[Applause]
biotechnology when we talk about
biotechnology we think about the future
will bring why I hail from the startup
hub of San Francisco we like to paint
the rosy fantasy world where
biotechnology will solve all of our
problems from disease to cancer but
there’s an equal number of people in my
neck of the woods that passionately warn
against the ecological calamity which
engineering life could bring as with
every emerging technology the fears and
the fantasies that this future
technology could bring are equally great
but they’re also equally wrong see it’s
really hard to predict the future to
kind of give you some context let’s talk
about more developed technology
computers so when computers are first
developed they were the size of our room
and only used by academics to make
calculations really the thought of the
average person using computer seemed
absurd finally though we made computers
that could fit on a desktop and the
experts thought ah yes people would also
use these just to make calculations you
know little personal finance but then
amateurs got a hold of the technology
and they did the unexpected
they made computer games so instead of
computers making life just easier they
were making life more fun now computers
are completely integrated into our lives
their fuel our economy and most
importantly their how we express
ourselves socially and it’s social
expression that’s influenced our
politics and has radically changed how
kids are socialized today and it’s only
at this point that we are beginning to
look at computers impact on society we
need to talk about biotechnology
now as its emerging to help guide its
use and prepare society for its impact
so is it wrong to change a gene in an
embryo so that it doesn’t have childhood
cancer how is that different than
changing a gene so that the child has
blue eyes how about blue skin what is in
order to protect the child against
childhood cancer it would necessarily
have to have blue eyes and blue skin the
ethical issues around biotechnology are
murky and involved not just how and when
the technology is used but also who has
access to the technology all together so
we can all agree we should probably talk
about genetic engineering synthetic
biology biotechnology GMOs but as you
can see we immediately run into a
problem terminology what are we talking
about how can we have a meaningful
conversation about something we can’t
touch we can’t see or really talk about
in detail without a PhD maybe we can
just let the experts figure it out
chaperon in the future for us right but
you know that works when we wanted to do
that keep doing the things the same way
by the same types of people but there’s
a group of hackers and scientists who
wanted to liberate science from the
confines of academia and Industry to
build spaces so people would have access
to the tools of biotechnology without
discrimination on gender orient gender
what else Oh race or even educational
background I am one of the scientists my
name is Mary Ward and I helped co-found
counterculture labs allow
open to everyone okay while you might
like fully support access to technology
how do you feel about amateurs tinkering
with genomes how would you feel if these
amateurs were in your backyard our lab
is in a neighborhood and I saw a real
need to welcome our neighbors in for a
discussion but how are we gonna get past
politically charged terms like GMOs to
have a meaningful conversation about
fears
you see when technologists and civil
society talk about biotech they miss
each other’s points they miss each
other’s points technologists missed the
critical social impact that a technology
can have and civil society misses out on
the nature of the technology itself and
this is because like I said before words
terminology they keep us in the present
discourse I forget and prevent us from
moving on towards the future so we would
have to get passwords maybe use some
visual aids but pretty pictures of
proteins don’t really capture what the
future could bring they don’t tell a
story just like in my example with
computers we haven’t had no idea what
the future can bring it’s not really
based on fact we need to bring in some
really creative folks who can imagine
something different to do so to do that
the special folks I’m talking about our
artists artists for a long time have
served the role of making the intangible
visual like emotions of fear and love
there’s actually a group of artists that
are embracing the tools of technology
biotech in fact they’re called by
artists and
by Oh artist see that the PCR machine
like a paintbrush and sells a new media
with which to sculpt to transform and to
communicate that’s right
bio artists are using scientific tools
to answer non-scientific questions to be
a form of activism and call us the
question what we view as normal
for example Andrew Zaraki out of New
York City School of Visual Arts asked
what is faith
what gives holy water its transformative
power he went around to all the
cathedrals and collected samples of holy
water that holy water he put into a PCR
machine and amplified the DNA he then
sequenced that DNA and what he found was
that this water contained and Noah’s Ark
worth of species and just one drop he
put those sequence data into a book and
that book was thicker than the Bible
kind of give us a new perspective on the
mystery marry magic out of MIT asked
what is femininity her art invokes a
critique of the politics around
fertility and gender by making DIY
estrogen a regulated hormone by the body
politic so by extracting estrogen from
women’s urine using stuff that you can
get at the grocery store her work brings
us into light the availability of
natural and synthetic estrogens in our
environment her work is both of
education and also of activism to
adam szalinski would make his child
have blue eyes and blue skin and
centipede limbs and scales instead of
hair while you might be appalled I don’t
want to ask you to think more deeply
about what you believe it means to be
human does it matter how many limbs you
have does it matter how much hair you
have does it make someone less human to
have a different color skin so bio
artists like Mary Adam and Andrew force
us to look at the darker side the shadow
sides of what it means to be human and
really dig deeper into our own biases
