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Leonardo’s choice: the ethics of artists working with genetic technologies

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Abstract

Working with current methodologies of art, biology, and genetic technologies, the stated aims of artists working in this area include attempts both to critique the implications and outcomes of genetic technologies and to forge a new art practice involved in creating living beings using those technologies. It is this last ambition, the development of a new art practice involved in creating living beings, that this essay will particularly take to task by questioning the ethics of that goal and the uses of biotechnology in reaching it.

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Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Notes

  1. The quote is actually from a work of fiction written by Merijkowsky in the 1920s Romance of Leonardo da Vinci.

  2. There are, of course, exceptions to this statement, including artists Sue Coe, Mark Dion, Julian Schanbel, and Britta Jaschinski, among others.

  3. This phrase comes from the title “The Aesthetics of Care?” a symposium presented by SymbioticA and The Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Western Australia. August 5 2002 at Perth Institute for Contemporary Arts. Catts and Zurr and their Tissue Culture and Art Project are hosted by SymbioticA—The Art and Science Collaborative Research Lab.

  4. “Interview with Eduardo Kac” Interview conducted online, with questions posted to the Genolog website, July–September 2000 http://www.ekac.org/genointer.html, pp. 3–4.

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  1. School of Design, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, 1399 Johnston Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6H 3R9

    Carol Gigliotti

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  1. Carol Gigliotti
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Correspondence to Carol Gigliotti.

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Gigliotti, C. Leonardo’s choice: the ethics of artists working with genetic technologies. AI & Soc 20, 22–34 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-005-0003-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-005-0003-8

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