Congratulations Erick Flores

Erick Flores - La recreacion de adan

“La recreacion de Adan” by Erick Flores, 2012.

The Creation of Adam is perhaps the most representative renaissance work of art. Besides the extraordinary "hand" of Michelangelo, the interpretations that have been around the fact that is portrayed in the fresco of the Sistine Chapel. For these reasons I decided to use the work as the basis and inspiration for my illustration. I tried to do my illustration as explicit as possible to make it easily understood by most. I wanted to represent and replace, without the desire to offend anyone's beliefs the characters, the players in this new field. On the one hand the main character of my illustration is a being with human anatomy made from strands of DNA - the raw material of synthetic biology, with this I wanted to represent that humanity will change with this new science metaphorically redefining its composition still having the same structure-A new way of understanding life as we know it.

The character on the right represents science, now in charge of create and give life to main being-science and the study as "creators". In the composition of the illustration I decided to frame the characters by an golden frame, as a symbol of the relationship between the characters and between what they represent and more importantly, among the topics of the call, the art and science. I would add one more, the nature.

Personally I see synthetic biology as the tip of an enormous range of possibilities that will give human tools and solutions to improve your life, but more importantly correct mistakes we made with our environment. Synthetic biology is a turning point in the sciences, perhaps a revolution that will change how we see life and our environment.

I must accept that besides the curiosity that gives me the progress of this matter I have some concerns know that will be used for, if it´s really going to be of any use to the average citizen, if it is going to serve the majority of habitants of the planet or just those who have the resources to take advantage of these advances and more importantly, if the development and applications of synthetic biology will be done with the proper ethics and responsibility. This is a very important issue because I think that having the possibility of creating organisms made "to the measure" is extremely dangerous.