A former bodybuilder, Glyph has at all times been fascinated by the concept of human enhancement. However it wasn’t until he moved to Canada where he met CyphR – a biochemistry undergrad, who on the time of meeting had already performed several implantation procedures on himself (he has one RFID chip implant that he uses to start out his automotive, lock and unlock his phone, and one other one by which he stores the private keys to his cryptocurrency wallets) – that he was in a position to pursue this interest in a meaningful way. Since then, the pair have worked on quite a few groundbreaking projects all within the name of human enhancement, with Glyph as a rule acting as CyphR’s test subject. Earlier this yr, they decided to introduce their underground exploits to the mainstream by establishing their very own Instagram, while a web site is soon to follow, acting as an area where amateurs and enthusiasts can come for guides on the best way to biohack and arrange your individual home lab, in addition to tips about DIY body modification, implantation procedures, and gene editing. Following on from his guide to biohacking, here Glyph turns his attention to bioart.

Whether it’s scientists using bacteria to recreate famous works of art, or artists using their bodies as experimental canvases to re-contextualize human biology, bioart is revolutionising how the general public interacts with science, while laying the groundwork for the democratisation of private self-expression.

Defined as the usage of living systems and biological material through biotechnology to create art, the term ‘BioArt’ was first utilized in 1997 when artist Eduardo Kac implanted himself with a microchip on live television; a prophetic precursor to biohackers today who livestream their gene editing self-experiments. It is that this convergence between art and science, between bioart and biohacking, where the artist and the hacker have opened up something as intellectually intimidating as biotechnology to the general public domain, which sets bioart aside from other forms of up to date art.

This union has even had a cultural impact on each fields. Take performance artist Stelarc who challenged the scientism of body functions and made a press release on biological fundamentalism by surgically implanting an ear into his arm. His works of bioart that include performing with a mechanical “third hand” have been credited with ushering in the complete grinder-biohacking subculture of DIY-cyborgs. While for the sector of bioart, its inclusion into the open science community despite being an art and never a “science”, has evolved it from merely a recent art moment in its scribble stage to a longtime and provocative art form.

The connection between bioart and biohacking gets much more interesting when one moves from Stelarc’s body augmentation through technology, and into do-it-yourself biology. DIY-bio is just not only spawning other forms of bioart, however it has also been providing a lifeline to bioart. Biohacker community labs are accessible to the layperson and so they have a tendency to be the go-to spaces for bioartists to create their works, given the limited accessibility of traditional science institutions.

“For me the body is an impersonal, evolutionary, objective structure,” Stelarc once said, partially explaining the ethos of bioartists who use their bodies as mediums of art despite the inherent risks. He’s now even working with biohackers to have an internet-connected microphone implanted into his ear-on-arm implant, despite an infection causing him to remove the microphone he had initially implanted during his first surgery.

The apparent risks with Stelarc’s body-augmentation bioart are nonetheless mitigated by how the symbiosis bioart has with biohacking emancipates each from the misconceptions society has about them, and the hindrance to progress such misconceptions afford them. Because where it may possibly be argued that biohacking reduces life to easy machinery with hack-able codes, bioart elevates life into an aesthetic using the exact same impersonal tools of biotechnology that biohackers use. And the more the biohacking movement grows, the more bioart lends itself as a real, non-knee jerk cultural scrutiny of a seemingly approaching post-human society where genetic engineering, human enhancement and designer babies are the norm. Bioethicists, the very individuals who scrutinize the moral implications of biological sciences and subsequently grow to be the arbiters of what is true and mistaken, seem like the precise opposite in comparison to bioartists. Who needs bioethics when you have got bioart.

“In a time when many point to technology as an alienating force, bioart appears to be an almost Frankensteinian yet Promethean treatment to this” – Glyph

The discourse bioart generates cannot only render bioethicists obsolete, but it may possibly even be a more organic, multi-faced type of science communication because bioart compels the audience to interact with the science of the art they’re presented with, sometimes at a deep cathartic level. And given the interdisciplinary communication that has to occur between a scientist and an artist when each parties are making a work of bioart (despite each of them having no backgrounds in the opposite party’s discipline) a type of organic scientific literacy that can make each the art and science translatable is guaranteed. That is the evolution of the general public’s engagement with science that bioart has the potential to birth. The opposite side of bioart, of democratizing self-expression, is much more crucial, and already unfolding.

Everyone, even through easy personal grooming, is a bioartist to an extent. Make-up, hairstyling; there may be a science to all of it — a sometimes rigorous process that must be followed, repeatedly using specific tools, to generate a certain result, a particular image. But the top goal is normally to create a perception, an impression, an art. Indeed, the image one presents to the world can involve many elaborate types of bioartistry — whether through cosmetic tinkering or socio-behavioural modification; a lot in order that the latter can even modify one’s gene expression. Bioart fosters a self-awareness of this, and when there may be a convergence with biohacking, this self-awareness can grow to be self-empowerment, with the person almost in a position to construct and deconstruct their biology, almost in a position to artistically express their self-actualized Self, unhindered by biology. And so identical to biohacking democratizes biotechnology, this unfolding hybridization of bioart and biohacking will democratize self-expression. Due to bioart, notions of biological fundamentalism won’t limit self-expression.

Bio-art, bio-hacking, bio-technology; all this may appear to be numerous bio-hyphenation, however it says rather a lot about what is going on: Human biology has a latest context, and “bio” or Life, is reaffirming itself on culture, values and technology. In a time when many point to technology as an alienating force that contributes to cultural devaluation and artistic decline, in a time of commercialized post-modernity that’s devoid of aesthetics, bioart appears to be an almost Frankensteinian yet Promethean treatment to this. For artists set the tone of a culture, and with a do-it-yourself culture of biohacking becoming their participation within the approaching biotech revolution, possibly the longer term may be aesthetically emancipated, despite technology. Possibly we could even see a more democratic, more inclusive reincarnation of the ‘Renaissance Man’ consequently of this free-fusion of art and science; a ‘Neo-Renaissance Post-Human’ for the approaching biotechnological revolution? Possibly.