Project: 'Concrete Lichen' by Lionel Billiet

Project: 'Aqua Vita' by Mike Thompson and Susana Cámara Leret

Project: 'In Vena Verbum – Message in a Vein' by Tiddo Bakker

Project: 'The Edible Time Machine' by Zack Denfeld, Catherine Kramer en Yashas Shetty

De winnaars van de Designers & Artists 4 Genomics Award zijn vanaf 8 juni te zien in de zaal Onderzoek in Uivoering op de 5e verdieping van Naturalis. Deze bijzondere kunstprojecten waarin design en wetenschap samenkomen, zijn tot 6 januari 2013 te bezichtigen.

Het laatste nieuws over de projecten vindt u op de blogpagina van DA4GA.

Klik hier voor informatie over Naturalis en een routebeschrijving.

Three works to which the first Designers and Artists 4 Genomics Award was allotted are definitely using living materials, microorganisms or nematodes and some of them have already used or intend to use biotechnological procedures, so they are extremely close to the mentioned approach which is like a new interdisciplinary version of  what Rembrandt was doing.
But we should start in turns, by explaining and researching into these, for the wider art scene still unusual, artworks. It is interesting to mention that only the press from the scientific world and not the one from the art-world attended the opening of the exhibition at the Naturalis museum at Leiden which is the fact that should be considered.

Each of the three awarded artworks has its own specificities, they differ from each other  not only in their own unique artistic features, but also in the artists’ choice of scientific processes in creating their artwork.

One of the awarded artworks, Matthijs Munnik’s Microscopic Opera, was created with the help of  Netherlands Consortium for Systems Biology. Microscopic Opera is an installation where a testing animal C. Elegans is used to produce sounds. C. Elegans worms are microscopic creatures situated under five microscopes which are situated under the big, rounded glass. The microscopes are connected to the screens where one can see the enlarged versions of the worms. Also, their movement triggers samples of the sounds – one worm triggers only one voice and for the two or more there is the whole chorus. The relation between invisibility and visibility is interesting in this installation. We cannot see with naked eyes the materiality of the C. Elegans (and we cannot look under the microscopes because they are closed in the glass) and when we transform it into digital, non-palpable form, it becomes visible. We can see on the screens how the worms intertwine with each other, how their paths blend and set apart. Since these creatures are transparent, owing to the reflection of the light, the projections have the colour of the rainbow, so in fact these creatures greatly remind of water, drops of water dripping and disappearing, all the time changing like a painting made with invisible paint. Action painting caused by nature is happening before us! And since we can also compare humans to these weak creatures which are not aware of the world around them, the triggering of the sound of the human voices while worms move is effective. Music as a metaphor of the divine in humans is ironically opposed to the worms as a metaphor of our mortal, non-divine side. Furthermore, it could be said that this artwork between three, is the closest to the generally accepted concept of artwork because the actual, material “product” is more important than the process of creating it, and when we talk about bio-art, often the process of the project and research part is more important than the actual artwork. That is the reason why, according to some definitions, this artwork is not considered to be bio-art. It would depend on the chosen interpretation of bio-art. Some would say that bio-art is only when artists experiment with scientific processes such as biotechnology, so according to that definition this work wouldn’t be bio-art because artist didn’t experiment with gene manipulation and biological processes of C. Elegans, but only nature did. The artist only connected the worms to technology, made them dependant on it so they can produce sounds. In fact, he made some kind of post-worms of them, worms connected to technology, just like we, the humans, according to N. Katherine Hayles have become post-humans (symbiosis of humans and artificial intelligence), so in this sense we can also read this work in a metaphoric way even though that was probably not the artist’s intention. In addition, when art and science fuse in this way, meaning that they are not completely intertwined (nature wasn’t manipulated), even though we look at them as united parts which constitute art, it is also difficult not to observe the natural or scientific part separately, like we see it somewhere in the laboratory or in nature, out of the museum context. We observe C. Elegans as an extraordinary creature which moves really beautifully and it is interesting that they are usually hermaphrodites, only rarely males occur and females never.

