Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr from the art/biology think tank SymbioticA at Machine this weekend. They will be speaking on Saturday night, and leading a tissue culturing workshop Sunday. SymbioticA’s past projects include growing all kinds of amazing things, including… 1. Disembodied Cuisine. Pre natal sheep skeletal muscle cells cultured onto/into a degradable polymer (PGA) scaffold to create a semi living steak. Upon creation this project was cooked and eaten. There’s a nice article on Disembodied Cuisine in issue 16 of Cabinet magazine.
2. Victimless Leather Immortalised cell lines which are cultured and form a living layer of leather like tissue in the form of miniature stich-less coat shape. Good images of Victimless Leather here
3. Extra Ear 1/4 Scale (in collaboration with Stelarc). A 1/4 scale replica of artist Stelarc’s ear grown using human (Stelarc’s) cells. The ear is cultured in a rotating micro-gravity bioreactor which allows the cells to grow in a 3D structure. (Via Machine Project.)
