1
00:00:00,762 --> 00:00:02,658
This is a vending machine in Los Angeles.

2
00:00:02,658 --> 00:00:05,788
It's in a shopping mall, and it sells fish eggs.

3
00:00:05,788 --> 00:00:09,746
It's a caviar vending machine.

4
00:00:09,746 --> 00:00:11,314
This is the Art-o-mat,

5
00:00:11,314 --> 00:00:12,874
an art vending machine that sells

6
00:00:12,874 --> 00:00:14,443
small artistic creations by different artists,

7
00:00:14,443 --> 00:00:16,643
usually on small wood blocks or matchboxes,

8
00:00:16,643 --> 00:00:18,522
on limited edition.

9
00:00:18,522 --> 00:00:20,554
This is Oliver Medvedik. He's not a vending machine,

10
00:00:20,554 --> 00:00:22,426
but he is one of the founders of Genspace,

11
00:00:22,426 --> 00:00:24,714
a community biolab in Brooklyn, New York,

12
00:00:24,714 --> 00:00:26,314
where anybody can go and take classes

13
00:00:26,314 --> 00:00:29,075
and learn how to do things like
grow e.coli that glows in the dark

14
00:00:29,075 --> 00:00:31,402
or learn how to take strawberry DNA.

15
00:00:31,402 --> 00:00:35,319
In fact, I saw Oliver do one of these strawberry
DNA extractions about a year ago,

16
00:00:35,319 --> 00:00:37,240
and this is what kind of led me into this bizarre path

17
00:00:37,240 --> 00:00:38,976
that I'm going to talk to you right now.

18
00:00:38,976 --> 00:00:40,789
Because strawberry DNA is really fascinating,

19
00:00:40,789 --> 00:00:42,179
because it's so beautiful.

20
00:00:42,179 --> 00:00:44,554
I'd never thought about DNA
being a beautiful thing before,

21
00:00:44,554 --> 00:00:46,251
before I saw it in this form.

22
00:00:46,251 --> 00:00:48,003
And a lot of people, especially in the art community,

23
00:00:48,003 --> 00:00:50,492
don't necessarily engage in science in this way.

24
00:00:50,492 --> 00:00:52,444
I instantly joined Genspace after this,

25
00:00:52,444 --> 00:00:54,339
and I asked Oliver, "Well, if
we can do this strawberries,

26
00:00:54,339 --> 00:00:56,068
can we do this with people as well?"

27
00:00:56,068 --> 00:00:57,691
And about 10 minutes later, we were both

28
00:00:57,691 --> 00:00:59,132
spinning in vials together and coming up

29
00:00:59,132 --> 00:01:01,332
with a protocol for human DNA extraction.

30
00:01:01,332 --> 00:01:03,563
And I started doing this on my own,

31
00:01:03,563 --> 00:01:05,915
and this is what my DNA actually looks like.

32
00:01:05,915 --> 00:01:08,014
And I was at a dinner party with
some friends, some artists friends,

33
00:01:08,014 --> 00:01:10,470
and I was telling them about this project,

34
00:01:10,470 --> 00:01:13,437
and they couldn't believe that
you could actually see DNA.

35
00:01:13,437 --> 00:01:15,686
So I said all right, let's get
out some supplies right now.

36
00:01:15,686 --> 00:01:17,430
And I started having these bizarre dinner parties

37
00:01:17,430 --> 00:01:19,022
at my house on Friday nights

38
00:01:19,022 --> 00:01:20,493
where people would come over

39
00:01:20,493 --> 00:01:22,198
and we would do DNA extractions,

40
00:01:22,198 --> 00:01:24,019
and I would actually capture them on video,

41
00:01:24,019 --> 00:01:27,210
because it created this kind of funny portrait as well.

42
00:01:27,210 --> 00:01:29,472
(Laughter)

43
00:01:29,472 --> 00:01:31,168
These are people who don't necessarily regularly

44
00:01:31,168 --> 00:01:32,720
engage with science whatsoever.

45
00:01:32,720 --> 00:01:36,863
You can kind of tell from their reactions.

46
00:01:36,863 --> 00:01:38,639
But they became fascinated by it,

47
00:01:38,639 --> 00:01:40,219
and it was really exciting for me to see them

48
00:01:40,219 --> 00:01:41,834
get excited about science.

49
00:01:41,834 --> 00:01:45,634
And so I started doing this regularly.

50
00:01:45,634 --> 00:01:47,386
It's kind of an odd thing to
do with your Friday nights,

51
00:01:47,386 --> 00:01:48,682
but this is what I started doing,

52
00:01:48,682 --> 00:01:50,186
and I started collecting a whole group

53
00:01:50,186 --> 00:01:52,086
of my friends' DNA in small vials

54
00:01:52,086 --> 00:01:53,386
and categorizing them.

55
00:01:53,386 --> 00:01:54,554
This is what that looked like.

56
00:01:54,554 --> 00:01:56,794
And it started making me
think about a couple of things.

