Transformations of the Self
Fundamental issues related to the knowledge of the nature of life, to the scientific and ethical limits of the human body’s possibilities, but also to the limits between living beings and machines, humans and animals, are today in the center of important interdisciplinary debates. The purpose of this article is to investigate the unimagined potential of life that emerges with improvements in biotechnology by highlighting the aesthetics of the « recreated » and « reconstructed » bionic meta-body. I chose as a starting point a particular set of artworks that use biotechnology as their medium and field of inquiry. I present five « ideal-type » categories of aesthetic representations of bioart in ordrer to understand these artistic fictions in the actual biotechnological context. These five « tables of thought » are not absolute : translucent body, prostheses to the body (symbiosis of man and machine), trans-specific hybridities (encounters with the absolutely Other), culture of the « semi-living » (new skins and « bio-facts »), desire for ubiquity.