Morality Calculus
Morality Calculus is a bioart installation by artist Yuning Chen that interrogates the prevalent mechanistic view of life in synthetic biology, in collaboration with biologist Dr. Elise Cachat. Through the creation of hybrid bread fermented with yeast-human cells, the artwork embodies the act of reducing complex lifeforms to mere collections of engineering parts, akin to 'lego bricks.' The installation poses the questions: If living organisms are perceived as mechanical vessels containing functional genetic components, how do we 'calculate' the moral status of a yeast-human cell? These queries are further complicated by the vast ecology of shadow organisms that have contributed to the adhesion experiment for the yeast-human cell, hinting at the multitude of life at stake in the artwork's central question: the moral implications of simplifying complex lifeforms into functional units.
Collaborator: Dr Elise Cachat, Centre for Engineering Biology, University of Edinburgh
The Morality Calculus Tasting Event
Accompanying the exhibition, an immersive tasting experience will be held to explore audiences’ personal "morality calculus." This event allows participants to collectively reflect on and debate the incalculable - the intricate ethics of reducing life to engineering components. The multi-sensory experience will engage attendees in tasting and deliberating over foods fermented by fictional hybrid organisms, analogous to those involved in the bread-making experiments. As they consume choreographed representations of hybrid organisms, audiences will be prompted to examine their own moral calculations and challenged to grapple with the ethical quandaries posed by the artwork. How do we calculate the moral value of genetic material combined across different living beings? What hidden ecologies and unseen lifeforms contribute to such hybrids?
booking link via Summerhall: https://www.summerhall.co.uk/sh-event/morality-calculus-tasting-event/2024-04-24/
Acknowledgement
This project is a collaboration between the Centre for Engineering Biology and Design Informatics, Edinburgh College of Art, and funded by BBSRC Transition Award Flexible Funding (BB/W014610/1). This project is presented by Summerhall Gallery and ASCUS Lab. Special thanks to the generous help from members of the Cachat Lab and the Rosser Lab, the guidance and support from the creators of Crossing Kingdoms, the artist’s PhD supervision team Dr Larissa Pschetz, Dr Rachel Harkness and Prof Jane Calvert, the spatial and technical support from Design Informatics and to Luca Cocconi for moral support and installation assistance.