The next awarded artwork is Jalila Essaidi’s 2.6g 329m/s which is interesting because it balances precisely at the border between art and science and in this case one cannot separate one from another because the creation of an artwork became possible only owing to Science. With the help of a molecular biologist Randy Lewis and his laboratory located in Utah, Forensic Genomics Consortium Netherlands and Dermatology Department at Leiden University Medical Center, the artist succeeded in creating the bulletproof skin, which is made of human cells and spiders’ proteins because the protein which a spider extracts to make a net is stronger than steel and therefore extremely suitable for making bulletproof vests or bulletproof skin! The name of the artwork is 2.6g 329m/s which is the maximum weight and velocity of a traveling bullet from which a Type 1 bulletproof vest should protect a person, but in fact the artist wanted to emphasize the relativity of safety. Maybe one day it is going to be strange for  people to walk without this kind of skin, maybe they would feel insecure and unprotected in the street only with our normal, human skin?
This little piece of skin, reared in the special incubator is in fact a hybrid between human, spider, and to make things more complicated – transgenic silkworm! It is impossible to extract a lot of spiders’ protein from spiders because they are carnivores so the artist had to use transgenic silkworm in order to get enough spiders’ silk. Hence, in this case we have a transgenic artwork which was already created with the help of a transgenic animal which doesn’t exist in nature. Probably the most precise definition of this hybrid would be human-spider-transgenic silkworm hybrid, a terrifying being which is just a bulletproof product and it wouldn’t have specific skills which we attribute to beings which helped in its creation. It is interesting to compare this hybrid with the ones from mythology and to emphasize the difference between the imaginary and this technological myth – in mythology hybrids usually have the possibility of using specific skills of their blended parts. For example – the horse Pegasus can indeed fly while human-spider-transgenic silkworm couldn’t produce spiders’ silk. But, that is in fact not important for this artwork because that characteristics makes it more passive, more design like, or we could say – even more artistic. We could call it a silent, statuary performance, a real liminal artwork, a hybrid between some kind of sculpture and performance. Also, in this artwork human cells seem more like the medium, some kind of new version of linen, where the spiders’ protein grows the invisible pattern of impenetrability.
It is important to mention more layers of this artwork. The artist herself had only an idea about what she wanted to invent but she didn’t know in advance how exactly the process of designing that kind of skin would actually look like. She was the creator of an idea and everybody else worked for her, as some kind of her tools while her hands were also busy with organizing things. For her a lot of things during the creative process were a surprise and she didn’t know if the skin would be bulletproof in the end, and finally it was not important for the artwork itself, it was more important from the scientific perspective. But, to understand both perspectives more precisely we will finally have to mention what the artist put on display at the exhibition. When we enter, we can first see the model of the stretched skin, but the real skin is growing in the incubator and you can see it only through the transparent little window on the incubator door because it has to be grown in special conditions. This fact completely changes the art support of the exhibition and the artwork becomes closer to an installation. It is also interesting to notice and to compare it to the traditional media – as paintings need walls, as sculptures need pedestals, bio-art artworks need bioreactors or incubators. The only difference is that this skin is an extremely small artwork created in a Petri-dish and the incubator is huge, so it seems that the accessory took up this sensitive artwork which can be seen as a metaphor also for our, human sensitivity. The third thing on display at the exhibition is the slow motion movie which the artist made while she was testing the bullet. In the movie, the artwork which stopped the bullet and the one which didn’t, transforms itself into some kind of minimal abstraction.

