Butterfly Wings and Transgenic Bacteria: Elements for an Ethics of the Sensible

Having presented a particular ontology of the Sensible, that plasmic substance between material and metaphor which seems to characterize the dynamic world of meaning and engaging relationships we experience, I feel compelled - or compromised, or responsible for, which is all the same and brings me to my point - to elaborate on the ethical consequences of such an ontology. After all, in order to be pertinent, theory must, at some point, embrace practice.

I will return here to a brief summary of my proposal as a way of recalling the relevant aspects of this notion of the ‘sensible’. Fundamentally, this concept of the Sensible implies a world where concrete, ‘material’ encounters have as opaque a presence as do the abstractions of our conceptual and metaphorical worlds. Moreover, materials and metaphors are here hybrids themselves, both emerging in the condensations of physical and abstract forces and are intricately intertwined with one another in dynamic cycles of exchange. Their distinction, if not at all arbitrary, could be perhaps conceived of as a difference in direction or orientation. For convenience and understanding we could propose that while materials are entities that circulate from the concrete to the abstract, and back, metaphors begin their cycle in the abstract, circulating then towards the concrete and back. On their own, materials, on the one hand, and metaphors, on the other, seem insufficient to account for the broad chromatic scope of our (human?) experiences. The historical debate between arts and sciences, each claiming ground in one of these encountering poles, certainly bears testimony to this. Together, however, materials and metaphors seem able to engulf, if not the entirety of our world of experience, at least a very extensive and powerful part of it. In constant mediation between modes of intellectual and sensorial apprehension, the Sensible, as I have proposed to call this viscous substance, has an immersive presence and preponderance. Sensible entities assemble in continuous realization, that is, in their dynamic actualization as products of necessary action and intervention. I have proposed the groping, sensing, working hand - as an alternative to the omniscient eye or mind which in modern times have become so representative of knowledge - as emblematic of this model of the Sensible.

Yet, beyond the temptation of assuming that such a model, being, after all, a metaphor-material composition, can already in and of itself be consequential, I realize that, without complementing materials-metaphors, it may not acquire a sensible opacity, but remain a diluted conceptual liquidity. Theories require practice and practices require theory.

I have found in the developing field of bio- and vivo-arts a domain of practical theory and theoretical practice which appears to be very self-consciously akin to this order of the Sensible. Deeply implicated in the exchanges between arts and sciences, the conceptual and the concrete, physical and symbolic effects, practice and politics, this field seems an open ground where the realization of materials-metaphors and metaphors-materials is constantly at stake. No less emphatic in the interventional, manipulative and inescapably implicating mediation of the ‘hand’ - as artists, as scientists - bio- and vivo-arts seem also to be invested in the ‘logics’ of ‘realization’. Bio- and vivo- artists (and scientists!) seem, thus to already have been exploring in practice the domain of the sensible. Yet, and perhaps even more intriguing, bio- and vivo-arts seem, by virtue of their specific modes of intervention, to become inextricable from politics. Having already gone the way of the metaphor-to-material in my previous paper, I will, in the following, and by the hand of two bio-art works, probe the way of the material-to-metaphor in search for a practice of the Sensible. For this purpose I have chosen the works Nature? By Marta de Menezes and the “Transgenic Bacteria Release Machine” performance, part of the GenTerra project developed by Beatriz da Costa in collaboration with the Critical Art Ensemble.

Realization

The piece Nature?, by de Menezes, is a project developed in collaboration with researchers from the Section of Evolutionary Biology of the Institute for Evolutionary and Ecological Sciences, at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. Having come in contact with researchers studying the factors that affect wing-pattern variations in butterflies and their evolutionary significance, by directly intervening in the butterflies wing-pattern development, de Menezes decided to explore these techniques to the construction of living artwork. De Menezes selected exemplars from two butterfly species, Bicyclus anyana and Heliconius melpomene and by means of microcautery and tissue grafting, altered, at the pupal stage, the development of the visual patterns of one wing out of each exemplar, leaving the other wing to develop naturally. As a result, de Menezes obtained unique, asymmetric butterflies which reflected, simultaneously, natural and altered wing-patterns. De Menezes is emphatic in her use of natural materials (grafted live cells) to create works which are “entirely natural, yet not designed by nature.” Her intention was, furthermore, to “explore the possibilities and constraints of the biological system in the butterfly wing to express concepts relating to our perception of shapes,” (2003: 30) thus, also investing her live material with perceptual, symbolic and metaphorical import. Experimenting with multiple pattern changes and novel techniques, de Menezes’ work also contributed with unexpected results that were, in turn, taken into account and study by the team of researchers in the Leiden laboratories. This served to emphasize yet another point of de Menezes work: the assertion that collaboration between artists and scientists not only benefits the arts but also the work of science.

