Hello, and welcome to the SETI Live. My name is Bettina Forgé. I'm the director of the SETI Institute's Artists in Residence program. How does life begin? This intriguing question touches on science, philosophy, and the imagination. Our guest today is artist Jennifer Willett, who created an artwork that visualizes the biogenesis theories of Dr. David Deamer and Dr. John Barrus, both recipients of this year's Drake Award.
Jennifer's artwork, Dreams of Biogenesis, imagines the birth of life on a planet as a reverie of molecules, cells, micro and multicellular organisms assembling and evolving under unique environmental conditions. We'll talk about how Jennifer developed this artwork, her work as a bio artist, and what she's doing at the Incubator Art Lab. If you have questions about anything that we talk about, please put those in the comments and we will get to those at the end of our chat.
But first, I would like to take a moment to welcome all of our viewers who are joining us from around the world on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and Twitch. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us. And please tell us in the comments where you're joining us from. Okay, so let me introduce our guest officially.
Dr. Jennifer Willett is an internationally renowned bio artist and the director of Incubator Art Lab and the Canada Research Chair in Art, Science and Ecology at the University of Windsor in Ontario. She's also a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada. Her work combines fine arts practices such as sculpture, collage, and performance art with applied biotechnologies that include bioprinting, microbiology, and microscopy.
Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Arnolfini Museum in Bristol, UK, Exit Art Gallery in New York, the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria, and ICIA in San Jose, USA, among many others. Welcome, Jennifer. Thank you so much for having me, Bettina. It's great to have you. And just so our viewers know, Jennifer has a bit of a throat issue. Her voice is normally not as jazzy as this, but we'll make do our best.
Okay. If you need to like take a lozenge or take a sip of water once in a while. So, but thank you for hanging in there with us today. So I introduced you as a bio artist, but before we talk more about the actual Dreams of Biogenesis piece, can you give us like a brief idea and like an idea of what bio art is? Sure. Bio art is a contemporary art form that involves the use of living biological media, sometimes the tools and technologies of the hard sciences in the production of art.
So rather than using paint or clay, artists are using cells and enzymes in order to make artworks. So my work, I work in a studio. I have a very traditional fine arts background, but I also have a laboratory. And in that lab, I will do things like grow algae that we might be using live in an exhibit. I also grow all sorts of bacteria. We do a lot of GMO bacteria. So I have a rainbow of bacteria, a palette of bacteria in my lab.
And so what I like to do is I like to create artworks in the lab that can be exhibited maybe virtually or to small audiences. But then I also like to take some of those artworks into the gallery. And it involves a lot of biosafety protocols and rules and regulations in order to safely transport and exhibit living biological media in the gallery. And so I spend a lot of my time sort of navigating that end of the paperwork in order to make it happen.
But for me, and the thing I love most about bio art is there's sort of an encounter between you and another organism. And these organisms are often organisms that are really sealed off from the rest of our society and from the natural world because they're in labs. But there's still something, it's similar to like going fishing in a creek in the mountains. You still have this, there's this like metabolic exciting exchange between you and the microorganisms in the lab.
And I like to bring that opportunity and that experience to viewers by bringing them into the gallery. That is really cool that you're working with microorganisms that normally we don't really get to see. Like you're making something visible and present that is all around us all the time, but you're doing it in a really artistic way. Yes, I think sometimes we think that microbes and particularly bacteria, but also like mold and algae and all the stuff are really, they get a bad rap.
You know, they smell bad, they discolor. We're fearful of them. We're fearful of getting a cold or a bug from them. But actually, they are the most voluminous organisms on the planet. They're really responsible for so many of the biological processes in our ecologies, but also in our bodies. We've learned in recent years that the gut microbiome, for example, has more cells of non-human organisms than the entire human body of human cells. So they really are everywhere.
They're essential for our well-being and for our ecology. and so a lot of my work is about um making them visible making them and giving them maybe like a voice in a a lot of my work the the the protagonist of the artwork is not necessarily a human it's often a microbial culture and so it's about giving voice and agency um to these very microscopic organisms that we often don't pay attention to or we really reject Um, but they're, they're so essential on so many levels.
And so it's, it's, it's fun to work with them. Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine. I, I, I just love that whole idea of using like life as the artistic canvas. And, you know, not just working with paints and like traditional media that you do, but also branching out. And, you know, I've seen your lab and there are petri dishes and then microscopes and like this, like really expanding what art media can be and what kind of questions we can ask. And I should say I'm part of a large community.
Internationally, I'd say there's probably a couple thousand bio artists working all over the world. I learned a lot of these techniques and technologies to the bio artists who came before me. So it's actually really a big growing field and I think it'll become more present in our culture moving forward. Yeah, yeah, I agree. And it's really exciting to see what's happening in the field of bio art.
