Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Balmer, Andrew S.
• Bulpin, Katie
• Molyneux-Hodgson, Susan

Titel

Bodies

Ist Teil von

• Synthetic Biology, p.116-150

Ort / Verlag

London: Palgrave Macmillan UK

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This robotic sequence plays out in a video on the website of Ginkgo Bioworks, a synthetic biology start-up company located in Boston with the explicit mission to ‘make biology easier to engineer’ (Ginkgo, 2015a). Ginkgo has become emblematic of the promised industrial future of synthetic biology, and it is certainly a core enterprise. One of the principle ways in which Ginkgo seeks to realise synthetic biology’s visions is by replacing traditional scientific practices of working ‘by hand’ (Ginkgo, 2015b) with automated, robotic processes. In this regard, the vision of industrialisation is set up in relation to the production of ‘readymade’ bio-objects, procedures and tools. Biological spaces, labour and methods are being reconfigured to align with industrial aspirations and, in keeping with this, the Ginkgo laboratory has been renamed a ‘foundry’, in which automated mechanisms construct such readymades. In new bio-industrial settings like these, the hands and bodies of scientists seem conspicuous by their absence.