Bioethics consulting

BEAK specializes in all of the types of Review Boards offered in Industry and Academia to provide best practices and weigh Risks vs. Benefit in experimental life science research. But in the case of BEAK,  this review process is done by artists and scholars who work on the  interstices of both art and biology.

Often a review board or an  Advisory kommission is hired to review the development and testing of  commercial products, corporate ‘trade secret’ research or pure research  in molecular biology, regenerative medicine or any of the Life Science  sub genera. Whether it is on the bench or at the bedside, geared towards  food, medicine or simply curiosity based biotechnological research, these IRBs (Institutional Review Boards) generally have zero to none experience reviewing Bioart, EcoArt, Body Art or Trans-species art.  

Often when presented with an arts based project seeking Institutional review for a School, Gallery, Museum, Home Lab, Maker Space or in the Public Sphere, science and scientist based Bioethical Advisory bodies freeze in the face of Creative Misuse of Biotechnology or alternative  repurposing of the materials and methods of Gene Editing or Tissue Culture. 

BEAK offers Bioart, Vivoart and other Living Arts experience to provide savvy education and even best practices within the realm of promoting actionable arts freedom and often seeing the innate worth of Art as Research. 

Art is fundamental research and arts practice are both educational for the general public, hold great potential for alternative pathways towards un-puzzling pieces of that glittering and endless quantized prize known as empirical knowledge and the broadening of general and particular enigma in the name of wider and deeper canyons  of emotional experience on a species aesthetics basis. So BEAK has a working knowledge of the benefits of subjective and qualitative exploration utilizing various scientific methodologies that entail the  care and use of life for both object of study and object of art. We support the exploration of the life-world in the realm of the arts but we also know about a few issues in bioethics that might apply.  

AICUC, Biosafety, Recombinant Safety
Human Subjects – Informed  Consent, Issues of Proprietary Knowledge, Model and Performance Release and even Ethical Issues in the Creative Commons Non-commercial open sciart sourced community.
Animal, Non-Human, Transgenic Human and other Mutants Enrichment 

• Methodology, Minimal Upkeep for Staff, Biosafety Training
• Unpredictability, Spontaneity and Improvisation in Bioart and the  Changeable and escaping Insidious Alterity of Lifeforms in general.
• Exhibition – Pure Culture Technique, Containment, Interaction, Contamination vs Contagion
• Bioart Death Rituals, Disposal, Living Archiving, Unstable Archives