So the reason you got involved with the SETI Institute's Artists in Resonance program is that you were commissioned to create an artwork that reflects the scientific research of the Drake Award recipients, Dr. David Deeman, Dr. John Barras, and they support opposing theories of biogenesis. So how did you approach this project and what kind of research did you do for this? I would argue that they are not opposing views. And in fact, I did ask them about it.
So in preparation for this, whenever I do a new project, I read a lot of scientific papers. I should also be very clear with you. I am not a scientist. So sometimes I read them like concrete poetry. Sometimes I don't understand everything I'm reading. But so I read a lot of their papers. I spent a lot of time online. I watched them in some interviews, listened to some podcasts.
And then I met with them virtually in a team's meeting, and I have to say it was just a really deeply honorable experience to be working with SETI in this capacity, but also to be sort of engaging with these two outstanding scientists who contributed so much to our larger scientific understanding so.
um the so I asked them specifically that question I said you know I see a lot of overlap or areas where these theories could collaborate and they agreed with me they said that um that actually as as scientists themselves they're part of a larger network or a cacophony of other scientists also doing research and that their work builds on and collaborates with and shares with others and they felt that their hypothesis did not necessarily negate the other, that they both could be true.
Or it could be an and both, right? And that thinking about how life started on this planet is probably more complex than just one direct path, right? So that was really fascinating. Should I tell you a little bit about both of their work and how it came to work? Yeah, go ahead. Sure. So John Barris is an ecologist. He's at the University of Washington in the Department of Oceanography.
And he came up, so he's really coming from an ecological standpoint, thinking about multiple organisms and the environment and the ecology and how it may have together produced life on this planet. He became very interested in the hydrothermal vents in the oceans and something called a black smoker.
right so these are places in the ocean where um there's just an enormous amount of heat and activity and um we we've studied in fact he's one of the scientists that have studied gone down in submarines and studied all of the microorganisms that live around these black vents they do not meet the criteria they're extremophiles they do not meet the criteria for the organisms that would normally be living very well on the surface of our planet, right?
And so his argument is that in that environment, with all this heat and agitation, became the winning conditions to start very, very teeny tiny small forms of life, and that over time that became more complex, and that eventually that is the origin of life on our planet. Whereas David Deamer, he is a chemist. So whereas now I say they're both did a lot of field research. I heard great stories about them out there, you know, camping and hiking and going to these really extreme environments.
But David Deamer is a chemist and he also spends a lot of time in the lab trying to figure out what, how the molecules may have come together. to start life on this planet. And so he has an experimental methodology in addition to sort of an environmental science. And so his thought is, and his hypothesis is that life began within these sort of wet-dry cycles in freshwater hot springs, particularly those around volcanic areas, right?
And that as it got wet and dry and wet and dry and wet and dry, it's very warm, very nutrient rich environments that we had these things called liposomes form. And liposomes are like these little bubbles of fat. And it's in his that those became protocells that would then develop cells within. that became more complex on our planet. He argues that a lot of the chemistry that would have been involved in this process would have come onto planet Earth through asteroids.
So if you look at both of these ideas, first of all, they were in very similar environments, although one much saltier than the other. And they are not mutually exclusive. So both of these things and both could have been occurring at the same time. So in my work, I have a body of work that I do. I'm very interested in the cacophony and complexity of life and the sort of like metabolic. For me, it's like an orchestra. I can hear it buzzing all around me when I think about it.
So a lot of my work, I can actually ask Beth to show an image. There's a piece called When Microbes Dream. So this is a piece of mine that I've been working on for a number of years. It's a site specific installation and I travel to different galleries and museums all over the world and I install it myself. And this is a collage. This one is eighty feet long and about sixteen feet tall. So it's meant to like put the human viewer into the space of the microbe.
Right. And to have when I think about what the microbes experience might be in the lab, I think about these sort of like ecstatic chemical interchanges, right? And some sort of like agitation. I think about chaos a little bit in that space. And so I wanna put the humans into that space when I'm making these installations. I should also say that this is a work of Bioware.
It does have living, I have these snow globes that I put in the collage and they're filled with living microbes, including algae and bacteria. So I really want people to get that ecstatic cacophony of life feeling. And so when I was reading about both of their research, it had a similar flavor to some of the work that I've been already doing on thinking about what would the biochemical experience of a microbe be.
And so what I did is I took the when microbes dream sort of apparatus, and then I inserted into it all the visual language from these two scientists. And so if you'd like to show the next image, which is the final collage itself. So this is the final collage itself. It's called Dreams of Biogenesis.
