The holes and stains in the dress have been patched with silk stained with pink colonies of E. coli bacteria, grown on dye-containing agar. The genomes of these bacteria have been edited using a technique called CRISPR, to remove an ampicillin antibiotic resistance gene and scarlessly patch the break using homologous recombination with a fragment of DNA encoding the WWII slogan Make Do and Mend. Ampicillin is part of the penicillin group of antibiotics, so with this artistic genomic edit, Dumitriu and Goldberg have used today’s technology to return the organism to its pre-antibiotic era state, reflecting on how we might in future control and protect such biotechnological advances.

Credits

Supported by the FEAT project, an initiative of eutema GmbH (AT), Stichting Waag Society (NL), and youris.com (BE). lt has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under grant agreement No 686527 (H2020-FETOPEN- 2015-CSA). Made in collaboration with Dr Sarah Goldberg at the Synthetic Biology Laboratory for the Decipherment of Genetic Codes at the Technion in Israel. With assistance from Dr Heather Macklyne, University of Sussex, and Dr Rob Neely, University of Birmingham.

About the artist

Anna Dumitriu (UK) (1969) is a British artist whose work fuses craft, sculpture, and Bio Art to explore our relationship to the microbial world, medicine, and technology. She is affiliated to the Modernising Medical Microbiology Project at the University of Oxford (UK), the Department of Computer Science at The University of Hertfordshire (UK), Brighton and Sussex Medical School (UK), and Waag Society (Netherlands). She is the artist partner on the EU Horizon 2020 funded FET support action FEAT: Future Emerging Art and Technology and is working with MRG-Grammar to explore gene regulation.

Read more: starts-prize.aec.at.

This project is presented in the framework of the STARTS Prize 2017. STARTS Prize received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 732019.

The key resource in this value production is the genetic material acquired from individuals through exploitable commercial services to be resold as digitized genetic data to research institutions for profit.

The Waag Society decided to challenge this exploitation with a socially responsible business model of self-ownership, where citizens remain owners of their genetic material and sequenced data. For that purpose the Waag Society proposes a cooperative institution, fully owned by its members, providing a legal framework for citizens to remain owners of their genetic data during the whole process of its monetization. Such an organization will actively advocate, negotiate and represent citizen interests.

Credits

Production: Waag Society (NL)
Support: Creative Industries Fund NL

Waag Society (NL) is an institute for art, science and technology—is a pioneer in the field of digital media. Over the past 22 years, the foundation has developed into an institution of international stature, a platform for artistic research and experimentation, and has become both a catalyst for events and a breeding ground for cultural and social innovation. Waag Society explores emerging technologies and provides art and culture a central role in the designing of new applications for novel advances in science and technology.

www.waag.org/en/project/gene-coop