now this one was just plain weird

[Guest guest]

plain vegan/synthetic alternatives -- or just normal fabric -- are so

less odd :-/ from wired.com.

 

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65248,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2

Jacket Grows From Living Tissue

By Lakshmi Sandhana

02:00 AM Oct. 12, 2004 PT

 

Fancy a partially alive jacket, possibly grown out of your own skin?

In reality, it may not be that far away.

 

Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr at the Tissue Culture & Art Project are

attempting to grow a semi-living jacket in an effort to create

" victimless leather. " Hoping to highlight the possibility of wearing

leather without killing an animal, the duo is presently focused on

growing living tissue into a leather-like material and having it

mature in the form of a miniature, stitchless, coat-like shape.

 

" It started from our research into living surfaces, " said Catts. " In a

sense we wanted to ask: How are we going to perceive something which

from the outside seems to be alive but which is something you

recognize as inanimate? "

 

Grown using a combination of mouse and human cells, the jacket is

currently quite tiny (about 2 inches high and 1.4 inches wide) and

would just fit a mouse. Using a biodegradable polymer as a base, the

team coated it with 3T3 mouse cells to form connective tissue and

topped it up with human bone cells in the hope of creating a stronger

layer of skin. The jacket is being grown inside a specially designed

bioreactor that acts as a surrogate body. The group hopes that once

the polymer degrades, a whole jacket that maintains its shape and

integrity will be left behind.

 

The group's members plan to grow a larger jacket as part of developing

what they term the " technoscientific body " -- an artificial

environment where semi-living entities are grown and cared for with

the ultimate aim of creating a victimless utopia. And the stress here

is on the " victimless. " Cells used in the project so far have come

from so-called immortalized cell lines, or cells that divide and

multiply forever once they are removed from an animal or human host,

essentially forming a renewable resource.

 

" The interesting thing about cell lines is that in most cases once a

cell line has been developed there is much more of that than the

original organism from which it was taken, " said Catts. " For example,

the 3T3 mouse cells which are very common in scientific research

centers around the globe can be weighed in tons or even tens of tons

and they all came from one mouse in the 1970s. "

 

Research and development of the victimless leather has been conducted

at SymbioticA: The Art and Science Collaborative Research Laboratory

at the University of Western Australia in consultation with Verigen, a

company that specializes in tissue-engineered cartilage for clinical

applications. The jacket was shown to the public earlier this year as

part of an exhibition in western Australia called the space between.

It drew some unanticipated feedback.

 

" One of the most common and somewhat surprising comments we heard was

that people were disturbed by our ethics of using living cells to grow

living fabric, " said Zurr, " while the use of leather obtained from

animals seems to be accepted without any concern for the well-being of

the animals from which the skin has been removed. "

 

The artists are also designing what they call a MetaBody, creating a

semi-living object consisting of different tissues that originate from

different bodies. They will be collaborating with the French

performance artist Orlan, who constantly experiments with her own

face, using plastic surgery to transform herself into the quintessence

of classical beauty: a new being modeled on Venus, Diana, Europa,

Psyche and Mona Lisa.

 

The artists will culture Orlan's own skin and hybridize it with skins

of different pigmentation from other people of different races to

create a miniature Harlequin dress. By culturing these tissues

together while they are stripped from the bodies' immune systems and

making them a single, semi-living entity, they intend to abolish

identities of individuals, genders, races and species.

 

They'll also be growing facial parts for Stelarc, an Australian artist

who explores extending the body through prosthetics. The duo plans to

grow a nose, lips and a shape of the eyes, connecting them to form a

living mask that would either imitate a face or represent a mutation

of it.

 

" We are the wizards from Oz, " joked Zurr. " In many ways, working with

Orlan and Stelarc we are doing what the Wizard of Oz (did), and we

have a bigger idea in the works. We will ask people to tell us what

organ they want us to grow in order to enhance their feeling of

well-being and we will do that for them and we will see if it works or

not. "

 

While there's still lots of research to be done before a fully formed

live jacket can be created, the artists are quick to point out that

they aren't interested in creating commercial products or even

furthering scientific research. Calling themselves conceptual artists

who create working prototypes, they say their aim is to bring to the

forefront the philosophical implications of making living organisms

tools for our own purposes.

 

" It's quite a scary thing, our attitude to life as it is at the

moment, " said Zurr. " And the more we manipulate life for human-centric

purposes, I wonder now how compassionate we are going to be towards

those living systems. Our work is more about questioning these things

rather than saying, 'This is great, let's go for it.' "