The Small Protein Translation Machine - The Tissue Culture & Art Project

The Small Protein Translation Machine features a piece of in vitro meat growing in a microgravity bioreactor. Bathed in a rich nutriment solution containing ten percent fetal calf serum, the cells that constitute this semi-living meat will slowly translate nutrients into animal protein while replacing the polymer scaffold on which they grow, highlighting the arguably futile idea of in vitro meat. The Tissue Culture & Art Project (TC&A) investigates our relationship to different grades of life through the construction/growth of a new class of object/being: the Semi-Living. Parts of complex organisms are kept alive outside the body and coerced to grow in predetermined shapes. TC&A’s evocative objects explore new discourses and new ethics/epistemologies that surround issues of partial life and the contestable future scenarios they offer us.

With kind support of VDW CoolSystems