The last awarded artwork, which is more close to design, is Maurizio Montalti’s System Synthetics. The designer cooperated with the Kluyver Centre for Genomics of industrial Fermentation in order to study the possibilities of producing bio-fuel from the degradation process of plastic waste. In this scenario one of the two fungi (filamentous fungus) would break down plastic waste and the other fungus (yeast) would produce bio-ethanol from it and the humanity would solve two of its ecological issues – the problem of  plastic waste and the problem of fossil fuels, and the pollution would definitely decrease. But, unfortunately, for some time it will not be possible to fuse these two organisms, because the procedure is quite complicated, at this moment synthetic biology is still not ready to produce this kind of man-made endosymbiosis. Endosymbiosis is a natural, a million years long process in which one microbe takes over another microbe and they get fused together, but now synthetic biology is able to accelerate it by designing the new life forms. So, maybe the Montalti’s vision is still a vision, but definitely with mediation of a man it can faster become a reality. That is also the reason why Montalti’s installation is closer to design and to science, because it is actually extremely important that this beautiful vision one day becomes a reality, the sooner the better, while for Jalila Essaidi’s artwork the outcome of the testing is not important for  artwork.
At the exhibition Montalti showed the small laboratory model which explains the procedure of the degradation of plastics with a joined forces of these mixed culture, the visionary model which presents how these organism would look like and the movie where System Synthetics project is explained.
The model of the small laboratory shows the whole process of the degradation which in the end results in the production of alcohol. There is a simple, profound aesthetics present in this installation, it brings the little, designed laboratory into museum context, in fact the only laboratory genuinely aesthetic parts which refer to bioreactor and to different models of transparent bottles, Erlenmeyer’s flasks, round-bottom flasks through which we can see the colours of different liquids, different plastic materials and of course two organisms. Within this simple aesthetic design mixed culture should occur one day for whose efficiency aesthetics will not be the least important. On the other hand, this useful, man-made design will, of course, bring the question of ethics. Is it ethical to accelerate the evolution in order to solve the problems which  the humans created themselves?

Finally, we have to repeat that for bio-art works usually the process itself is also extremely important but it is not easy to understand it without being close to the laboratory or a bio-artist. That is the feature which brings bio-art really close to literature. Because, when we listen about these artworks, they seem more like a (fiction) story than actual existing visual artwork. There are a lot of people who claim that reality has become so crazy that art can’t anymore surpass it. Is that the reason why art also decided to be real??? It is indeed an interesting fact that in our, largely virtual time, art itself, which has always been virtual, has become alive and palpable. Formulated like this, it sounds like an alarming situation. Art that has always been based solely on fantasy, suddenly becomes alive and real, and the world that should be real, the world where we spend much of our real time, the world of computers and Facebook – is entirely virtual.. We should reassess that, to observe it as a new version of metaphore and myth. And Designers and Artists 4 Genomics Award is the great chance to initiate thinking – thinking about past, present and of course-  the future.  In couple of  hundreds years what will the words natural or real mean? Something quite the opposite than what they mean today?, that is the question to pose.

Neva Lukic, art historian

Theatrical aspects of microorganisms

Artist Matthijs Munnik collaborated with Netherlands Consortium for Systems Biology in realizing his audiovisual installation where lab worms C.elegans are used to produce sounds and images instead of being researched as model organisms in the lab. The role of Science completely gave way because it has been used for producing a pure artistic experience. We could say that this time Science humbly serves Art, just like C.elegans usually serve Science. Their collaboration is some kind of hommage to this worm, the glorification of oneness of Art, Science and Nature. In order to find out more about this installation, we are going to put a few questions to artist Matthijs Munnik and scientist Richard de Boer who he collaborated with.

C. Ellegans in the Microscopic Opera installation

Microscopic Opera installation

Matthijs Munnik

Hello Matthijs, could you please tell me more about your installation… How exactly does it function and how big are these microscopic worms? How did you come up with the idea?

In this installation I wanted to use micro-organisms as performers in order to research if I could apply theatrical aspects to these organisms. Richard de Boer, the researcher I collaborated with, then introduced me to the micro-organism he was researching –  C. elegans, a microscopic worm. I knew right away that they were going to be perfect performers, because of their aesthetics and an interesting history. In the installation I use microscopes for watching movements of these worms, which in turn, through software, control the sounds. In the end, the worms unknowingly perform in an abstract opera, just by moving around. They are less than a millimeter in size, you can sometimes see larger ones with the naked eye, but not the smaller ones.

But, what kind of sounds do they trigger?

Different movements trigger different sounds, in different layers. With software I analyze what is happening on the screen and thus adjust the sound. Different situations trigger different sounds, from abstract opera singing to a dynamic soundtrack of background sounds.

