Are you ready to receive a Do It Yourself (DIY) lipofection beauty treatment? Participants will learn about the history of lipofection biolistics and electroporation and be screened. If they are sincerely interested in being Human Subjects, we will ask for a medical aesthetic model release form and seek informed consent. Lipids include various fats, oils, and waxes. Lipofection also known as “lipid transfection” or “liposome-based transfection,” uses a complex fats to deliver DNA into cells through absorption. Often used to get novel genes into the genomes of living cells, we will use cocoa butter to get the DNA of salmon sperm into the skin cells of volunteers. This is known either as transgenesis transfection, trans-gene infection, transformation, genetic modification or transgenic production. We will talk about the history and symbolism of lipofection development and the ethics of human genetic modification, human gene editing and engineering the human germline.
The goal of these labs is to create an open-ended interface between life and the arts. To keep all expressive options dilated, the focus is not on the logic of the biologic. Instead, our cultural relationships to the world of life are exposed in their contradictory and slippery illogics. The interfaces between human society and the ecosphere are identified, rethought and collaged together to form signs of definitional breakdown. Consider the categories for whom should be treated to artistic xenophilia: Food, Nature, the Laboratory, Our Bodies and other non-humans. By defining where and how we interface with all lifeforms and by mixing these logics into art media instead of fact production, we arrive at unusual conceptual re-evaluations… towards a kinship with biodiversity and general life as complex for appreciation.