Congratulations Alejandro Fuentes y Helena Reyes

Alejandro Fuentes y Helena Reyes - X

“X” by Alejandro Fuentes y Helena Reyes, 2012.

Work arising from a joint collaboration between Digital Design and Genomic Sciences students, Alejandro Fuentes and Helena Reyes respectively. This work has influences from the Mexican sculptor Enrique Carbajal (better known as Sebastian) and from the American sculptor Alexander Calder, it refers to synthetic biology, the paradigms that have emerged in the field and its scope.

The infinity symbol represents the vast number of expectations and reservations on synthetic biology, we do not know exactly what the scope of the field will be and the technologies derived from it, but it certainly opens the door to endless possibilities, as Synthetic biology aims to design, build and study biological systems (or biological functions) which do not exist in nature.

The work consists of a circular assembly of 18 pieces and 18 pentagonal pieces whose union is standard. The nature of such unions allows selecting two or more pieces and swapping them to any site without problems, thus evoking the concept of modularity that has gained prominence in synthetic biology.

The shape of the pieces is a tribute to one of the classical graphical representations of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), where pentagons are deoxyribose and circles are phosphate. For the advancement of synthetic biology different technologies had been required, one of which is sequencing that has resulted in the possibility of know the DNA sequence of any organism, such information is an important pillar for the field because knowing the DNA content, it is possible to create a new content or modify an existing one.

It is very important to deliver the message that synthetic biology is a new field, which can result in endless benefits for humanity, but also requires an analytical and critical thinking about it: safety and ethics of synthetic biology cannot be passed overlooked. The participation of people is very important to achieve this goal; X is intended to be an attractive work that draws public attention and provoke reflection.

The name of the piece, X refers to a variable: it may be the name of a new organism, like a plant that produces hydrogen, a new gene that gives people the ability to see more colors, the name of the process that produces edible cheese from fungi that are in human feet ... ... what synthetic biology results in depends on all of us: scientists, artists, students, the public, the whole community.

This work was conducted over four weeks where the authors argued sessions and technical information exchange that resulted in a description written by Alejandro Fuentes and a work assembled by Helena Reyes, both painted the work.