Bio Art: Life Imitates Art. But What Happens When the art IS life?
Well, then the bio-art starts growing out of control and has to be killed by a lone hero. Obviously. That might sound like the script of "Little Shop Of Horrors: The Revenge", but it actually happened in New York this month.
The organic art in question was the piece "Victimless Leather", a tiny
jacket grown from mice embryonic stem cells and kept alive by an
external life-support system. Yes, you read that right. Artists,
working with the SymbioticA research laboratory in the University of
Western Australia, grew living tissue into the shape of a tiny leather
jacket and cyborged it up with electrical parts. Presumably to give
Tom Thumb either a stylish biodegradable look or nightmares for life.
The mini-flesh-threads were designed to raise questions about
human use of animals, and it certainly did - even if only by adding
the questions "What the hell are they doing with that jacket?"