Creative Biotechnology: A User's Manual

What is a biotech hobbyist and what exactly is biotechnology?

Biotechnology promises to impact upon virtually every aspect of our lives, and yet the methods, techniques, and practices of biotech often remain closed off from the public, making it hard to understand exactly what it is and how it will impact our broader understanding of biology, politics, and culture. Biotech Hobbyism seeks to counteract this sense of alienation and fuel this curiosity through promoting an understanding of the means, what’s and where for’s of biotech.

The Biotech Hobbyist collective includes a multi-disciplinary group of [media] artists, scientists, engineers, activists, and cultural theorists that is dedicated to working with biotechnology in a creative and critical way. Exploring the idea of 'garage biotechnology' - a hybrid based upon the 'garage computing' movements of the 1970s, the Biotech Hobbyist project aims to encourage an ethical engagement with biotechnology in the non-specialist public.

Biotech Hobbyist activities often centre around developing 'kits' for thinking critically about biotech: How do you extract your own DNA? How do you clone plants? How do you sequence DNA? How do you culture tissue? How do you use computers to study DNA and proteins?

Having worked with Locus+ to develop a series of prototype kits, the Biotech Hobbyist kits have been transformed into a publication in the form of a 'users manual'. In keeping with the open ethos of Biotech Hobbyist, these manuals will also exist in the format of an e-book that can be freely accessed via the Web

PLEASE CLICK ON THE NAMES BELOW FOR THE PROJECTS AND TEXTS:
Please note you will need Adobe Acrobat reader to access the pdf files. This can be downloaded free of charge from: http://www.adobe.co.uk/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

Natalie Jeremijenko
Natalie Jeremijenko is an Assistant Professor in Visual Art the University of California, San Diego. She was last on faculty at Yale in the Faculty of Engineering. She has recently launched the OOZ project, coming soon to a pond near you.


Eugene Thacker
Eugene Thacker is an Assistant Professor in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at Georgia Institute of Technology. He is the author of Biomedia and The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics and Culture.


Denna Jones
Denna Jones is Director of creative agency Paracity (www.paracity.co.uk) and was curator
of contemporary initiatives at the Wellcome Trust for seven years.


Heath Bunting
Heath Bunting is an artist based in Bristol, UK.
www.irational.org/heath

Locus+ recognises the support of The Wellcome Trust in the production of this publication.