陈昱凝
Yuning Chen
Biodesign
Feminist STS
More-Than-Human
Ciao! I am Yuning Chen, a PhD candidate between Design Informatics (Edinburgh College of Art) and STIS (Science, Technology and Innovation Studies) at University of Edinburgh.
With a background in environmental science and design engineering, I am fascinated by the practice of designing with living organisms. And more importantly, how working with more-than-human life could challenge anthropocentric perspectives entrenched in our capitalist ecologies.
My practice-based research looks into more-than-human ethics in biodesign and the broader biotechnological practices, with a particular focus on labour justice and practice of resistance.
CV
Project:
Morality Calculus
Morality Calculus Food Theatre
Labour Provenance
Bevergising Spirits of Asilomar
Scents of Asilomar
Microbial Revolt
Carbon Alchemy
Plant Reality Set
Project Habitate
Mobius
Email
Google Scholar
Instagram
Feel free to contact me for collaborations or brainstorming ideas!
Morality Calculus is a bioart installation that interrogates the prevalent mechanistic view of life in synthetic biology. Through the creation of hybrid bread fermented with yeast-human cells, the artwork embodies the act of reducing complex lifeforms to mere collections of engineering parts, akin to 'lego bricks.'
The installation poses the questions: If living organisms are perceived as mechanical vessels containing functional genetic components, how do we 'calculate' the moral status of a yeast-human cell? Is it a mere combination of the moral status of source organisms, defined by the ones with higher moral status or affected by the resulting traits they exhibit?
These queries are further complicated by the vast ecology of shadow organisms that have contributed to the cell adhesion experiment for the yeast-human cell, by providing resistance genes, gene-editing enzymes, or serums for culturing media. Often being backgrounded by the effective components they provide, the search for these organisms in the databases has been highly challenging. The hidden labourers shown in the exhibition hint at the multitude of life at stake in the artwork's central question: the moral implications of simplifying complex lifeforms into functional units.
In essence, Morality Calculus invites viewers to confront the ethical dimensions of synthetic biology's mechanistic world-view, provoking discussions on the moral status of engineered lifeforms and the often-overlooked contributions of countless more-than-human labourers to scientific endeavours.
Credit:
Yuning Chen
Elise Cachat
Special Thanks to:
Oron Catts
Ionat Zurr
Tarsh Bates
Ugne Baronaite
Iseabail Farquhar
Alex Arrese-Igor Royuela
Emily Johnston
Larissa Pschetz
Rachel Harkness
Jane Calvert
Mark Kobine
Luca Cocconi
03-05/2024
Bread made of human (HEK 293)-yeast(BJ4365) hybrid cells in petri dishInstallation displaying organisms participated in the hybridisation experimentCustom made blocks representing human cells and yeast holding molecular hands after being genetically engineeredInstallation parts showing origins of enzymes and nutrients used in cell cultureFlourescent bread crumbs (human cells are engineered with Green Flourescent Gene)