How many worms do you have?

There are 5 Petri dishes in the installation and each has 100 to 1000 worms, depending on the food and elapsed time.

A worm is an animal we associate with a lot of symbolic connotations. They are used as a metaphor of death, evil, corruption and labor. What is your perception of the worm and why did you decide to use it in your work?

I didn’t use worms in a symbolic way, it is purely because they are really relevant in genomics, they are model organism for a lot of research on genes and DNA or RNA, and it is the first multi-cellular creature whose genome has been entirely decoded. Also, their aesthetic side is quite important – they move really beautifully.

Why did you want to work with an invisible living thing, is it a sort of dedication to these creatures…?

I think it’s fascinating to make the microscopic world visible to our world. Everything is completely new and different on a small scale.  Did you also have an urge to do something for science or just for art?
I think that for scientists a different kind of (artistic) perspective is interesting because they only see this world through black and white microscopes. But it doesn’t have explicit research value, I’m not writing a paper on it or anything like it.

I cannot avoid noticing the note of humor and irony in this installation. It is kind of absurd in Beckett’s sense. It simultaneously glorifies humanity and sneers at it. One of your previous performances, Sisyphus, also engages with this subject. Is there a connection between the two?

Yes, that’s right. Even though worms don’t actually sing, that notion makes this artwork funny and ironic at the same time. In Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus people do the same, stupid actions, but in them they can also find some happiness and comfort. Maybe absurdity and happiness at the same time… When you look at the worms, their lives seem worthless, and then you realize that we are just like them.

Looking at your previous work it seemed to me that this is the first time that you used nature, something alive (among yourself!) to produce the impalpable: image (projection) and sound. How do you see this connection between palpable and impalpable, nature and art?

It is interesting to incorporate other creatures besides humans into artistic creation. By using animals for artistic purposes you give away some control.

In fact we could say that you did the same thing as scientists do – you used the laboratory animal for testing, but for artistic testing!

I treated the worms in exactly the same way as scientists do, but I used the data which I got from them for the different purpose – instead of using it to see growth or movement patterns, I used it to make them control an opera.

Are you  interested in bio-art, did you like working in the lab and what exactly did you do there?

Yes, I am interested in bio-art. However, I don’t really see this piece as bio-art. Some time I’d love to do some work in that area. I really like working in the lab, but for this piece I didn’t really experiment with biological processes. We only selected the mutations of  worms and did some tests with chemicals and some different growth media.

Do you now have a different opinion about worms?

Yes, actually I’m now pretty fond of the C. elegans.

How do you see the relation between art and science? In your view, what kind of impact can it have on future? Can it change something?

I think it’s a very interesting development, and I’m looking forward to seeing how this field will develop. There is a lot of beauty in science; in chemistry, physics, biology, mathematics, it’s just waiting for artists to take it and use it to create new art, which is not only relevant to the art world but also to the scientific context.

Richard de Boer

Hello Richard, could you please tell me how is exactly this worm used in scientific research? How do you treat it and why is it so suitable for research?

I use the worms to study the side effects of drugs that have been developed in treating HIV- infected people. These drugs cause all kinds of side effects with these patients, which in a lot of cases forces the patient to stop taking a specific kind of drug. Fortunately, there are nowadays a lot of different drugs available, so changing to a different drug is most of the times an option, but still it would be good to know why these side effects occur. This is what I study. I’m not sure what you mean by treat, if you mean: how the worms are grown in the lab, it is by letting them crawl on an agar plate, on which we’ve spread a bacterial culture. This is the natural food source of this organism, and they are perfectly happy this way. If you mean by treat how we expose them to the drugs we study, the answer is quite simple: we just add the drug to the food source, so the worms crawl around in it. This way, when they feed, they also ingest the drug. We use these organisms because for this type of research we need a eukaryotic (cells with a nucleus) model so the cellular processes are similar to our own. Most of the time, baker’s yeast is used as a eukaryotic model organism, but this is only a single cell organism. Because C. elegans is a small and simple organism and consists of only a few hundred cells, we can study tissue specific effects, whereas in cell-lines for example, you can only study one cell type at the time. Therefore, they are suitable for research. They are also very easy to maintain in the lab, and already a lot is known about this organism, which makes it easier to interpret the data.

