Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, are co-founders of the Tissue Culture

1
Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, are co-founders of the
Tissue Culture Art Project.http//www.tca.uw
a.edu.au/
2
Oron Catts Ionat Surr Tissue Culture Art
Project

• Tissue Culture (Wikipedia)
• the growth of tissues and/or cells separate from
  the organism.
• This is typically facilitated via use of a
  liquid, semi-solid, or solid growth medium, such
  as broth or agar.
• Tissue culture commonly refers to the culture of
  animal cells and tissues, while the more specific
  term plant tissue culture is used for plants.

3
Biotech Art

• Stelarc Extra Ear
  Eduardo Kac Petunia -
  Edunia
• Emerging in the late 1990s, artwork, in response
  to current developments in biotechnology, that is
  blurring the boundaries between science and art.
• Diverse work with artists employing
  biotechnological techniques, working with living
  tissue, human and/or animal cells, bacteria,
  viruses and other genetic material.
• Artists are cloning, breeding, creating hybrids
  and intervening in biological processes to create
  their work.

4
http//www.fact.co.uk/news/?id128http//www.flic
kr.com/photos/katielips/sets/72157603878431761/ht
tp//www.collegeoutlook.net/creative_outlook/its_a
live.cfmhttp//www.we-make-money-not-art.com/arch
ives/2009/09/vivoarts-school-for-transgenic.phpti
meline for regenerative medicine from a talk
by Oron Catts http//www.we-make-money-not-ar
t.com/archives/2009/09/vivoarts-school-for-transge
nic.php
5

• Oron Catts
• Born in Finland
• Currently living and working in Western Australia
  .
• Tissue engineering artist.
• Co-Founder and Artistic Director of SymbioticA,
  the Art Science Collaborative Research
  Laboratory, School of Anatomy and Human Biology,
  UWA.
• Co-Founder of the Tissue Culture Art
  Project/TCA (1996).
• Research Fellow at the Tissue Engineering and
  Organ Fabrication Laboratory, Harvard Medical
  School (2000-2001).
• Trained in product design and specialized in the
  future interaction of design and biological
  derived technologies. BA, (first Class Honours),
  and Visual Art (MA).

• Ionat Zurr
• Born in England
• Currently living and working in Western Australia
  .
• Wet Biology Art Practitioner.
• Researcher/Academic Coordinator - SymbioticA
• Co-Founder of the TCA Project.
• Research Fellow at the Tissue Engineering and
  Organ Fabrication Laboratory, Harvard Medical
  School (2000-2001).
• Studied art history, photography and media
  studies.
• Specializing in biological and digital imaging as
  well as video production.

6

• 'We overlook only too often the fact that a
  living being may also be regarded as raw
  material, as something plastic, something that
  may be shaped and altered.'
• HG Wells, 1895
• Short Manifesto The Tissue Culture Art
  Project (TCA)
• was set to explore the use of tissue
  technologies as a medium for artistic expression.
  We are investigating our relationships with the
  different gradients of life through the
  construction/growth of a new class of
  object/being that of the Semi-Living. These are
  parts of complex organisms which are sustained
  alive outside of the body and coerced to grow in
  predetermined shapes. These evocative objects are
  a tangible example that brings into question deep
  rooted perceptions of life and identity, concept
  of self, and the position of the human in regard
  to other living beings and the environment. We
  are interested in the new discourses and new
  ethics/epistemologies that surround issues of
  partial life and the contestable future scenarios
  they are offering us.

7
Pig Wings Project

• Using tissue engineering and stem cell
  technologies in order to grow pig bone tissue in
  the shape of 3 sets of wings, the Pig Wings
  installation presented the first ever wing shaped
  objects grown using living pig tissue.
• The 3 kinds of wings represented
  chimeras--good/angelic (bird-wing) and
  evil/satanic (bat-wing)--and Pterosaurs
• This absurd work presents some serious ethical
  questions regarding a near future where
  semi-living objects (objects which are partly
  alive and partly constructed) exists and animal
  organs will be transplanted into humans.
• What kind of relationships we will form with such
  objects? How are we going to treat animals with
  human DNA? How will we treat humans with animal
  parts? What will happen when these technologies
  will be used for purposes other then strictly
  saving life?

