Doctoral Dissertation Research: Hannah Rogers: SymbioticA: The Practices of Art and Science

这项博士论文研究改进基金--由生物科学理事会和美国国家科学基金会的科学、技术与社会(STS)计划之间的生物与社会倡议资助--支持探索“艺术”和“科学”如何作为限定知识主体的类别的问题的研究。这项研究询问了知识群体如何在不同的背景下给艺术和科学对象贴上标签并对其进行物质塑造。这项研究的重点是生物艺术家以及他们如何理解和挣扎与生物知识生产相关的材料。通过他们的作品，生物艺术家展示和质疑更广泛的美学、伦理和政治价值观。生物艺术运动的成员使用生物材料和实验室技术来创建对现代生物学提出批判性质疑的项目。该项目在西澳大利亚大学由艺术家运营的生物研究实验室共生A进行了一项人种学研究。共生A参与者根据对艺术/科学区别的特殊理解来定位他们的活动。这项对生物艺术作品的调查可以提供新的方式来思考公众如何参与科学问题，以及如何通过艺术实现科学的民主化。研究还将有助于通过揭开艺术和科学的类别来研究知识系统是如何运作的。该项目将展示不同背景下的社会行为者如何在修辞上将知识视为“艺术”或“科学”。这个项目的学术价值是洞察生命科学中具体批评的性质，并对当前将概念作为类别进行分析的STS学术做出贡献。这项研究的一个更广泛的影响是，它调查了艺术如何告知和参与我们对科学的理解。

This doctoral dissertation research improvement grant--funded through the Biology & Society initiative between the Biological Sciences Directorate and the Science, Technology & Society (STS) Program at NSF--supports research that explores the question of how "art" and "science" work as categories that circumscribe bodies of knowledge. The research interrogates how knowledge communities label and materially shape artistic and scientific objects in various contexts. This research focuses on bioartists and how they understand and struggle with materials associated with biological knowledge production. Through their work, bioartists demonstrate and contest broader aesthetic, ethical, and political values. The members of the bioart movement use biological materials and laboratory techniques to create projects that critically question modern biology. This project conducts an ethnographic study at the artist-run biological research laboratory, SymbioticA, located at the University of Western Australia. SymbioticA actors position their activities according to a particular understanding of the art/science distinction. This investigation of bioart work can offer new ways to think about how the public can be engaged in scientific issues and the democratization of science through art.The research will also contribute to scholarship on how knowledge systems work by unpacking the categories of art and science. The project will show how social actors in different contexts rhetorically produce knowledge as either "art" or as "science." The intellectual merit of this project is insight into the nature of specific critiques in the life sciences and contributions to current STS scholarship that analyzes concepts as categories. A broader impact of this research is that it investigates how art can inform and engage our understanding of science.