Works Cited

"Transgenic Animals." Transgenic Animals. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 May 2015. <http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/T/TransgenicAnimals.html>.



Kelty, Chris. "Meanings of Participation: Outlaw Biology?" (n.d.): n. pag. Web.


"Heaven and Earth and Joe Davis - Interview." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 09 May 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NfK5RdmgYY>.