conVerge - Image and Meaning

Image and Meaning - Jill Scott

Download the accompanying Power Point presentation, (13.1 Mb).

"The future of the body could be thought about without the hype of technophilic utopia, simply because flesh is always wet, intimate, juicy and a body of bleeding and suffering ... the point is to remember that we might have been otherwise, and might yet be" ...Donna Haraway

Bio-ethics is the consequence of critical debate. It is not only about the level of critical information and the types of interpretation that the general public are given to discuss and compare, it concerns the psychological effect on viewers and readers of the use of utopic and dystopic visual representation. In this light, the utopic representation used in bio-technology is often opposed to the dystopic representation featured in bio-terrorism. Thus the level of ethical debate is not only greatly effected by popular media and by scientific interpretation, but also by associations through the use of aesthetic imagery.

Bio-technology is mostly perceived by the general public as a utopic scientific exploration into the realms of organic manipulation, and popular media feels responsible to feed into this concept. Therefore, the artistic and mediated interpretations of the body and the bio, are often, by their very construction related to a new and convincing streamlined and animated level of aesthetics. For example: in the science journals (Scientific American, Nature) slick aesthetics often aim to convince us that genetic manipulation is both a promising and desirable concept, aimed at the creation of a perfectly healthy society. These aims are often accompanied by repetitions of verbs which also promise to ask the funding sources to invest and the public to psychologically support. However, analysis can lead to more critical revelations. Once I traced, extracted and outlined these current utopian concepts and aims of micro-biology from the pages of these magazines. (Immortal Duality- 1997. ZKM). I then re-built the outlines and extruded them as 3d forms, winding them together with a DNA model. The over riding aesthetics of the work was streamlined and perfect but upon a closer look many questions rose to the surface:

These were:

1. Why do we need to manipulate nature?

2. Who is manipulating whom? The rich can afford bio-technology and the poor?

3. How discriminating is racial DNA categorization?

4. What kind of ethics do the scientists themselves have?

5. Who owns your genetic code and for how long should it be preserved?

6. How can control be monitored? What are the limits to genetically modified food or the fate of transgenetic creatures?

7. How far can animal testing go?

8. What is inherited and what is environmentally induced?

9. What is prevention and what is a cure?

10. How in-vitro can in-vitro reproduction be?

11. Perfection Is the perfect clone a replicant of us?

12. Is nature just a fertile factory?

13. Can we clean up our mess? Our environment-including Nano-technological promises?

If bio-technologies are to offer us more choice-as well as decisive qualities in our world of tomorrow, then the simple old 70s contexts of dualism (utopia verses dystopia, us and them) will have to be disbanded. This is a issue which could be raised when thinking about the ethics of bio-terrorism. It seems that the psychological aspects of bio-technology, have not been explored by the media, in comparison to the medical breakthroughs and values. For example, the way the media handled the anthrax, situation in the beginning, must be criticized. Not only for a lack of public information about dealing with the ethical issues of bio-technology, but also for distorting the syndrome into a dystopic nightmare. From a psychological point of view, the media was riding on shock value and/or the use of damaging and patronizing tones. In fact the general lack of comparative information and representation is unbelievable since the September 11 attacks. Here is a list of what psychologists think should have been told to "the people" as an ethical responsibility in the Anthrax case:

1. What are the bio-technological hazards and what don't the scientist know about it.

2. Avoid speculation and never mix facts with re-assurance.

3. Give a detailed account of what is being done to counter the threat.

4. Recommend specific steps that people may take to protect themselves.

The above calms down the panic and treats people as intelligent humans beings for a change, but will related images and texts be delivered differently in the future?

It is amazing that in the context of our "information world", the general public is still being treated in such a childish manner. Especially when our own bio-logical futures have been and will continue to be questionable as Donna Haraway has suggested (See quote) Unfortunately, dystopian visual propaganda is also on the increase. At this point "we" (artists and scientist and the general public) no longer need utopian and dystopian aesthetics and promises of either a post-biological future or bio-terrorist nightmares but art activism and critical scientific discussion based on solid information and visual analysis. Information and interpretative representation which would hope to bring the critical debate of bio-technology in general to the foreground and allow us to see the shades of gray and red in between.