Victimless Leather
However, due to rapid cell growth, the exhibit was eventually "killed" by cutting off its nutrients, aligning with the creators' intent to remind viewers of the responsibility towards manipulated life.
[5] The SymbioticA website explains what it is, "an artistic laboratory dedicated to the research, learning, critique and hands-on engagement with the life sciences.".
[6] The artists work with tissue, constructing and growing complex organisms that can live outside the body, making the new objects semi-living.
The project website states that NoArk is "a tangible as well as symbolic ‘craft’ for observing and understanding a biology that combines the familiar with the other".
The project wanted to confront the cultural perceptions of life now that we are able to manipulate living systems, and also discuss the notions of the wholeness of the body.
The project website point out how clothing has always been used to protect the fragile skin of humans, but lately have evolved into a fabricated object used as a tool to show one's identity.
As the artists put it: "This particular project will deconstruct our cultural meaning of clothes as a second skin by materialising it and displaying it as an art object.
"[1] The intention to grow artificial leather without killing an animal is meant as a contribution to a cultural discussion between art, science and society.
The bioreactor used in this project was custom made, based on an organ perfusion pump designed by Alexis Carrel and Charles Lindbergh.
[15] The research and development of “Victimless Leather” has been conducted in SymbioticA: the Art and Science Collaborative Research Laboratory, School of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia and in consultation with Professor Arunasalam Dharmarajan from the School of Anatomy and Human Biology as well as Verigen, a Perth-based company that specializes in tissue engineered cartilage for clinical applications.
[17] The victimless leather was featured in the exhibition “Design and the Elastic Mind” at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, United States.
The French actress Brigitte Bardot strongly opposed hunting of animals for vanity and the commercial purpose of the skin.
[25] Similar to ethics like this, is the interest for artificial meat production due to reactions against the livestock sector because of health and environmental problems.
A 2006 UN Food and Agriculture Organization FAO report pointed out the livestock sector as one of the most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems like soil degradation and water pollution.
