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Bio Art

“To develop a complete mind: Study the science of art; Study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” - Leonardo da Vinci

Art exists since the origins of humanity. Likewise, science has always been prompted by a desire of knowing more and more about the world, the nature and life.

While developing Printeria, we had the chance to get into the vast applications of the BioArt world: a contemporary art form that adapts scientific methods and biotechnology to explore living systems as artistic subjects (1).

As a consequence, we decided to promote the existant synergy between art and science through the BioArt expansion among society.

Printone: express yourself

While creating our Part Collection, we decided to provide bioartists with a complete DNA toolkit for their artwork production. To do so, we assembled several transcriptional units with our reporteres (GFPmut3, sfGFP, YGP, mRFP, amilCP ) and a variety of promoteres and RBS of different strenghts.

By this way, we finally obtained Printone: a palette of pigmented bacteria, with different colours and intensity tones, for the entire disposal of the bioartist.

We used this variety of colours to introduce, both ourselves and the general public, to the Microbial Art field: agar plates artworks using living cells. In fact, some of these samples were given to the bioartists María Peñil and Dr. Mehmet Berkmen, who were part of our Integrated Human work, to provide them with new tones to paint with.

FOTO COLORES

Activity: Bioartist for one day

How to attract people to SynBio? It is possible to achieve this challenge in a subjective and eye-appealing way? While developing Printeria, we realized the BioArt could be the perfect way to approach SynBio in a nerby and attractive way to the non-research world. Thus, o divulgue the BioArt field, we designed the practical session ‘Bioartist for one day’.

The activity took place in the Mustang Art Gallery (Elche), a cultural space dedicated to the diffusion of contemporary art. This workshop involved last year high school students of arts, science and social sciences, so we could be able to interact with a wide range of different profiles.

In this activity, they created their own ‘living masterpice’. Previously, we did detailed explanation on how to properly use the lab material and cells during simple microbiology protocols such as plating. Thus, they could learn both from the art and microbiology worlds. Then, using solid agar plates as a canvas, inoculating loops as brushes and the palette of pigmented bacteria we self-made in the lab as tempera, they blew their minds to do imaginative Microbial Art. As soon as they finished, petri dishes were collected, kept and sealed for a later incubation in our lab. Finally, a gallery of all their artistic works was published in this Instagram account, so everyone could share it and so create interest into bacterial art.

Yturralde: fusion between art and science

José María Yturralde is an spanish artist widely known for his relationship with science. He collaborated with artists and scientists to expand and redefine his understanding of shapes, and explored ways that the mainframe computer could be used as a tool for complementing his art practices (2). In this context, we thought it could be a great idea to introduce him to the vast possibilities of the BioArt world and so learn about his life experiences.

We decided to recreate one of his most famous masterpieces, from the collection 'Impossible Figures', with our own genetic engineered bacteria. To do so, we printed a 3D mold of the figure to delimitate the barriers of the drawing, so we could then inoculate each coloured bacteria in a compartiment of the solid agar medium. Finally, using bigger than usual agar plates, we were able to recreate his artwork perfectly.

Impossible figure artwork. Yturraldes's masterpiece and the equivalent Microbial Art version