artforms:
Semi-Living Three Dimensional Tissue Sculptures and Biological Imaging.

science engagements:
Tissue Technologies

science partners:
University of Western Australia: Department of Anatomy and Human Biology. Professor Miranda D Grounds, PhD (Head) and Dr. Stuart Bunt
Tissue Engineering & Organ Fabrication Laboratory, Mass General Hospital, Harvard Medical school, Boston, USA. Dr. J Vacanti (Head)

project description:

The Tissue Culture and Art Project (TC&A, initiated in 1996) is an on-going artistic research and development project into the use of tissue technologies as a medium for artistic expression. In the last five years, we have grown tissue sculptures, "semi-living" objects, by culturing cells on artificial scaffolds in bioreactors. Ultimately, the goal of this work is to culture and sustain, for long periods, tissue constructs of varying geometrical complexity and size, and by that creating a new artistic palette.

The acquisition of living cells and tissues for artistic purposes has created concerns and has focussed attention on the ethical and social implications of creating "semi-living" objects. Thus our goal is to create a contestable vision of futuristic objects that are partly artificially constructed and partly grown/born. These semi-living objects consist of both synthetic materials and living biological matter from complex organisms. These entities (sculptures) blur the boundaries between what is born/manufactured, animate/inanimate and further challenge our perceptions and our relations toward our bodies and constructed environment.

Pig Wings Project

In this project we have used pig's bone marrow stem cells and three dimensional bio-absorbable polymer scaffolds in order to grow three sets of wings.

Acknowledgement:

The musical dynamic cell-seeding component of the Pig Wings Project was done in collaboration with Adam Zaretsky, Research Affiliate, MIT Department of Biology

Many Thanks to: Dr. Joseph Vacanti, Dr. Hidetomi Terai, Dr. Didier Hannouche, Dr. Julie Fuchs, Alec Sevy, The Tissue Engineering & Organ Fabrication Laboratory, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Dr. David P. Martin, TEPHA Inc Cambridge Massachusetts. Aslihan Sanal, MIT, STS Program. Dr Frederic Gimenez, MIT Bioengineering Department. Kylie Sandy and Dr. Stuart Hodgetts, Department of Anatomy & Human Biology, University of Western Australia. Sponsors for the development of the Pig Wings Project for the Adelaide Biennale for Australian Art: Coherent Life Sciences, Jumbo Vision, CTEC the Centre for Medical and Sugical Skills, Medic Vision.

exhibition history:
TC&A: Stage One: Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, August 1998.
Art in Science: Lawrence Wilson Gallery, University of WA, 1998.
TC&A / Art in Science: Australian and New Zealand Cell Biology Conference, Adelaide, 1998.
Viruses and Mutations: Experimenta Media Arts / Melbourne International Festival, 1998.
Metis: Exhibitions of Science and Art, National Science Week, May 1999
Art-ID/Cyb-ID: identities in cyberspace, online www project at the Bienal de Artes Visuais do Mercosul, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. November 1999.
"The Stone Age of Biology", Scitech Discovery Centre, Perth International Arts Festival, January 2000
The Tissue Culture & Art(ificial) Wombs, Ars Electronica Festival, Linz Austria, September 2000
The Tissue Culture & Art(ificial) Wombs II, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, "Hard/Soft/Wet/Artificial Life" deluxe Media Arts, October- November 2000.
Digitized Bodies, Virtual Spectacles' Biomedia Installation Environment, curated by Nina Czagledy, InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Center Toronto Canada, November 2000.
The Tissue Culture & Art(ificial) Wombs III Kendardine Art Gallery, Saskatoon Saskatcheuuan, Canada "Transhuman", September- October 2001

links:
http://www.tca.uwa.edu.au/
http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au
http://www.anhb.uwa.edu.au
http://www.mgh.harvard.edu/ depts/tissue/index.html

movies:
high bandwidth QuickTime - 1.3Mb
low bandwidth QuickTime - 408Kb
high bandwidth mpeg - 1.8Mb