New techno-natures: the future of human reproduction in sci-art

Abstract

In the fields of sci-art, bioart and speculative design, contemporary artists are creating experiential visions of the future based on trends within science. Two artworks with futuristic figurations of human reproduction, Pinar Yoldas’ Designer Babies and Ai Hasegawa’s I Wanna Deliver a Dolphin/I Wanna Deliver a Shark, serve as the point of departure for revisiting the eternal nature-culture debate. Hasegawa’s work explores relations to other species in the radical figuration of humans giving birth to sharks and dolphins. Yoldas plays with the notion of bioscientists as playing God, giving genetically modified progeny god-like features, while critically showcasing the potential of genetic engineering. Contemporary sci-art stages experiments and encounters of technoscience and human biology, thus experiments with the very ‘facts of life’. These sci-art works involve critical perspectives on the technoscience of assisted reproduction including surrogacy and genetic engineering. Still, they configure nature not as threatened but as dynamic, responsive, and continually undergoing change. By expanding the perspective on human reproduction through surprising and mind-expanding figurations, they address emerging technologies as a shift to new techno-natures, entailing the ongoing merging of natural biological processes with emerging biotechnologies.

New techno-natures: the future of human reproduction in sci-art