Bio-pixels: A stem cell-based interactive–generative interface designed to redefine technologies of self-making in new media arts

Abstract

Bio-pixels is a stem cell-based interactive–generative interface designed to investigate the concept of ‘self-making’. The project uses stem cells as a biological prototype of an identity-free substance and defines in vivo stem cell differentiation processes as nature’s self-making technology. It therefore considers in vitro-induced differentiation processes as artificial self-making technologies that were recontextualized through the interactions between the world of genes and the world of bits. The project’s system was functionally built based on three operational principles derived from convergence technologies that facilitate a mutual functional shift between bio-media and digital media and reveal the extent to which this shift leads to a reconciliation between our biological and narrative identities. Empirically, the project remodelled visual maps of cellular activities during the induced differentiation processes by which cells acquire their identity. Finally, a generative biological–digital mirror was architected by which the viewers see their faces resynthesized as the result of the interactions between the artificial remodelled differentiation processes and the participants’ activities at the project’s physical place and its Twitter page. Within this context, Bio-pixels highlights the consequences of today’s bioinformatics on in vitro artificial processes of self-making through which the public can control, enhance or resynthesize their identities.