MOLI VIEW™

In the new movement known as bio art, scientists and technology experts are using craft and chemistry to create new forms of life.

Though it sounds more like the fiction of Frankenstein than the Whitney Biennial, artists like Adam Zaretsky, Julia Reodica, and Eduardo Kac use bacteria, living tissue, and other organisms in work that includes everything from growing replacement hymens (Reodica's hymNext Designer Hymen Project; 2004-present) to implanting jellyfish genes into a rabbit embryo to produce a live rabbit that glows in the dark (Kac's Alba; 2000).

Though most bio artists claim creating dialogue about social issues and the scientific world as the art form's primary objective, there are a number of opponents who fear these works are harmful to animals and create unstable laboratory environments that could potentially aid the proliferation of dangerous organisms.

"Transgenic manipulation of animals is just a continuum of using animals for human ends," PETA senior researcher Alka Chandna told the Associated Press in a story on bio art. "The suffering and exacerbation of stress on the animals is very problematic. We're all in support of creativity, but we're opposed to all suffering."

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