8
Pig Wings Project Lab images
9
Pig Wings Project musical enhancement

• Adam Zaretsky was exploring the effects of music
  on bacterial fermentation at Massachusetts
  Institute of Technology
• Catts Zurr decided to collaborate with Zaretsky
  by playing Pig Music to Pig Wings. Downloaded all
  the pig related MP3s by typing in PIG as the
  keyword. Two examples War Pigs by Black
  Sabbath, Fascist Pig by Suicidal Tendencies.
• Over the next three weeks the music was applied
  on a regular basis.
• Alteration of Sculptural Morphology was noticed
  early on.
• After the incubation period had finished, some of
  the Musically Entertained Pig Wings were sent to
  histology to be compared to the Pig Wings whom
  had been Musically Deprived.
• Considerable differences in cells count, tissue
  morphology and distribution throughout the
  construct were ascertained.

10
Victimless Leather A Prototype of Stitch-less
Jacket grown in a Technoscientific "Body

• Humans, the naked/nude apes, have been covering
  their fragile bodies/skins to protect themselves
  from the external environment. This humble act
  for survival has developed into a complex social
  ritual which transformed the concept of a
  Garment
• Garments became an expressive tool to project
  one's identity, social class, political stand and
  so on.
• By growing Victimless Leather, the Project is
  further problematising the concept of garment by
  making it Semi-Living.
• The Victimless Leather is grown out of
  immortalised cell lines which cultured and form a
  living layer of tissue supported by a
  biodegradable polymer matrix in a form of
  miniature stich-less coat like shape. The
• Victimless Leather project concerns with growing
  living tissue into a leather like material.
• This artistic grown garment will confront people
  with the moral implications of wearing parts of
  dead animals for protective and aesthetic reasons
  and will further confront notions of
  relationships with living systems manipulated or
  otherwise.
• An actualized possibility of wearing leather'
  without killing an animal is offered as a
  starting point for cultural discussion.

11
Victimless Leather A Prototype of Stitch-less
Jacket grown in a Technoscientific "Body

• Bizarre Living Art Project Put to Death by
  Deborah 5-8-08
• http//www.lifeinthefastlane.ca/bizarre-living-art
  -project-put-to-death/art/odd-unusual-weird-whacky
  
• An art piece ironically entitled Victimless
  Leather a tiny living leather jacket created
  with embryonic stem cells of a mouse to grow into
  a stitch-less coat was put to its death when it
  got out of control and began to outgrow its
  incubator.
• The work which combined artistic practice with
  scientific research was fed nutrients by tube
  and expanded too quickly which clogged its own
  incubation system.
• Merely 5 weeks into the art installation Design
  and the Elastic Mind at the Museum of Modern Art
  in New York, Paola Antonelli, curator of the show
  and head of MoMAs architecture and design
  department, had to make the disconcerting
  decision to turn off the life-support system for
  the work which inevitably killed the living
  creature.
• The jacket started growing, growing, growing
  until it became too big. And the artists were
  back in Australia, so I had to make the decision
  to kill it. And you know what? I felt I could not
  make that decision. Ive always been pro-choice
  and all of a sudden Im here not sleeping at
  night about killing a coat. That thing was never
  alive before it was grown. Paola Antonelli said
  to The Art Newspaper.
• Oron Catts _at_ Techno Threads
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?v4BMVVX6GTPs

12
2 Additional Projects 2 Links

• Extra Ear - 1/4 scale
• In this collaboration a quarter-scale replica of
  Stelarc's ear is grown using human cells.
• The ear is cultured in a rotating micro-gravity
  bioreactor which allows the cells to grow in
  three dimensions.
• The prosthesis is seen not as a sign of lack, but
  as a symptom of excess. Rather than replacing a
  missing or malfunctioning part of the body, these
  artifacts are alternate additions to the body's
  form and function.
• Disembodied Cuisine
• Project to grow frog skeletal muscle over
  biopolymer for potential food consumption.
• A biopsy is taken from an animal which will
  continue to live and be displayed in the gallery
  along side the growing steak. This installation
  will culminate in a feast. (installation
  Nantes,Fr 03)
• As the cells from the biopsy proliferate the
  steak in vitro continues to grow and expand,
  while the source, the animal from which the cells
  were taken, is healing.
• The idea and research into this project began in
  Harvard in 2000. The first steak grown was made
  out of pre-natal sheep cells (skeletal muscle).
• http//www.abc.net.au/arts/headspace/triplej/morni
  ng/tissue/default.htm
• http//www.lifeinthefastlane.ca/bizarre-living-art
  -project-put-to-death/art/odd-unusual-weird-whacky