The “Transgenic Bacteria Release Machine” performance is the result of a rather different approach. This is a performance project that involves a simple robotic game machine which holds ten Petri dishes on a circular surface. One of the ten dishes contains a transgenic sample of E. coli and the rest contain samples of mold and bacteria collected from nearby surroundings. Visitors of the performance are invited to interact, activating the TBRM. Once turned on, the wheel supporting the Petri dishes begins to spin and stops randomly after some seconds. The mechanic arm then slides down and opens one of the Petri dishes. With 10% probability the arm will open the transgenic dish. The machine indicates which sample is opened the transgenic or one of the wild samples by means of turning on a red or green light, respectively (Da Costa, 2001-2002). Designed to help understand and call attention to the environmental impact of transgenic organisms, visitors are then encouraged to engage in discussion of these issues. Adam Zaretsky’s remarks about the project appears also particularly pertinent for our discussion; he adds: “By the way, common scientific rhetoric assures us that E. coli cannot fly so the actual TBRM ‘release’ is a symbolic gesture, a mere exposure to air. Nonetheless, the public walks away with the metaphor of GMO [genetically modified organisms] release as Ecological Russian Roulette” (2005: 11). While de Menezes’ Nature? is a more artistic and epistemologically oriented work, the “Transgenic Bacteria Release Machine” performance is of a markedly social and political character.

It is here worth noting that these two interventions recur to different, and often colliding, branches of biological research and, in particular, evolutionary theory. While the “Transgenic Bacteria Release Machine” performs interventions at the level of genetics, de Menezes’ butterflies are intervened according to principles of developmental biology. While genetic intervention implies immediate, evolutionarily consequential alterations of organisms (insofar the altered genetic contents would be directly implicated in the development of the altered organisms and could also be transmitted to coming generations), alterations at a developmental level (usually at an embryonic stage) carries, at least in principle, only morphological consequences for the organism directly affected which do not enter that organism’s genetic stream. Contemporary evolutionary theory faces constant debate on the role that genetic and developmental influences, respectively, play in the outcome of evolution. Taken to the extremes, genetic determinism would claim that only genetic material is influential in evolution, while on the other, environmental determinism (never really a mainstream proposal) would claim external factors as the essential ground of evolution. However, although throughout the twentieth century, and up to now, genes have been emphasized as main determining factors in evolution, there has been increasing attention to the role of environmental circumstances and developmental influences in the evolutionary outcomes of organisms and populations. Contemporary complexity theory in biology and increasingly relevant currents such as so-called “Evo-Devo,” represent an attempt to restore extra-genetic factors their proper value in evolution. Specifically, contemporary biological theory seems to be more and more invested in exploring the conjunction of these two currents of evolutionary change (Hansen, 2000). It is tempting to point out the curious correlation of these two branches of biology with the dynamics at play in our model of materials-metaphors and metaphors-materials: genetics, referring us to abstract and invisible (coded) informational contents, seems to cast us onto the domain of metaphors that become materialized in organic forms. On the other hand, developmental biology’s implication with the morphological, immediately visual or functional dimensions of the organisms, especially with their potentiality of being assimilated into the genetic stream, reminds us of materials becoming metaphors. I would suggest that the corresponding scientific-artworks, also replicate this difference in orientation. De Menezes’ butterflies, very immediately concrete and used as epistemological instruments to call attention to abstractions of perception (in altered wing-patterns), the relationships between nature and human interventions (by retaining the asymmetry between natural and altered patterns) and as research instruments for science and arts, seem to begin the cycle in the direction of materials to metaphors. Meanwhile, the TBRM, involving a “symbolic” gesture, aimed at provoking actual actions and reactions in its audience, effects the complementary cycle in the direction of metaphor to materials, and back.

