Begin  Discussion and Debate

Workers from a variety of backgrounds are increasingly making collaborative alliances with scientific researchers. A recent example is between sociologist Robert Doubleday, and a team of engineers and scientists at the Nanoscience Centre at Cambridge university. Robert describes his role within the team at the centre:

"My role is to help imagine what the social dimensions might be, even though the eventual applications of the science aren’t yet clear. A lot of what I do is translate and facilitate conversations between nanoscientists and social scientists, but also with NGOs and civil society" (quote taken from "See through Science", published by Demos).

There is often a percieved gap between scientific innovation, and the application of new technology to a familiar social setting. This is seen as a gap between science, and the people who are effected by it. Projects like the one at the Nanoscience Centre aim to create a dialogue between different sets of workers, and to most importantly extend that dialogue to the the public.

This project is at the most contemporary end of a long history of initiatives which aim to create a debate with the public. Successful debates provide a wide audience with detail about the motives, processes and outcomes of science research, and in return the research becomes enriched by the responses, ideas and questions of this audience.

The aim of Biojewellery is to strike up a range of relationships with an audience over the issues that surround biotechnology, tissue engineering in particular. The collaboration is between a core team of a bioengineer and two designers. Our backgrounds, interests and previous work provide this collaboration with some unusual features, which we hope will engage an audience in an exciting way.

Some of the issues that inform the project from the outset are mentioned below.

The obscurity of Science

Public knowledge of scientific research is minimal and science, its institutions and language remain impenetrable to most people. The assumption that science and the development of technology is somehow produced in a political and cultural vacuum still prevails, and as a consequence controversial propositions from within the scientific community, which have far reaching implications for ordinary people, are rarely challenged in the public domain.

Tissue engineering is one element of scientific study, which is beginning to have a profound effect on how disease and physical disorders are treated. What are the implications of medical research and how do we introduce the issues surrounding them? Creative responses perform a critical function in terms of challenging/raising public awareness, whilst engaging with the technologies themselves to create new methods of producing work. Biojewellery uses the device of a recognizable social custom to open a debate about  new medical technology. By using an invasive medical procedure to procure cells we are then manipulating these living organisms to produce designed objects. 

Science and Art

We could not begin to discuss Biojewellery without referring to science and art partnerships. An important example is the ‘Tissue Culture and Art  Project’, lead by Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr. The two artists were perhaps the first people to propose the idea of using living tissue for purposes other than medicine and agriculture. By culturing and growing animal tissue in a laboratory environment, they created living sculptures, which would confront the issues of the human treatment of animals and the ethical issues of biotechnology. They were granted a one-year residency as research fellows at Harvard University Medical School- an indication that scientists were beginning to accept that art has a valid and necessary contribution to make to scientific progress, as does science to creative endeavor.

Catts and Zurr believe that biotechnological research occurs within a particular social and political system which inevitably indicates that the focus is on improving and manipulating nature for profit and economic gain. They argue that if the objects that surround us can be manufactured yet at the same time be living, growing entities, we will begin to take a more responsible attitude to our environment and curb our destructive consumerism. Catts and Zurr have created a project which overtly references a particular political philosophy and establishes a distinct position in terms of their objectives.

Whilst each participant of Biojewellery has their own set of concerns, we are not producing objects of direct protest but pieces of information that will hopefully provoke unexpected and diverse responses. Our interest is in the complex relationship between the production and value of the biojewellery, the couple as both owner and donor, and the ways in which the jewellery and couple are perceived by a larger audience. 

Understanding the challenges and limits of scientific research

To follow soon (note: legislation and ethics, experimental faliure, process compleity and time scales).

The value of new technology

To follow soon (note: Rapid prototyping, Cell Biology, craft, cross-discipline similarities).