before we begin to judge other people’s
ideas so really they’re helping us
understand who we are now but could
artists help us understand who we would
be in a biotech future well it was this
question that brought artists and
technologists together at our community
lab in Oakland California and how the
unlike like academic and industry labs
artists would come into our labs freely
team up with members and actually have
the opportunity to become makers in
biotech so over the next three months
designers artists and performers worked
on pieces for the show genetically
altered was a platform for discussion to
elevate us above words as it dropped us
into a visual and tangible future not a
passive art show where visitors could
keep a safe objective distance no this
was an experience where people would be
sculpted like an artist gulps a piece of
so when people came in to the show they
saw a bustle of activity virtual reality
mind-altering light therapy humanoids
like they had never seen before a great
open-air chapel and an altar in that
kind of like travellers dropped into an
exotic culture the visitors of the show
were completely immersed in a new world
while they had come just to observe they
were integrated to become transformed
through body modification and costume
patrons became players so people coming
later on during the program had no idea
who was with the production and who was
a guest and so as the evening progressed
the people coming from the streets the
normal looking people were the abnormal
ones and the people with these body
modifications extra limbs facial paints
these new human beings these bio queers
that was the normal so as the night
progressed everyone was welcomed into
the great open-air chapel see all the
bustle was for a special occasion it was
for a birth so the ceremony that they
witnessed what had a lot of familiar
themes kind of like a Catholic Mass but
instead of communion the priest
performed a bacterial transformation see
in this future the virgin birth was not
due to the will of God but rather
there’s the altar but rather to the
technological achievement of an
artificial womb a great warp that hung
experiences have a way of binding us
together and our person we really can’t
ignore what people experience made them
feel like the odd one out they were
exposed to a new norm and a new future
with their ontology is wrecked
they were actually free to have creative
artists and their arts are the future of
biotechnology because biotechnology is
moving from something a tool to fix our
problems to a means of self-expression
and this is because it’s been released
from the confines of academia and
Industry and people are doing
biotechnology on their kitchen tables
and you’re seeing a displayed at your
local gallery and what’s beautiful about
this is that this creative movement is
being empowered by including all
stakeholders in the use and applications
of biotechnology in the future artists
will be writing genomes just as fluently
as Blake or Byron wrote vers life will
be poetry so yes we don’t know what the
future may hold but artists will help us
see the possibilities thank you [Applause]
biotechnology when we talk about
biotechnology we think about the future
will bring why I hail from the startup
hub of San Francisco we like to paint
the rosy fantasy world where
biotechnology will solve all of our
problems from disease to cancer but
there’s an equal number of people in my
neck of the woods that passionately warn
against the ecological calamity which
engineering life could bring as with
every emerging technology the fears and
the fantasies that this future
technology could bring are equally great
but they’re also equally wrong see it’s
really hard to predict the future to
kind of give you some context let’s talk
about more developed technology
computers so when computers are first
developed they were the size of our room
and only used by academics to make
calculations really the thought of the
average person using computer seemed
absurd finally though we made computers
that could fit on a desktop and the
experts thought ah yes people would also
use these just to make calculations you
know little personal finance but then
amateurs got a hold of the technology
and they did the unexpected
they made computer games so instead of
computers making life just easier they
were making life more fun now computers
are completely integrated into our lives
their fuel our economy and most
importantly their how we express
ourselves socially and it’s social
expression that’s influenced our
politics and has radically changed how
kids are socialized today and it’s only
at this point that we are beginning to
look at computers impact on society we
need to talk about biotechnology
now as its emerging to help guide its
use and prepare society for its impact
so is it wrong to change a gene in an
embryo so that it doesn’t have childhood
cancer how is that different than
changing a gene so that the child has
blue eyes how about blue skin what is in
order to protect the child against
childhood cancer it would necessarily
have to have blue eyes and blue skin the
ethical issues around biotechnology are
murky and involved not just how and when
the technology is used but also who has
access to the technology all together so
we can all agree we should probably talk
about genetic engineering synthetic
biology biotechnology GMOs but as you
can see we immediately run into a
problem terminology what are we talking
about how can we have a meaningful
conversation about something we can’t
touch we can’t see or really talk about
in detail without a PhD maybe we can
just let the experts figure it out
chaperon in the future for us right but
you know that works when we wanted to do
that keep doing the things the same way
by the same types of people but there’s
a group of hackers and scientists who
wanted to liberate science from the
confines of academia and Industry to
build spaces so people would have access
to the tools of biotechnology without
discrimination on gender orient gender
what else Oh race or even educational
background I am one of the scientists my
name is Mary Ward and I helped co-found
counterculture labs allow
open to everyone okay while you might
like fully support access to technology
how do you feel about amateurs tinkering