What is your perception of this worm? Did Matthijs’ installation open for you a new perspective of this animal?

I see this worm as a very useful and elegant creature, which has a tremendous impact on scientific research. Even without Matthijs’ installation they are fun to watch, but for me, Matthijs has added music to this perspective, which for me is a new way of looking at the animal. Because it is a nematode (worm) it is not an animal you normally associate with sounds.

How do you see the relation between art and science? In your opinion what kind of impact can it have on future? Can it change something?

I think that one should be careful when science and art are mixed, especially where animals are involved. The scientific research is strictly bound by rules and regulations regarding the well-being of the animals used in experiments. However, it can open up the eyes of the public to the value of scientific research and show that not all research involving animals is bad, which sadly is the general view by a lot of people.

As Matthijs told me, you proposed C. elegans to him, so in fact we could say that you had some kind of the impact on the artwork. How do you feel about it? And why did you propose exactly this worm?

Together with a technician here in the lab, Jos Arents, Matthijs came to me because he was looking for a micro-organism that would react to its environment. Jos knew I worked with C. elegans. I do not feel I had a direct impact on the art itself, as the idea of using micro organisms as composers of music was already there. I merely suggested a particular animal. I proposed this worm, because I knew it moves around and is sensitive to vibrations. They are also very easy to maintain, and harmless. So there can never be any danger. I also knew there are mutants of this worm that move differently which Matthijs was looking for.

interviewer: Neva Lukic

interviewees: Matthijs Munnik, Richard de Boer

Bulletproof skin –  a proof of the relativity of safety

Artist Jalila Essaidi, fascinated by nature and its potentials contrived an idea of producing a bulletproof human skin to explore the social, political, ethical and cultural issues concerning safety. The process of making this kind of skin is, as we can imagine, extremely complicated.
Firstly, the artist had to acquire a lot of extraordinary, unobtainable materials, of which one was spider’s silk produced by transgenic silkworm. The word transgenic (refers to any organism which contains genetic material artificially transferred from another species) is important here because specific sequences of spider silk DNA are inserted into the genetic make-up of a silkworm, so an insect starts to produce a spider protein – the thread which is almost as strong and flexible as the thread of the native spider (strength relative to native spider silk is 80 %).
Next avant-garde material that the artist needed was living human skin cells, in order to blend them, of course, with transgenic spider’s silk, so after five weeks the bulletproof skin would be produced. After the production of the skin, the artist needed ballistic gel (used to simulate the density and viscosity of human muscle tissue) which is used at the shooting ranges, and last but not least – the glorious bullet, how she could finally confront the skin, test the strength of this unusual artwork, obtained from completely new invented material. Hence, the subject matter is not the only new one in this bio-art work, but also a material the work is made of. In order to find out more about this work of art and its resistance to bullets we are going to put a few questions to Jalila Essaidi and scientist Marcel Piët (the manager of the Forensic Genomics Consortium Netherlands), who she cooperated with.

Transgenic silk

Ballistic gel

Bulletproof skin ready to be shot

The shooting range at NFI

Jalila Essaidi

Hello Jalila, can you please tell me how you got interested in creating a bulletproof skin from spider silk?

