Biowriting
Published by Jeremy Douglass September 28th, 2005 in ASCII, Text Art.Like lightwriting and waterwriting, and I’d like to consider a new category of (digital) text art - biowriting.
I’m proposing “biowriting” as a term for symbolic inscription in bioart.
What is bioart? Bioart is art which uses living biological organisms as material components. This definition encompasses biomasses of all sizes, from individual bonsai to complex arrangements of topiary, while the scope of the engagement ranges from microbe photography to visualizations of migrations tracked across vast distances.
With such a broad definition of bioart, what are the limits? Are the culinary arts all bioart as well? What about performance art that involves human bodies - is that ‘bio’ enough, or do the organisms involved have to be drawn from the worlds of ‘nature’ or ’science’? Does the sculptural plasticization of cadavers count, or would including dead organisms require us to consider wooden architecture and furniture, inks and ochre, fabrics, and so on?
One answer to limiting and refining the category of bioart is to focus on thematic concerns - particularly art which addresses the political and ethical issues raised by contemporary biotechnology such as DNA testing or GMOs. Much like the overlapping definitions of blog art, my impression is that, for some, bioart is a category defined by the issues it addresses, regardless of material approach, while for others, the opposite holds true.
Tags: bioart, biowriting, theory
What are some examples of bioart writing, or biowriting? Examples might include spelling with naked bodies (and its long history), bioluminescent painting and bioluminscent sky writing, legible crop circles, and written branding, tattooing, body painting or other words on skin.
From a digital point of view, a particularly interesting example of biowriting is DNA biowriting. The structure of DNA is commonly represented in science and the public imagination as a long sequence of letters. Although folding and RNA interaction make the physical reality of DNA much more complicated, the idea of DNA instructions as a sequential alphabetic expression is a powerful crossover point for metaphors involving computing and information technology.
Most DNA bioart nevertheless focuses on non-alphabetic representations. This may be in part due to the difficulty and expense true sequencing. Indeed, a revolution in affordable instant-sequencing devices of the kind imagined in the film Gattaca might bring with it a revolution in biowriting, bringing to bioart many of the pattern matching and sequencing techniques already used in search art and generator art.
> I???m proposing ???biowriting??? as a term for symbolic inscription in bioart.
I don’t think it will float. Sounds too much like the writing of biographies.
Other than Jeremy’s, there’s only one name in biopoetry in my book: Eduardo Kac.
See his article on biopoetry.
Although highly speculative, his work includes such possibilities as Atomic Writing (positioning atoms precisely to create molecules to spell words) and Xenographics (Transplant a living text from one organism to another, and vice versa).
Is Kac serious? This is always the question. The answer is a resounding, ironic “Yes.”
In an interview, he says,
So Kac wants to explore, to propose, and to provoke. And also, to create glowing rabbits.
I’m not too concerned about confusion - for that matter, “bioart” sounds too much like making biographical portraiture, but it is understood well enough within an art context. Of course, the best term for “writing with life” would be “biography”… but that is already taken, as it turns out.
Alternative suggestions cheerfully accepted, of course.
Thanks for this, Mark. Funny, but I actually wrote this article as a long lead-in to a piece I was running in a few days on using critical code studies to consider Kac’s “Move 36.” However I wasn’t familiar with his work in general, and I hadn’t seen “Biopoetry” - it is an excellent article, and I wish I had read it first!
I love the evocative imagination of biopoetry, but what I don’t like about using the term (as opposed to biowriting) is that it tends to present bio- techniques as short aesthetic novelties, rather sustained discourses such as stories, novels, dialogs, etc. If we transcribe “The Lady, or the Tiger?” into DNA, or spell out the Bill of Rights in naked human bodies, is that biopoetry? Or is it biowriting?
I agree with you about the novelty aspect. Kac’s are provocations, though I do think he has a sustained interest in the relationship between technology, culture, and creativity, perhaps most grotesquely and materially illustrated by his bunny.
I also like this point about biowriting and am interested to see how these ideas play out. Kudos.
Eduardo Kac has a new book out, Telepresence and Biowriting, which has been added to our library list.