Synthetic Spectacles
Synthetic Biology will ubiquitously change our world. In order to explain what that means from my point of view, I will compare this to Greek drama. With their philosophy, politics and above all their art, the Greeks radically changed their world. Above all was the roll of Greek drama carrying this antique high culture out of an era of illiteracy to a society of writing with which it was put in the position zu communicate over time and space. Synthetic biology is currently making its first step towards a firm place in our worldview with which likewise will begin a new era of scientific use of our environment. Sonification means the turning into sound of specific events, typical examples for sonifying devices are the sonar and the Geiger counter—with both devices it is only an indication of an event, but possesing no characteristics of the event itself. Through the employment of bacteria in a video-tracked petridish as the foundation of a sound installation, a completely other form of composition arises in which the composer no longer takes over the rules of mathematics and the interdependencies create a multiplicity of themselves, but the setup, i.e., the orchestra, plays the composition through the rules of nature, which means the processuality is carried from a theoretical field to a performative one. Nature follows its own rules and is only manipulated, or rather changed, in terms of its own framework. With this one can understand this art project also as a kind of translation of scientific work within the field of synthetic biology. The petri dish as an enclosed living environment for the bacteria serves as a metaphor similar to the Greek amphitheater—for the life and death of our planet earth. Sonification is the chosen means in order to transport the abstract microbiological process of which people easily access a level of abstraction. Humans have forever been receptive to music, respectively sound, by which the degree of knowledge of individuals about the things of the world (in this case of synthetic biology) plays no scientific roll.
Links:
http://www.judithrauch.de/Texte/sonifikation.html
http://www.hkb.bfh.ch/ffsonifikation.html
http://www.kleines-lexikon.de/w/s/sonifikation.shtml ...naja