We recently collaborated with Diemut Strebe, an artist, to construct her artwork Sugababe. It is a chondrocyte-seeded Van Gogh’s ear model cultured in a bioreactor with perfusion. The artwork is currently on show in the Ennova Art Museum in Langfang, Hebei, China. https://ennovaartmuseum.com.cn/news/activity/113.html
Introduction to Sugababe:
“In Sugababe, the Theseus paradox—a thought experiment based on Plutarch’s Ship of Theseus, which questions whether an object that has all its component parts replaced remains the same object – has been applied to the molecular level by replacing various natural components with engineered ones: We replaced natural DNA present in a living cell line from a van Gogh male descendant with foreign DNA of a living female descendant and natural DNA with modified variations, namely those genes and other components that are supposed to influence and enhance artistic creativity.
The involved technology such as gene scissors CRISPR Cas9 and mRNA technology is probing the re- creation of a historical person and options to enhance our natural physical dispositions. The principles of such technologies allow us to alter, control and re-design our own “hardware.”
Sugababe explores the potential and implications of such cutting edge bio-technology and questions the mystification of art and the artist by the public and in art theory.” For more information, please visit https://diemut.net/sugababe/
English