Two world-renowned artists and curators exploring the ethics of regenerative biology technologies are set to join the Royal College of Art.
Oron Cattsand Dr Ionat Zurr, who are known for their cutting-edge work in bioart, have been appointed as visiting faculty in the School of Design, headed by professor Dale Harrow, from January 2016.
The pair's work has won acclaim for exhibiting innovative scientific processes -- such as tissue engineering and biotechnology -- in an artistic context, and is at the forefront of a growing interest in the overlap between the worlds of science and design, in everything from architecture to food.
Catts, current director and cofounder of SymbioticA, an artistic research centre based at the University of Western Australia's School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology, and Zurr, an assistant professor and academic coordinator at the centre, have had their work exhibited around the world. Their "Victimless Leather" experiment was shown at MoMA New York's Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition, which was seen by more than half a million people in 2008. "We are artists/designers working with semi-living beings," the pair told WIRED.co.uk: "We grow/construct carbon-based life forms made of living fragments of complex bodies, which are sustained alive through artificial support mechanisms, and are always potentially dying. "It can be argued we are following an intrinsically human practice of exploring and exploiting life through manipulation."
However, Catts and Zurr are keen to stress the unorthodox approach they take in their work. "Our intentions are non-utilitarian, non-instrumental and open to debate. Rather than celebrating the technological approach to 'life,' we look at how life asserts itself as a context based materiality, defying human and technological controls." "We celebrate failure and embrace futility, we rejoice life."
The RCA's Rector, Dr Paul Thompson, commented: "The appointment of Oron Catts and Dr Ionat Zurr as visiting faculty at the RCA is a major advance for this university, as we seek to explore the cultural, ethical and aesthetic implications of synthetic biology. Catts and Zurr have taken biotech out of the life science lab and placed it into the design studio, under the gaze of the artist. They will play a very significant role in the new RCA."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