Affect and Consequences

Yet, whichever approach, both projects are profoundly characterized by the blatant manipulation that is has made them possible. Whether genetic intrusion or developmental probing, intervention is central to both works. Perhaps more than in any other kind of work, intervention acquires here an insistent visibility by being effected upon living material as medium and vehicle of art; intrusion is a fundamental aspect of these works. However, far from being itself the end of these works, as a means to a final, determined product, intervention, in both these pieces, seems rather to detonate the projection of these works into an indeterminate future in time and space. The culmination of Menezes’ work, on the one hand, is not only to be found in the completion of a semi-altered butterfly (in which case its lifespan would be coterminous with that of the work of art), but also in the questions those interventions leave behind to artists and scientists equally, and potentially, also, in consequences for the butterflies themselves (as the original research question points to). Correspondingly, the limits of the TBRM performance as a science-artwork are not bound by the immediate context of performance; instead, it aspires to disperse, airborne, with the presupposed cloud of infesting transgenic bacteria among its spectators - and presumably even their relatives, acquaintances and descendants. Whether as an originating premise (what are the consequences of altered wing patterns, or what if a transgenic bacteria dish is opened) or as the inevitable residual of intervention (the biological, ethical, social, cultural, political questions they bring to surface) the question of consequences becomes an actualizing force in the projecting spatio-temporal expanse of these works. And questions here are implicatory. In the vein of a certain, as of yet only conceptually developed SuperWeed Kit 1.0, by Heath Bunting, which, so far not being but a “construct of the mind,” became thickly present in diverse critiques and indignant denunciation (Malbreil, 2005), these projects become effective and profoundly implicatory by means of “raising the right questions.” And if, as in the extending radii of Nature?, the TBRM and SuperWeed Kit, consequences are let loose in the immersive world of the Sensible, ubiquitous materials-metaphors and metaphors-materials, the one impossible thing is to remain unaffected.

In this kind of especially ethically self-conscious art, I would like to call attention to some peculiar implications. What if, as these works of arts and sciences strive to present, consequences exceed the realm of the immediately concrete? What if, following the realization of the persistently mediating Sensible, consequences are implied in turbulent exchanges between materials and metaphors? What if, instead of finished products or exhausted consequences, we obtain questions as results? What kind of ethics would enable us to face the persistent semi-determinacy of sensible materials-metaphors? A normative, linear ethics, based on the possibility of assessing consequences at short, medium or long term and balance them against a scale of assessable benefits, or a system of prescriptive ethics that defines a priori all its constitutive entities and scaffolds all possible courses of action, seem, in any case, insufficient. The indeterminacy of these works of science-art themselves (what kind of entities are these entirely natural yet not designed by Nature butterflies, or the transgenic human-bacterial E. coli, for example), as well as the elusiveness and spatio-temporal indeterminacy of their consequences (does wing-pattern alteration have evolutionary consequences, can anybody get infected by transgenic bacteria, what courses of action will people take facing these possibilities), reaffirm the fundamental implication of unpredictability and unprescribability in this order of the Sensible. Thus, in face of the immersive character of the Sensible and of the fundamentally diffusive, epidemic ‘nature’ of questions, I propose as alternative, as I also think these works of science-arts strongly advocate for, an ethics of affect.

It might be, then, useful to recall here the scope of this notion of affect. To begin with, I would like to stress that affect, again, refers us to the question of consequences. Affect, as in the verb ‘to affect’, has intervention as its prerequisite and instantiates the realization and recognition of consequence. It is a verb that preempts the possibility of neutrality and reaffirms presence as inevitably consequential. On the other hand, ‘affect’ entails the imperative of a relationship, be it what it may, the taking of a stance vis à vis an entity or situation. This may be, perhaps, one of the best articulated aspects of affect in the works discussed. Both Nature? and the “Transgenic Bacteria Release Machine” performance are expressly designed to drive us into this dimension of affect and, more often than not, to conflicting dimensions of it. The altered butterflies awaken in us, simultaneously, the recognition of kinship in the living and a disquieting wariness towards their ‘unnaturalness’; the same way, the common reaction of aversion of visitors to the TBRM performance is counterbalanced by the invitation to engage in further, informed discussions on the matters it raises. In either case, affection is a driving force for the effectiveness of the works. Affect, after all, is the necessary sequel to the recognition of consequences and is never neutral. The presentation of consequences - that is, their becoming present as new conditions in the world - implies changes that cannot but force us to take stance; that is, after all, the meaning of adaptation.

