Bioart -- art that uses either living materials (such as bacteria or
transgenic organisms) or more traditional materials to comment on, or
even transform, biotechnological practice -- now receives enormous media
attention. Yet despite this attention, bioart is frequently
misunderstood. Bioart and the Vitality of Media is the first
comprehensive theoretical account of the art form, situating it in the
contexts of art history, laboratory practice, and media theory.
Mitchell begins by sketching a brief history of bioart in the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries, describing the artistic, scientific, and
social preconditions that made it conceptually and technologically
possible. He illustrates how bioartists employ technologies and
practices from the medical and life sciences in an effort to transform
relationships among science, medicine, corporate interests, and the
public. By illustrating the ways in which bioart links a biological
understanding of media -- that is, "media" understood as the elements of
an environment that facilitate the growth and development of living
entities -- with communicational media, Bioart and the Vitality of
Media demonstrates how art and biotechnology together change our
conceptions and practices of mediation. Reading bioart through a range
of resources, from Immanuel Kant's discussion of disgust to Gilles
Deleuze's theory of affect to Gilbert Simondon's concept of
"individuation," provides readers with a new theoretical approach for
understanding bioart and its relationships to both new media and
scientific institutions.
