BIOTEKNICA is a fictitious corporation, which explores notions of reproduction and self/other distinctions in relation to evolving biotechnologies. BIOTEKNICA projects its viewers into the future, where within our virtual laboratory designer organisms are generated on demand. However, the organisms produced by BIOTEKNICA do not adhere to the structures and functionality normally manifest in nature. Similar to mutations depicted in The Fly, Rosemary’s Baby, and Alien Resurrection, our specimens are irrational and grotesque. They are modeled on the Teratoma, an unusual cancerous growth containing multiple tissues like hair, skin, teeth, and vascular systems. Monstrous as this may seem, scientists today see the teratoma as an instance of spontaneous cloning in nature, and are conducting research on the Teratoma with the goal of developing future technologies. BIOTEKNICA both embraces and critiques biotechnology, considering the contradictions and deep underlying complexities that these technologies offer the future of humanity. BIOTEKNICA is a timely meditation on the ultimate fragility of the concept of a natural body.

In 2004 we took steps towards bringing our theoretical specimens out of their virtual environment and in to the laboratory. That summer we were invited to work as Research Fellows at the Symbiotica Art/Science Laboratories at The University of Western Australia, where we began preliminary investigations into growing organic prototypes to serve as new representations of our BIOTEKNICA product line. Here we trained in use of tissue culture protocols in the production of artwork as pioneered by Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, of the internationally recognized Tissue Culture and Art Project (TC&A), and SymbioticA founders.

In January 2006, we will return to SymbioticA to complete the BIOTEKNICA: Organic Tissue Prototypes in a collaborative effort with Tissue Culture and Art Project (Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr). During this time we plan on developing strategies for building integrated circuits that will connect the prototypes’ bioreactor with online visualization of the work in progress for gallery and remote display of these very fragile works.

We are very interested in the connection, as we see it, between hardware (silicon, and electronics) and wetware (organic, and biological) as means of computation, programming, and control. This work will result in a complex multi media installation, a live web artwork, video and print incarnations of the constructed bio-circuit, and many public presentations, performances, and paper presentations called BIOTEKNICA: Networks for Organic Systems.

BIOTEKNICA | WEB PRESENCE

In conjunction with this line of research we have developed a new web based artwork and BIOTEKNICA archive entitled BIOTEKNICA: Corporate Art for a Corporal Public. This was accomplished with the assistance of artist/programmers David Jhave Johnston, and David Bouchard. This site mobilizes the construct of a corporate interface, in conjunction with critical art production in the development of a complex, unraveling experience for the viewer. The cool and clean design, combined with grotesque and clinical imagery culminates in the interactive Virtual Laboratory Software, now available on line.

Rooted in recent findings related to reverse cell differentiation, BIOTEKNICA projects its users into an extrapolated and exaggerated future, where the power of cellular manipulation and DNA programming has been harnessed. In the BIOTEKNICA Virtual Laboratory the user/viewer is given the opportunity to play the role of the scientist in the visualization of complex theoretical organisms. On our website the user/viewer is provided with a simple interface where they are able to mix their own teratoma, based on the amount of five fictitious ‘ingredients’ they choose to combine. Osteogenicphysis, Histiopoiesis, Dermaplasm, Megalytrichoma, Scaroadipocyte, are manufactured words to describe five different tissue categories that are mixed and grown into teratomas in front of the viewer. Intentionally difficult to understand, and daunting, the user is making biotechnological decisions without the confidence and experience we would prefer to ascribe to that type of powerful action.