Last Thursday, I went to Maria’s
lecture of interdisciplinary projects at the National Autonomous University of
Mexico. It was a very interesting lecture talking about the combination of art
and science, and I learnt a lot from it.
Maria’s team mainly focus on art of
biology. They believe that artists can create great and useful pieces by going
into the biology lab. We always want to see the nature change through
technology, but at the same time the nature can be technologically produced by
the combination of biology and art. So here comes the question: What is the
distinction between nature and artificial? Maria gives us four ways as the
outputs of their solution: holding exhibitions, going to festivals, going into
labs and building labs. In this way, the collaborations between artists and
scientists are enhanced, they both get chances to work on specific projects and
work collectively.
She gives us some examples of their projects.
The one impressed me most was the the adoption of Arabidopsis, the small flowering
plants related to cabbage and mustard. Actually it’s one of the model organisms
used for studying plant biology and the first plant to have its entire genome
sequenced. They want to cultivate the mutant of this flower (which reminds me
of Xmen, ha-ha.) and the transgene will have enhanced beauty. They achieve this
by asking scientists to pick certain genes and discard the rest. They develop
the first generation and keep seeds of the good ones and cultivate following
generations until they get the satisfied ones. It’s really like going shopping.
They choose specific kind of genes, saying “I want this one, I don’t want that
one…” and finally get the extreme beauty. Of course they have many other interesting
projects related to local culture and living styles, such as the transgene corn
exhibition.
I highly recommend this event because
it shows us a feasible way to combine art and science. We should bring art into
labs and get amazing results.
me at the lecture
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