The Art of Synthetic Biology
Communicating the impact and promise of a technology through art
In the early 2000s, the term ‘synthetic biology’ was introduced to define an approach to engineering organisms using a collection of defined genetic parts. Today, it encompasses much more than just a new set of tools and methods for engineering microbes. Synthetic biology is a philosophy: a belief that we can create things that are better for people and the planet using biology as the underlying technology.
With synthetic biology, we are mastering the art of manipulating the code of life the same way we have mastered metalwork, textiles, organic chemistry and other defining technologies of our civilization. With synthetic biology, we are also cultivating hope that the world of the future will look more like postcards from Eden than barren landscapes torched by climate change. With synthetic biology, we are defying the scarcity mindset that can render us paralyzed by the fear of the future.
Art is an instrument that helps make that vision more palpable. It entices us with the scent clouds of extinct flowers, glow-in-the-dark petunias and promises of unicorns (or at least, mammoths). Art helps us bypass explaining the science behind the technology and instead market biology-powered products by appealing to our emotions and senses. In our hyper-rationalist world, art speaks to our subconscious, our feelings and desires—which we are so disconnected from, but which nonetheless exert a powerful pull on us. It helps us dream awake and envision a different world.
Ambassadors of synbio
Artists are, in a sense, the ambassadors of synthetic biology. They help take it outside of the labs and imprint it into the minds of ordinary people. One of my personal inspirations is Christina Agapakis, an artist who is creating sensory experiences and stories about synthetic biology to make it more approachable, creative and exciting. Her work spans a wide range of projects, from documenting the ecology and metagenomes of the Salton Sea to making cheeses from human microbiome cultures.
Agapakis is the Creative Director at Ginkgo Bioworks (a title that you wouldn’t normally expect a B2B biotech company to have), responsible for the vibrant aesthetic of the company’s visual branding and more. Guided by her creative vision, Ginkgo has established several initiatives and programs that provide a fertile environment for artists to experiment with incorporating synthetic biology into their work and for scientists to explore their creative side.
For example, the Grow by Ginkgo magazine tells the unfolding story of synthetic biology by publishing stories that explore how this new industry can transform the way we live. Since 2019, the magazine has been publishing outstanding creative writing and opinion pieces that explore the world and worldview shaped by synthetic biology. Those stories served as an inspiration for me to start writing about biology and contribute to shaping the narrative of our young industry.
The Ginkgo Creative Residency program is a unique opportunity for artists to work with biologists and learn how to co-create art together with living biological organisms. It was established in 2017 based on a framework developed by the designer and founder Natsai Audrey Chieza. Chieza, who was the first Ginkgo artist in residence, is the founder and CEO of Faber Futures, a design agency at the intersection of biology, technology and society.
Her path to synthetic biology was through fashion: she is the co-founder of Normal Phenomena of Life, the first synbio fashion brand. Over a decade of experimentation, Chieza established novel design-driven processes for textile coloration using bacteria. She is also the editor of the publication “Other Biological Futures” in collaboration with MIT Media Lab and the mastermind behind the mycelium-based art installation at last year’s Venice Architecture Biennale.
Ginkgo is not the only organization that thought synthetic biology needed to explore its artistic side. Genspace, a NYC-based community lab and educational space, also has an Artist in Residence (AIR) program. This three-month program is designed for artists who want to learn how to use biology tools and techniques to create art. It provides a stipend, mentoring, and access to the Genspace community expertise to help artists create BioArt. In their own words, “A painting made in collaboration with bacteria, a sculpture carved from mycelium, jewelry made with algae, and a performance piece that involves genetic manipulation are all examples of BioArt.”
In addition to these organizational efforts, there are plenty of individual designers and artists who see biology as an inspiration and a medium of expression. One of them is Karen Ingram1, who just became the recipient of the 2024 Queens Arts Fund for her exhibit “Biogenetic Blooms: Collaborations with Genetically Modified Yeast”. This work uses live yeast cells to create art and showcase some of the possibilities of genetic engineering technology.
If you have ever worked in a microbiology lab, you will understand the mystery of lightly scratching the jelly surface of a Petri dish with a metal ‘hockey stick’ rod, stowing it away in a warm incubator overnight, and in the morning discovering the patterns formed by living things. You paint with invisible ink of microscopic cells, and the art develops as the life that’s contained in them prospers and multiplies. The motifs that Karen Ingram uses are deliberately nature-inspired: beautiful daffodils, poppies and irises in light purple, silver and golden tones.
SynBio Utopia
This year’s SynBioBeta conference included an immersive interactive art experience at The Tech Interactive organized by Dan Grushkin, the Founder and Executive Director of Biodesign Challenge. There, you could walk on ponds of bioluminescent dinoflagellates, make your own mushroom bricks and play with dyes made by living organisms.
The evening included a film screening at the IMAX theater. Cinema is one of the most persuasive art forms, and it left an indelible impression on me—perhaps my favorite session from the entire conference. The short films explored the themes of human genetic design and cloning, love and pheromones and, of course, what lies at the heart of it all: DNA. One of the films by molecular animator Drew Berry was a music video he created for Björk’s Hollow, which takes you on a deep journey to the level of our genes to find our ancestry.
I am not the only one who thinks movies are an incredibly powerful way to inspire people and disseminate ideas. At this year’s Ginkgo Ferment Kristina Buožytė and Bruno Samper presented their 2022 SciFi film Vesper. The film describes a future world where the idea of the scarcity of resources has been taken to the extreme and a young girl named Vesper experiments with bioengineering to bring prosperity and abundance into her world.
In this mesmerizing and imaginative movie biology IS the protagonist: it is a powerful technology capable of changing the course of history. It allows us to imagine different scenarios of our future and explore the “what if?” questions that many of us undoubtedly have as the world evolves in front of our eyes at a pace like never before. As Christina Agapakis said, “Science fiction is how we grapple with the questions of our time and think about the future of technology”.
The artist within
This is by no means an exhaustive list of synbio artists and their projects. People like Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Neri Oxman, Suzanne Lee, Ginger Dosier and so many others are creating beautiful, thought-provoking and visionary works of art that blend biology, technology and aesthetics into one. I would go as far as to say that genetic engineers and molecular biologists that do not consider themselves artists actually are.
To be an artist, one does not need a Master of Arts. After all, Jean-Michelle Basquiat failed the only art class he ever took. To be an artist, one needs to be obsessed with something. So much so, that you spend most of your waking life trying to get to the bottom of that phenomenon. And aren’t most great scientists perpetually in that space? Art is just a spontaneous product of the unconscious distillation of your obsession. It is a prophetic, symbolic vision that we want to share with others. We can change the course of history by bringing something that exists only in our mind into this world, as a material object.
What then, if not art, is synthetic biology?
Ingram is not only an artist, but an educator and one of the co-creators of Biobuilder, an innovative synthetic biology curriculum for students.