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This is a vending machine in Los Angeles.

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It's in a shopping mall, and it sells fish eggs.

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It's a caviar vending machine.

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This is the Art-o-mat,

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an art vending machine that sells

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small artistic creations by different artists,

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usually on small wood blocks or matchboxes,

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on limited edition.

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This is Oliver Medvedik. He's not a vending machine,

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but he is one of the founders of Genspace,

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a community biolab in Brooklyn, New York,

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where anybody can go and take classes

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and learn how to do things like
grow e.coli that glows in the dark

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or learn how to take strawberry DNA.

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In fact, I saw Oliver do one of these strawberry
DNA extractions about a year ago,

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and this is what kind of led me into this bizarre path

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that I'm going to talk to you right now.

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Because strawberry DNA is really fascinating,

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because it's so beautiful.

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I'd never thought about DNA
being a beautiful thing before,

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before I saw it in this form.

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And a lot of people, especially in the art community,

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don't necessarily engage in science in this way.

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I instantly joined Genspace after this,

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and I asked Oliver, "Well, if
we can do this strawberries,

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can we do this with people as well?"

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And about 10 minutes later, we were both

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spinning in vials together and coming up

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with a protocol for human DNA extraction.

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And I started doing this on my own,

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and this is what my DNA actually looks like.

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And I was at a dinner party with
some friends, some artists friends,

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and I was telling them about this project,

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and they couldn't believe that
you could actually see DNA.

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So I said all right, let's get
out some supplies right now.

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And I started having these bizarre dinner parties

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at my house on Friday nights

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where people would come over

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and we would do DNA extractions,

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and I would actually capture them on video,

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because it created this kind of funny portrait as well.

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(Laughter)

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These are people who don't necessarily regularly

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engage with science whatsoever.

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You can kind of tell from their reactions.

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But they became fascinated by it,

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and it was really exciting for me to see them

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get excited about science.

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And so I started doing this regularly.

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It's kind of an odd thing to
do with your Friday nights,

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but this is what I started doing,

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and I started collecting a whole group

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of my friends' DNA in small vials

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and categorizing them.

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This is what that looked like.

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And it started making me
think about a couple of things.

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First of all, this looked a lot like my Facebook wall.

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So in a way, I've created sort of a genetic network,

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a genetic social network, really.

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And the second thing was,
one time a friend came over

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and looked at this on my table and was like, "Oh.

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Why are they numbered? Is this
person more rare than the other one?"

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And I hadn't even thought about that.

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They were just numbered because that
was the order that I extracted the DNA in.

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But that made me think about collecting toys,

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and this thing that's going on right now

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in the toy world with blind box toys,

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and being able to collect these rare toys.

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You buy these boxes. You're not sure
what's going to be inside of them.

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But then, when you open them up,

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you have different rarities of the toys.

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And so I thought that was interesting.

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I started thinking about this and the caviar
vending machine and the Art-o-mat all together,

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and some reason, I was one
night drawing a vending machine,

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thinking about doing paintings of a vending machine,

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and the little vial of my DNA was sitting there,

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and I saw this kind of beautiful collaboration between

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the strands of DNA and the
coils of a vending machine.

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And so, of course, I decided
to create an art installation

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called the DNA Vending Machine.

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Here it is.

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(Music)

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[DNA Vending Machine is an art installation
about our increasing access to biotechnology.]

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[For a reasonable cost, you can purchase a sample

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of human DNA from a traditional vending machine.]

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[Each sample comes packaged with a collectible

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limited edition portrait of the human specimen.]

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[DNA Vending Machine treats DNA

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as a collectible material and brings to light

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legal issues over the ownership of DNA.]

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Gabriel Garcia-Colombo: So
the DNA Vending Machine

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is currently in a couple galleries in New York,

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and it's selling out pretty well, actually.

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We're in the first edition of a hundred pieces,

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hoping to do another edition pretty soon.

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I'd actually like to get it into more of a metro hub,

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like Grand Central or Penn Station,

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right next to some of the actual vending machines

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in that location.

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But really with this project
and a lot of my art projects

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I want to ask the audience a question, and that is,

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when biotechnology and DNA sequencing

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becomes as cheap as, say, laser cutting or

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3D printing or buying caviar from a vending machine,

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will you still submit your sample of
DNA to be part of the vending machine?

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And how much will these samples be worth?

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And will you buy someone else's sample?

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And what will you be able to do with that sample?

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Thank you.

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(Applause)