And again, what I'm thinking about is how today we have this cacophony of complex life, but it comes back to these billions of years of biochemistry and of happenstance of ecological interactions and how these sort of organisms that come from the origin of life in our planet are also know our descendants or our cousins in some way so I wanted to create a collage similar to when microbes dream that gives people the sensation of this total cacophony but instead of using only my visual
language also includes visual language from the scientists themselves so if you look at this collage you can see in the background I've painted some black smokers into the ocean if you look in the background you can see a volcano a volcano and a volcanic pool down below it where David Deamer imagines life comes from. And then I took visual cues from both of their research. So for example, in the backgrounds, there's a purple and a red sort of like net shape.
And this net shape is something called ribofilm, which is a physical apparatus that John Barras thinks might have helped bring together the origins of life. Um, there's the, one of my favorite parts of the whole thing is the liposomes. And those are these sort of like day glow, um, fluorescent yellow, pink, and purple, uh, squiggly bubbles, um, where he thinks that life originated on our planet.
So I took things from their stories and from their research, and I put them back in to this cacophony of life as a way of acknowledging. the origins of life on our planet and the complexity it's grown to, but also to really celebrate them. And I have to say that was the other thing I really thought a lot about when I was doing this.
I'm also an academic, I'm entering the, you know, I'm in the second half of my career and I just thought what an absolute Joy, it must be for them to be celebrated in this way and recognize they've done amazing research. I know how hard it is to continue research at that level for thirty, forty years. And I wanted to give them a gift. I wanted to give them something where they could see little pieces of their research within the larger stretch of life on our planet.
and to understand that their contribution is not only these organisms are drawing our attention to these proto cells and microorganisms, but also their contribution to like human knowledge and thought, which is like one of the furthest expressions of this origin of life on this planet. So it's also really intended to honor them and to celebrate them.
Yeah, and I think that was just absolutely perfect, especially since at the Drake Awards, both David and John were invited on stage and they had this really wonderful conversations about their, as you said, maybe not opposing points of view, but complementary aspects of or approaches to how life would begin. And so seeing that artwork basically be a visual representation of what they're talking about and the celebration was just really wonderful.
And for viewers who have not seen it, the Drake Awards were actually filmed and livestreamed at the time. And there is a video available if you want to see the entire Drake Awards. And if you want to sort of scroll fast forward, like about like, you know, two thirds in, there's actually this conversation between how to break award recipients that is really fun to follow. And then you look at Jennifer's work again, then you go like, all right.
Because I know that you talked to both of them, how delighted they were to answer your questions and have an artist kind of, you know, sort of think it over and sort of digest all that information and make it, you know, give it visual form and kind of bring it to life in a different way. You know, I've worked with a lot of scientists over the years, and often if you sort of start the conversation, you'll learn things about them that they're also engaged in the arts in different ways, right?
And so one of the delightful surprises that I had from that conversation is that John Barras actually wrote a script for an opera. And he sent it to me about the origin of life on our planet. So, yeah, it was actually like a really beautiful conversation because, you know, these are people, scientists and artists are very similar. They're always trying to think outside of the current bounds of human thought. There's a lot of like experimental methodology. technologies.
And so I often find that scientists when I get talking to them, either maybe they are very, maybe they have a spouse in the arts, or they used to take piano lessons their whole childhood, but there's often like these really like creative twists in their life as well. Yeah, I fully agree. I think, first of all, science itself is very creative.
And I think there's even a study that Nobel recipients are twice as likely to have an artistic practice than those scientists who do not receive Nobel prizes, hint, hint. I'm gonna just take a moment to welcome viewers from all over the world. We have people joining us from France, from Italy, Larry from Indiana, and from Austin, Texas. And we're getting lots of great comments also about like how fun people think bio art is, which I think, you know, we don't talk enough about.
So I'm glad that we have a chance to have a bio artist with us for the SETI Live. You do other really cool work besides the collages. You also do performance pieces. There's one called the Gentleman Scientist. Do you want to talk a bit more about that one? I have an alter ego. I have a few alter egos. And one of them is called the Gentleman Scientist.
And the Gentleman Scientist wears a top hat and a very filthy lab coat, all white, but like filthy, like we buried it in the... in the mud along the Detroit River one year. And so it's like it's well worn. It looks a little bit like a time traveler coat, but it also has these snow globes sewn into it, like sort of like a lot of breasts or egg sacs or something. And I grow organisms in it when I wear it. And the gentleman scientist is for me, I think of like an Orlando character.
It is a person who transcends time, but also transcends gender. And it is a person who maybe comes from this tradition of the gentleman scientist, which is sort of the origins of the scientific methodologies that we have today. It is also a colonial figure and it really is intended to like undermine that authority and bring in more of a playfulness and a conversation around science. And so I often dress as the gentleman scientist at a lot of my openings.
And then I'll take Q-tips and I swab people that I like and then I grow them in my little snow globes. You're just a walking science experiment at that point. Yes, I am. And I think it's, I've seen, it's a beautiful coat because it even has a train and those globes on there, they're just like really fascinating to look at. So I feel that this is really, fascinating way to do outreach also about science, that you're bringing it into the conversation for a larger audience in a different way.