with genomes how would you feel if these
amateurs were in your backyard our lab
is in a neighborhood and I saw a real
need to welcome our neighbors in for a
discussion but how are we gonna get past
politically charged terms like GMOs to
have a meaningful conversation about
fears
you see when technologists and civil
society talk about biotech they miss
each other’s points they miss each
other’s points technologists missed the
critical social impact that a technology
can have and civil society misses out on
the nature of the technology itself and
this is because like I said before words
terminology they keep us in the present
discourse I forget and prevent us from
moving on towards the future so we would
have to get passwords maybe use some
visual aids but pretty pictures of
proteins don’t really capture what the
future could bring they don’t tell a
story just like in my example with
computers we haven’t had no idea what
the future can bring it’s not really
based on fact we need to bring in some
really creative folks who can imagine
something different to do so to do that
the special folks I’m talking about our
artists artists for a long time have
served the role of making the intangible
visual like emotions of fear and love
there’s actually a group of artists that
are embracing the tools of technology
biotech in fact they’re called by
artists and
by Oh artist see that the PCR machine
like a paintbrush and sells a new media
with which to sculpt to transform and to
communicate that’s right
bio artists are using scientific tools
to answer non-scientific questions to be
a form of activism and call us the
question what we view as normal
for example Andrew Zaraki out of New
York City School of Visual Arts asked
what is faith
what gives holy water its transformative
power he went around to all the
cathedrals and collected samples of holy
water that holy water he put into a PCR
machine and amplified the DNA he then
sequenced that DNA and what he found was
that this water contained and Noah’s Ark
worth of species and just one drop he
put those sequence data into a book and
that book was thicker than the Bible
kind of give us a new perspective on the
mystery marry magic out of MIT asked
what is femininity her art invokes a
critique of the politics around
fertility and gender by making DIY
estrogen a regulated hormone by the body
politic so by extracting estrogen from
women’s urine using stuff that you can
get at the grocery store her work brings
us into light the availability of
natural and synthetic estrogens in our
environment her work is both of
education and also of activism to
adam szalinski would make his child
have blue eyes and blue skin and
centipede limbs and scales instead of
hair while you might be appalled I don’t
want to ask you to think more deeply
about what you believe it means to be
human does it matter how many limbs you
have does it matter how much hair you
have does it make someone less human to
have a different color skin so bio
artists like Mary Adam and Andrew force
us to look at the darker side the shadow
sides of what it means to be human and
really dig deeper into our own biases
before we begin to judge other people’s
ideas so really they’re helping us
understand who we are now but could
artists help us understand who we would
be in a biotech future well it was this
question that brought artists and
technologists together at our community
lab in Oakland California and how the
unlike like academic and industry labs
artists would come into our labs freely
team up with members and actually have
the opportunity to become makers in
biotech so over the next three months
designers artists and performers worked
on pieces for the show genetically
altered was a platform for discussion to
elevate us above words as it dropped us
into a visual and tangible future not a
passive art show where visitors could
keep a safe objective distance no this
was an experience where people would be
sculpted like an artist gulps a piece of
so when people came in to the show they
saw a bustle of activity virtual reality
mind-altering light therapy humanoids
like they had never seen before a great
open-air chapel and an altar in that
kind of like travellers dropped into an
exotic culture the visitors of the show
were completely immersed in a new world
while they had come just to observe they
were integrated to become transformed
through body modification and costume
patrons became players so people coming
later on during the program had no idea
who was with the production and who was
a guest and so as the evening progressed
the people coming from the streets the
normal looking people were the abnormal
ones and the people with these body
modifications extra limbs facial paints
these new human beings these bio queers
that was the normal so as the night
progressed everyone was welcomed into
the great open-air chapel see all the
bustle was for a special occasion it was
for a birth so the ceremony that they
witnessed what had a lot of familiar
themes kind of like a Catholic Mass but
instead of communion the priest
performed a bacterial transformation see
in this future the virgin birth was not
due to the will of God but rather
there’s the altar but rather to the
technological achievement of an
artificial womb a great warp that hung
experiences have a way of binding us
together and our person we really can’t
ignore what people experience made them
feel like the odd one out they were
exposed to a new norm and a new future
with their ontology is wrecked
they were actually free to have creative
artists and their arts are the future of
biotechnology because biotechnology is
moving from something a tool to fix our
problems to a means of self-expression
and this is because it’s been released
from the confines of academia and
Industry and people are doing
biotechnology on their kitchen tables
and you’re seeing a displayed at your
local gallery and what’s beautiful about
this is that this creative movement is
being empowered by including all
stakeholders in the use and applications
of biotechnology in the future artists
will be writing genomes just as fluently
as Blake or Byron wrote vers life will
be poetry so yes we don’t know what the
future may hold but artists will help us
see the possibilities thank you [Applause]
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