The idea started a few years ago, when I read an article by dr. Randy Lewis, a molecular biologist. That was an article about transgenic goat, a genetically manipulated animal with special spider genes. This kind of goat produces silk in its milk (it is the silk protein which can be extracted from milk). With being ten times stronger than steel, the spider silk is more than a worthy competition to Kevlar (para-aramid synthetic fiber which bulletproof vests are produced from). Dr. Randy Lewis created it as an ideal replacement for modern-day bulletproof vests because these are heavy and not flexible. Since it is impossible to put a lot of spiders in the room because they would eat each others, he decided to make a transgenic goat, which was later replaced by transgenic silkworms (whose spider silk was sent to me from the laboratory of doctor Randy Lewis located in Utah) because it was more complicated with goats. So, when I read the article, I was thinking: why produce bulletproof vest from this transgenic silk, why not directly produce real bulletproof human out of it!? When I first came into contact with bio-art I was disappointed because I saw that a lot of projects were just concepts. For example, I thought that Eduardo Kac’s GFP Bunny was real, but there are a lot of theories that actually it is not. So, my main goal was to take it to the real level, I didn’t want it to remain a concept, I wanted it to balance on the transhuman border, to almost make it to tip over…, and with bulletproof skin that was possible. So, even though most of the scientists from the Dutch Genomics Centers considered my idea unfeasible, I contacted Randy Lewis and he said that he believed that a concept could work, and here is where it started to roll…

Does it mean that imagination is sometimes not far from the real world? Other people, not just scientists, can also sometimes have healthy logic ideas and not just dreamy ones about creating something in the laboratory that will actually really function on the scientific level?

A scientist can be really specialized and excel in his/her own field, but can almost be classified as non-scientist in other scientific fields.  A good artist makes art that communicates with and connects different fields. You try to make a language that is universal and accessible to everyone. I think it is helpful for projects that span many scientific-areas to have a wider perspective of things, as an artist usually does.

Your project seems quite complicated… Was it difficult to develop? Who did you exactly cooperate with?

Yes, in order to produce this skin I had to cooperate with a lot of different people and of course that is sometimes complicated. For example, several weavers left us after they overestimated themselves, but there are so many special people who you cooperate with, and it is impossible to obtain this knowledge from the books or the Internet…, because every partner has its own little specialty, a little island of its own. Since my project was about safety, I got into contact through DA4GA with my partner in this project, Marcel Piët from the Forensic Genomics Consortium Netherlands. Even though they are more focused on analyzing DNA from biological crime scenes than aiming at creating the bulletproof skin, we found common interest in this concept of safety. Another partner who I cooperated with was the Dermatology Department at Leiden University Medical Center. I got into contact with Dr. Kees Tensen and Dr. Abdoel El Ghalbzouri. They are special because they have an in vitro human skin model which is the replacement for animal testing (pharmaceutical tests etc.) and they aim to grow this model without the use of the usual newborn calf serum…

And…, in the end was the skin bulletproof and did you want it to be bulletproof or not?  What is your perception of the concept of safety in general?

From my curious human side I wanted it to be bulletproof, but from the artistic side it doesn’t matter because the concept remains.
Safety is relative. You can use multiple layers of this skin but there will always be something else that can harm you. A nice example is made by Lucas Evers, the initiator of this project, who told me that before there were no safety belts in the car, the child was protected only with his father’s hand and that was enough for the child to feel safe… The question of this work is also about the border. Scientists are also thinking about that. So it has to become accessible to the whole society. Just as safety is relative, so is the word bulletproof. For example, I have recorded two impacts of a slower bullet, the same caliber but with a lower speed. The bullets didn’t pierce the skin, but in both situations they showed very different results. One of them got embedded in the ballistic gel, wrapped in the silk-skin, much like an arrow in the silk vest of a warrior during the time of Genghis Kahn would have done. The other one was on a piece of skin with more spider silk layers and the bullet got embedded in the skin itself and not all the way inside the ballistic gel. Two entirely different results, both being bulletproof.

Bulletproof skin stopping the bullet

Bulletproof skin being pierced

Did you notice any similarities in artistic and scientific processes?

You share the passion, energy to work on it, and excitement. Sometimes I probably annoyed Marcel because I change directions – scientists are very structured!

So, even though it was with the help of scientists you succeeded in growing the combination of human cells and spider silk. How do you feel about it? And how do you see that fact from the artistic/aesthetic point of view?