57
00:01:56,794 --> 00:01:59,410
First of all, this looked a lot like my Facebook wall.

58
00:01:59,410 --> 00:02:02,045
So in a way, I've created sort of a genetic network,

59
00:02:02,045 --> 00:02:03,834
a genetic social network, really.

60
00:02:03,834 --> 00:02:05,659
And the second thing was,
one time a friend came over

61
00:02:05,659 --> 00:02:08,653
and looked at this on my table and was like, "Oh.

62
00:02:08,653 --> 00:02:12,296
Why are they numbered? Is this
person more rare than the other one?"

63
00:02:12,296 --> 00:02:13,840
And I hadn't even thought about that.

64
00:02:13,840 --> 00:02:16,760
They were just numbered because that
was the order that I extracted the DNA in.

65
00:02:16,760 --> 00:02:18,984
But that made me think about collecting toys,

66
00:02:18,984 --> 00:02:20,672
and this thing that's going on right now

67
00:02:20,672 --> 00:02:22,577
in the toy world with blind box toys,

68
00:02:22,577 --> 00:02:24,520
and being able to collect these rare toys.

69
00:02:24,520 --> 00:02:27,128
You buy these boxes. You're not sure
what's going to be inside of them.

70
00:02:27,128 --> 00:02:28,605
But then, when you open them up,

71
00:02:28,605 --> 00:02:30,574
you have different rarities of the toys.

72
00:02:30,574 --> 00:02:31,765
And so I thought that was interesting.

73
00:02:31,765 --> 00:02:34,557
I started thinking about this and the caviar
vending machine and the Art-o-mat all together,

74
00:02:34,557 --> 00:02:38,125
and some reason, I was one
night drawing a vending machine,

75
00:02:38,125 --> 00:02:39,945
thinking about doing paintings of a vending machine,

76
00:02:39,945 --> 00:02:41,749
and the little vial of my DNA was sitting there,

77
00:02:41,749 --> 00:02:43,891
and I saw this kind of beautiful collaboration between

78
00:02:43,891 --> 00:02:46,821
the strands of DNA and the
coils of a vending machine.

79
00:02:46,821 --> 00:02:48,757
And so, of course, I decided
to create an art installation

80
00:02:48,757 --> 00:02:51,221
called the DNA Vending Machine.

81
00:02:51,221 --> 00:02:53,085
Here it is.

82
00:02:53,085 --> 00:02:58,300
(Music)

83
00:02:58,300 --> 00:03:02,887
[DNA Vending Machine is an art installation
about our increasing access to biotechnology.]

84
00:03:07,700 --> 00:03:11,691
[For a reasonable cost, you can purchase a sample

85
00:03:11,691 --> 00:03:14,695
of human DNA from a traditional vending machine.]

86
00:03:33,499 --> 00:03:35,419
[Each sample comes packaged with a collectible

87
00:03:35,419 --> 00:03:38,263
limited edition portrait of the human specimen.]

88
00:03:43,577 --> 00:03:45,400
[DNA Vending Machine treats DNA

89
00:03:45,400 --> 00:03:47,488
as a collectible material and brings to light

90
00:03:47,488 --> 00:03:50,092
legal issues over the ownership of DNA.]

91
00:03:53,320 --> 00:03:54,706
Gabriel Garcia-Colombo: So
the DNA Vending Machine

92
00:03:54,706 --> 00:03:56,577
is currently in a couple galleries in New York,

93
00:03:56,577 --> 00:03:58,264
and it's selling out pretty well, actually.

94
00:03:58,264 --> 00:04:00,257
We're in the first edition of a hundred pieces,

95
00:04:00,257 --> 00:04:02,233
hoping to do another edition pretty soon.

96
00:04:02,233 --> 00:04:04,257
I'd actually like to get it into more of a metro hub,

97
00:04:04,257 --> 00:04:06,169
like Grand Central or Penn Station,

98
00:04:06,169 --> 00:04:08,361
right next to some of the actual vending machines

99
00:04:08,361 --> 00:04:09,977
in that location.

100
00:04:09,977 --> 00:04:11,769
But really with this project
and a lot of my art projects

101
00:04:11,769 --> 00:04:13,675
I want to ask the audience a question, and that is,

102
00:04:13,675 --> 00:04:15,505
when biotechnology and DNA sequencing

103
00:04:15,505 --> 00:04:18,521
becomes as cheap as, say, laser cutting or

104
00:04:18,521 --> 00:04:22,161
3D printing or buying caviar from a vending machine,

105
00:04:22,161 --> 00:04:24,953
will you still submit your sample of
DNA to be part of the vending machine?

106
00:04:24,953 --> 00:04:26,995
And how much will these samples be worth?

107
00:04:26,995 --> 00:04:29,369
And will you buy someone else's sample?

108
00:04:29,369 --> 00:04:32,599
And what will you be able to do with that sample?

109
00:04:32,599 --> 00:04:34,602
Thank you.

110
00:04:34,602 --> 00:04:38,602
(Applause)