Soft Genes 002
Join Soft Genes at Emergence: Art from Life at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center. Emergence is produced by Fathomers and is part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide by Getty.
With DNA now in the toolkit for artists and engineers, we aim to offer a creative exchange of materials and skills that enable artistic realization. Join us for an evening of connection and discussion among technologists and creatives exploring biology on the genetic level in the Los Angeles area.
Our second meetup showcases some examples of contemporary art work that is being made with synthetic biology methods. We will have a short talk by Stacy Switzer, the curator and co-founder at Fathomers who will discuss the works in the Emergence show. We will the hear from from Soft Genes organizers to further set the stage for what is possible today in the creative biology space.
About Soft Genes:
Soft Genes connects overlapping worlds in art, academia, and industry to enable tangible production of artwork that involves synthetic biology. Through the creative exchange of materials and skills, we aim to create work on the bleeding edge of what's possible in synbio via interdisciplinary collaboration.
Our broader purpose is to educate and inspire advocacy and understanding around synthetic biology and contribute to its larger societal potential. www.softgenes.love
About Fathomers:
Fathomers is a creative research institute dedicated to producing sites and encounters that challenge us to live and act differently in the world. We cultivate the ideas of diehard dreamers, commission projects that seem far-fetched, and enlist expansive thinkers across disciplines to redefine the limits of scale, scope and support for artist-led projects. www.fathomers.org
About Emergence:
The expansive field of synthetic biology, or SynBio, has the power to transform our lives. As we redesign organisms to new ends and construct novel life forms, we confront deep questions about homo sapiens—the “wise human”—and our capacities for creation, destruction, recklessness, renewal, and hope. What forms of life are we choosing to cultivate? What will we nurture, and what might we leave behind? Who has agency in this moment of making, learning, and living with? Emergence invites the public to explore these questions together while being inspired by iconic bio artworks, lab-based discoveries and design solutions, and the provocations of a range of wildly creative thinkers. Emergence probes changing definitions of what is natural, synthetic, conscious, and essential to existence.