An instrumental vehicle into this dimension of affect are, again, questions. We have discussed how these projects, rather than achieving their actualization in finished products, become effective in a certain spatio-temporal expansion of its consequences, and, perhaps more accurately, in the questions of their consequences. Having questions as consequence results in the vertiginous opening up of worlds of indeterminate possibilities where our role, position and claims to our worlds are constantly cast into doubt, questions and speculation. Rather than a final period, this works end in an extending elipsis. The interesting result is that, in face of a lack of external support - deteminate answers, proven facts, prescribed courses of action - we find ourselves profoundly and personally implicated in the search for order, sense and understanding. The fundamental indeterminacy of an order of questions implicates us directly in the order of consequences. Affect, then, like questions, is directly and personally implicating. Moreover, by implicating us as individuals it also reaffirms its asymmetrical economy: affect, as empathical inclination or aversion, is a call for engagement and position-searching. It is, in itself, orientation. Like the asymmetrical butterfly wing patterns, affect is also a persistent reminder of multiple, indeterminate possibilities and of our consequential intervention in the order of things. Also, like the expanding powder cloud of spreading metaphors-materials of the “Transgenic Bacteria Release Machine,” affect, within the pervasive domain of the Sensible, is voluminous.

Ethics of Implication

Perhaps we would like to return to the competing strands of biology these two works of science-art. In reaction to Deleuze and Guattari’s biophilosophy, a philosophy grounded in the notion of “involution,” which privileges molecular dynamics as a source of evolutionary change, a position that draws to the extreme the privilege of genetics in the contemporary cultural imaginary, M. Hansen elaborates on the paths taken by contemporary biological theory, especially, in the development of complexity theory (Hansen, 2000). Although not fundamentally distant from traditional evolutionary thought, which, in fact, implicates as much genetics as the developmental consequences of the influence of environmental factors in the process of evolution, complexity theory does its part to temper the emphasis on genetic determinism that has permeated, particularly, over the last century. In this model of evolutionary change, the metaphorical-material domain of genes is as influential as the material-metaphorical scope of environmental and morphological factors. Expanding to include the visible of forms as the invisible of genes, endogenous and exogenous factors, the spectrum of change becomes volumetric. No longer bound solely to either linear patterns of genetic heredity or flat webs of morphological diversification, the simultaneous composition of these planes results in an inclusive, multi-dimensional span that is, simultaneously, radically inclusive and implicatory. Every factor, action or entity becomes potentially influential. Thus engulfing us volumetrically, implication becomes inescapable. Interestingly enough, in this volumetric expansion, it is relationships that play the supporting role. Organisms, in complexity theory, aquire renewed centrality, not as definite entities, but rather, as mediators between genes and structural realization. Much in the same way, Nature?’s butterflies and the TBRM are both ‘products and vehicles’ of a voluminous space of implicating relationships. Butterflies that mediate between art and science, nature and artifice, life and reification and cannot but indefinitely reproduce questions for science, arts, and everything between and around them, and transgenic bacteria that equally challenge all these domains of understanding in an epidemic of ‘polluting’ questions, all call for an effective, affective implication of individuals.

The linear, prescriptive ethics of a domain of completed entities, thus gives way to the immersive ethics-politics of the Sensible. In such an inescapably implicating world, I must emphasize, ethics becomes openly inseparable from politics. Materials and metaphors, as well as we, their intrusive mediators, grafting butterfly wings and turning on transgenic bacteria release machines, are its agents. As a consequence, whether we are prepared or not - as much bio- and vivo-art militantly emphasizes - responsibility for the unpredictable is only waiting to embrace us.

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