When I had those human skin cells in my own hands, it was a strange and amazing feeling. Really live skin cells from another human being, put in a Petri dish. Too small for the human eye to see. Knowing that they are growing and creating art instead of serving a purely scientific purpose… Is it wrong what I am doing? People do not fear things that are wrong, they are afraid of losing their grip on the definition of wrong, having to redefine it constantly. Skin tissue engineering has been used in art before and shall be used even more in the future, normalizing the way we look at skin tissue engineering as a medium, we have to accept it as a fact. When I started to create the artwork I knew I liked the science part, but I didn’t know what exactly my art will look like. For me, there must be present an element of surprise  because I have an artistic perspective, I work in a different way than designers. My project is also about aesthetics and beauty, beauty of the skin growth and the beauty of the frozen moment – bullet which got stuck in this skin, it didn’t come through. A lab is a really sterile place while the skin is something you touch with, so I wanted to bring these two concepts together. The fact that we use human skin is because I wanted to bring it closer to the audience. It brings more discussion. Makes the concept bigger, because it comes under your skin. Transgenic goat or silkworms are just science fiction for us.

And, if it was allowed, would you create a bulletproof human?

I am not completely sure, but yes, something in me wants to do it! Or perhaps not, would it even be a human? I would definitely like to create an organism with a sole purpose to be bulletproof, my human desire to keep and hold things urges me to create art that can reproduce itself, unlike this bulletproof skin, which dies after five weeks, even if it survives the bullet-impact.

Marcel Piët

Hello Marcel, could you please tell me your perspective of this artistic project? Do you see it more as science or as an art?

I see this project as an art project, however based on scientific information. The part of this project, which I liked very much is that by using technologies and knowledge coming from science, a piece of art is created, by which social and ethical questions, in this case about safety, are raised.

How do you see the cooperation with an artist? Did you notice any similarities in artistic and scientific processes?

It is great to work with Jalila. She is very inspiring and has a great perseverance. She has gathered a lot of scientists around her project, which is an example of a good multidisciplinary science project.  So, this is one of the similarities with science. By enabling scientists from all fields to cooperate with each other, real new ideas and products are developed. In science, too, a lot of inventions have been developed through the interaction of scientists from different fields.

Did you want the skin to be bulletproof or not? And what is your perception of the concept of safety from the perspective of a scientist who is into forensic science?

As a scientist it would be great to show that the spider silk skin or various layers of  spider silk skin would stop a bullet. However, as discussed with the artist, this is not really the goal of the artistic project. With this art project we would like to start social, political and ethical discussions about safety, which is very relative. People can protect themselves from bullets with bulletproof vests, but there are always persons who would like to develop bullets that will penetrate the latest bulletproof vests. This artistic project will help to start discussions about this topic.

Scientists in fact didn’t expect this skin to be bulletproof … Does it mean that other people, not just scientists, can also have healthy logic idea, and not just a dreamy one about creating something in the laboratory that will actually really function on a scientific level?

As proven in this art project, non-scientists can also have very good ideas about developing new products. Most of the time, customers of products have the best ideas of what they would like to have. So, in general I would say that new ideas can be developed only by gathering people from all sorts of backgrounds. Scientists in the laboratory have certain skills, which others do not have. But that is also true the other way around. In this project, Jalila is very interested in biotechnology, able to read articles and possesses an enormous creativity to combine collected information with developing new ideas (realistic or not).

If that kind of bulletproof people would really exist, what kind of effect would that have on research which you are doing in the Forensic Genomics Consortium Netherlands? Would it change anything?

It would not change the work of FGCN. FGCN is focused on developing new DNA tests to be applied in forensic work. But it is possible that the result of this work will influence the work done by Abdoel El Ghalbzouri, a scientist who is a specialist at the Leiden University Medical Center in developing methods of growing human skin tissues. It was already great to see that he was able to grow skin tissue on spider silk. The future will show us, if one can apply this knowledge in new applications.

And, if it was allowed, would you create a bulletproof human?

I would not create a bullet proof human. But this was also not the objective of this art project. The project wants to start discussions about the relativity of safety. If one is able to create a bullet proof skin for the currently known bullets, there will always be an individual to develop a bullet, which will pass the new bulletproof skin.

interviewer: Neva Lukic

interviewees: Jalila Essaidi, Marcel Piët

All images courtesy: Jalila Essaidi

System Synthetics video

2.6 g 329 m/s