this is a vending machine in los angeles. it's in a shopping mall,and it sells fish eggs. it's a caviar-vending machine. this is the art-o-mat,an art-vending machine that sells small artistic creationsby different artists, usually on small wood blocksor matchboxes, in limited edition. this is oliver medvedik. he is not a vending machine,but he is one of the founders of genspace, a community biolab in brooklyn, new york,
where anybody can go and take classes and learn how to do thingslike grow e. coli that glows in the dark or learn how to take strawberry dna. in fact, i saw oliver doone of these strawberry dna extractions about a year ago, and this is what led meinto this bizarre path that i'm going to talk to you right now. strawberry dna is really fascinating,because it's so beautiful. i'd never thought about dnabeing a beautiful thing before, before i saw it in this form.
a lot of people, especiallyin the art community, don't necessarily engagein science in this way. i instantly joined genspace after this, and asked oliver, "if we can dothis with strawberries, can we do this with people?" about 10 minutes later,we were both spitting in vials, coming up with a protocolfor human dna extraction. i started doing this on my own. this is what my dna actually looks like.
and i was at a dinner partywith some artist friends, and i was telling them about this project, and they couldn't believethat you could actually see dna. so i said, all right, let's get outsome supplies right now. and i started having these bizarredinner parties on friday nights, where people would come overand we'd do dna extractions, and i would capture them on video, because it createdthis kind of funny portrait as well. (laughter)
these are people who don't necessarilyregularly engage with science. you can kind of tell from their reactions. but they became fascinated by it, and it was really exciting for meto see them get excited about science. and so i started doing this regularly. it's an odd thing to dowith your friday nights, but this is what i started doing. i started collecting a whole groupof my friends' dna in small vials and categorizing them.
this is what that looked like. and it started to make me thinkabout a couple of things. first, this looked a lotlike my facebook wall. so in a way, i createdsort of a genetic social network. and the second thing was, one time a friend came overand looked at this on my table and was like, "uh ... why are they numbered? is this person more rarethan the other one?" and i hadn't even thought about that.
they were just numbered because that was the orderthat i extracted the dna in. but that made me thinkabout collecting toys, and what's going on right nowin the toy world with blind box toys, and being able to collect these rare toys. you buy these boxes, but aren't surewhat's going to be inside. but when you open them,you have different rarities of the toys. i thought that was interesting;i thought about this and the caviar vending machineand the art-o-mat all together.
and for some reason, i was one nightdrawing a vending machine, thinking of doing paintingsof a vending machine. the vial of my dna was sitting there, and i saw a beautiful collaborationbetween the strands of dna and the coils of a vending machine. so i decided to create an art installationcalled the dna vending machine. here it is. (music) [dna vending machineis an art installation
about our increasing accessto biotechnology.] [for a reasonable cost,you can purchase a sample of human dna from a traditional vending machine.] [each sample comes packaged with a collectible limited editionportrait of the human specimen.] [dna vending machine treats dnaas a collectible material and brings to light legal issuesover the ownership of dna.] (music ends) gabriel barcia-colombo:
the dna vending machine is currentlyin a couple of galleries in new york, and it's selling out pretty well. we're in the first edition of 100 pieces, hoping to do another edition pretty soon. i'd like to get itinto more of a metro hub, like grand central or penn station, next to some of the othervending machines in that location. but really, with thisand a lot of my art projects, i want to ask the audience a question:
when biotechnology and dna sequencingbecomes as cheap as, say, laser cutting or 3d printing or buying caviarfrom a vending machine, will you submit your sample of dnato be part of the vending machine? how much will these samples be worth? will you buy someone else's sample? and what will you be able to dowith that sample? thank you. (applause)