Perspectives of Bioartists and Community Lab Organizers on Working with Living Organisms

Abstract

There is increasing interest within the HCI community about working with living organisms in the design of interactive systems.Bioartists and community lab participants have worked with living organisms for decades. Their motivations for doing so include artistic expression, design innovation, and activism. We interviewed 12 artists, community lab organizers, and researchers who work with or facilitate work with living organisms. Participants expressed perspectives on working with living orga nisms and described bioart as an effective practice for engaging and informing the public, fostering transdisciplinary collaborations, and for facilitating inspiration and learning from organic processes. They also discussed questions of agency and consent, among othe r ethical issues in this context. Based on our findings, we present future directions to investigate the potential of hybrid living media interfaces to engage and educate human users, open up possibilities for transdisciplinary collaborations, and participate in ethical dialogues on emerging technologies in a new way.

“Short on time and big on ideas”: Perspectives from Lab Members on DIYBio Work in Community Biolabs

“…Scroggins and Verenne [65] highlight the centrality of "acrimony and dissension" as well as spotlighting the considerable work involved in the establishment of a new community biolab through the case study of BioCurious (www.biocurious.org). Asgarali-Hofman and Hamidi [4] have explored the nuanced relationship between bioartists and the organisms they work with, integrating the perspectives of community biolab organizers. de Lange et al [18] have suggested that community biolabs create unique and novel opportunities for the formation of relationships between amateur and professional scientists as well as between other stakeholders in order to respond to local community challenges.…”

“…DIYbio has been highlighted as not only a productive subject of study, but also as a new area of HCI research practice [23]. The specifc DIYbio practices of bio art [4,29,45] and open source laboratory hardware [22] have been explored in HCI research. Microbes themselves have been promoted as novel design materials [5] or as living computers with which HCI researchers should be engaged in developing new conceptions of-and tools for-active design [59].…”

"Short on time and big on ideas": Perspectives from Lab Members on DIYBio Work in Community Biolabs

“…In recent years, HCI researchers have begun to explore DIYbio, accepting its latent invitation to re-imagine the interaction space of human and non-human organisms with diverse machines and materials [4,44,45]. This has involved studying DIYbio practitioners operating outside of HCI [4] as well as integrating DIYbio into HCI practice [23,29], and design research into systems that could support DIYbio work by better meeting the interests and contexts of practitioners [21,22,26] .…”

“…Scroggins and Verenne [65] highlight the centrality of "acrimony and dissension" as well as spotlighting the considerable work involved in the establishment of a new community biolab through the case study of BioCurious (www.biocurious.org). Asgarali-Hoffman and Hamidi [4] have explored the nuanced relationship between bioartists and the organisms they work with, integrating the perspectives of community biolab organizers. de Lange et al [18] have suggested that community biolabs create unique and novel opportunities for the formation of relationships between amateur and professional scientists as well as between other stakeholders in order to respond to local community challenges.…”

“…DIYbio has been highlighted as not only a productive subject of study, but also as a new area of HCI research practice [23]. The specific DIYbio practices of bio art [4,29,45] and open source laboratory hardware [22] have been explored in HCI research. Microbes themselves have been promoted as novel design materials [5] or as living computers with which HCI researchers should be engaged in developing new conceptions of-and tools for-active design [59].…”