| This dissertation offers an innovative, practical and theoretical approach to ideation and creation in the emerging contemporary field of biological art. Throughout art's history, materials and technique have played a profound role, both directly and indirectly, in shaping the content and form of a work of art. This dissertation proposes to look at biological art in a similar capacity but also as a system, allowing the narratives of cell differentiation, circadian rhythms, growth and decay, predictability and emergence, evolution, and other biological agencies to become intertwined with the material used and meaning created within the work. Furthermore, there is a relationship created between archetypes and actual life: Metaphor and reality come together in a significant union of science and reverie materially evidenced in a living work of art. This shaping of nature for artistic or scientific purposes is not without its moral and ethical dilemmas and implications. This dissertation will also touch briefly on the contemporary state of engineering biology by examining these issues from the perspective of a practicing artist. Analogies between computational paradigms, biological behaviors and artistic systems will be amplified for the purpose of expanding and reevaluating what it means to be digital. In the author's artistic practice, she experiments both metaphorically and scientifically, with the materials she chooses to work with and by choosing to work with biological materials she am brings to light a possible approach for developing what could be called "behavioral aesthetics" or "the poetry of biological systems". Additionally, the author's specific practical aspects of this theory will be thoroughly described and documented within this dissertation, including detailed analyses of The Search for Luminosity (2005-8), Capacity for (urban eden, human error) (2007-9) and Growth Pattern (2008-10). Finally, a structure for looking at ways of archiving and preserving living bio-art systems will be discussed. |