And you also do that at Incubator Art Lab, which I want to take a moment also to talk about. So tell me about the Incubator. So I should say a little before incubator that science engagement is a huge aspect of my research as a professor. And I'm very interested in creating these in engagement moments with people throughout time, durational moments, reciprocal moments where scientists and artists are learning as much from the general public as they are. from them.
And I'm really think that in terms of science communication, focusing less on these direct points of communication and maybe more on durational relationship building through joy and delight and whimsy is another way to get people to really sort of like maybe trust and have a more complicated long term relationship with science. So for me, that's a whole aspect of research that I do outside of my work as an artist. I run a lab at the University of Windsor. It's called Incubator Art Lab.
I run it the same way as a science lab. So we meet twice a month. I have half dozen people or a dozen people working for me at any given time. I have artists and scientists, but then also people from the social sciences and humanities who work for me. And what we do in this lab is we produce artworks, my artworks. We have a BSL level two laboratory in the School of Creative Arts that is also a performing arts venue. So it's a lab that also has theatrical lighting and sound capabilities.
And we're just doing some of our preliminary tests with it now. It's amazing. I'm thinking about like a laser light show combined with Bill Nye, the science guy, where you can do performance art, but also have, you know, DNA extractions running at the same time. And we have live cameras that go from the microscopes and project onto the wall or from the sterile cabinet out into the hallway or online.
so I'm really thinking about like a performing arts relationship with biotechnology that can be made available virtually or in person and so that's one aspect of our research and then the other thing that we do is we have a community engagement lab as well and it's more of my art studio but also we run workshops and I I have to say I was doing the math the other day in the last three years we've had over three thousand People come in and do hands-on workshops in our studio.
And just in small groups, twenty-five at a time, I have to say, Dominica Mediatti, shout out to her, our educational coordinator, because she runs most of these workshops. She's tireless. And people come in and we do microscopy or painting with algae or we have one that we do where you animate... owl pellets and you need to collect all the bones out of owl pellets and create stop motion animations.
So again, a really way of creating like these durational but also fun, quirky science and art moments for a general public to sort of open up dialogue and discourse around science and technology. Wow. And I've seen both venues that you described, and they're amazing. And I love this idea of having an art lab slash performance space, because it really messes with how we think about those disciplines. You always think art, gallery, or art studio, paints, easel.
and lab coats, everything is nice and tidy. But what happens when you're below those boundaries? And all the most interesting things happen at the boundaries. And the same as to, I remember an opening and you were all dressed up in lab coats and you were dancing. There was music and we were like dancing on the table. It was so much fun. That was really awesome. We'd only just finished the renovations the day before. We didn't really know how to operate it yet, but we did a flash mob.
for the FEM Meeting Women in Art, Science and Technology Conference. It was fantastic. I was really glad you were able to see it. So if viewers are interested, I will have Beth share with you the Incubator Art Lab link in the comments and you're welcome to come and check out our website. You can also follow us on social media and we publicize all of the work that we do. And we do have people come from all over the world to try our workshops or attend our events. Yeah, yeah.
I encourage you to follow that up. I also want to say hello to people from Huntsville. We have somebody joining us from Peru and Ardmore, Oklahoma and Windsor, Ontario. I wonder who that could be. Somebody you know, maybe. And we also have a question. Have you ever animated nanoparticles? No, I have not. I tend to be like, I'm really biology focused, right? But in my, I will say art and science genre, there's people who do all different types of things.
So nanoparticles are a little outside of my forte.
all right um I guess maybe too small but something you know big there's there are options for people to maybe come and join you and to join your incubator and somebody has a great idea yes maybe we'll well you know we'll we'll do that at another time we're always looking for great ideas and graduate students so if someone would like to come study with us oh that's that's absolutely right yes Okay, well, we are approaching the sort of, thirty minute mark, and I know that your throat
must be killing you, so I promise you to cut it a little short. Thank you, everyone. Before I wind us down, I want to say that I'd like to take this opportunity to remind you that the SETI Institute is a nonprofit organization. And it is due to the contributions from viewers like you that outreach projects such as this very SETI Live is possible. So if you'd like to support us, please consider going to seti.org and hit donate. of dwarf planets. It's a series.
So remember to tune in again to our next study live. So that leaves me with thanking Jennifer for this wonderful discussion. Thank you also to Beth and Jasmin and Rebecca who are working behind the scenes to make this SETI Live possible. And if you would like to find out more about the SETI Institute's Artists in Resonance program, please visit seti.org forward slash AIR.
And don't forget to sign up for a newsletter so that you can stay up to date with news about upcoming exhibitions, performances, and artist profiles from our program. Thank you very much. And we will see you at the next SETI Live. Bye and bye, Jennifer. Thank you. Thank you.