Doctoral Dissertation Research: Hannah Rogers: SymbioticA: The Practices of Art and Science

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation research improvement grant--funded through the Biology & Society initiative between the Biological Sciences Directorate and the Science, Technology & Society (STS) Program at NSF--supports research that explores the question of how "art" and "science" work as categories that circumscribe bodies of knowledge. The research interrogates how knowledge communities label and materially shape artistic and scientific objects in various contexts. This research focuses on bioartists and how they understand and struggle with materials associated with biological knowledge production. Through their work, bioartists demonstrate and contest broader aesthetic, ethical, and political values. The members of the bioart movement use biological materials and laboratory techniques to create projects that critically question modern biology. This project conducts an ethnographic study at the artist-run biological research laboratory, SymbioticA, located at the University of Western Australia. SymbioticA actors position their activities according to a particular understanding of the art/science distinction. This investigation of bioart work can offer new ways to think about how the public can be engaged in scientific issues and the democratization of science through art. The research will also contribute to scholarship on how knowledge systems work by unpacking the categories of art and science. The project will show how social actors in different contexts rhetorically produce knowledge as either "art" or as "science." The intellectual merit of this project is insight into the nature of specific critiques in the life sciences and contributions to current STS scholarship that analyzes concepts as categories. A broader impact of this research is that it investigates how art can inform and engage our understanding of science.