WEBVTT

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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,
an art-vending machine

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that sells small artistic creations
by different artists,

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usually on small wood blocks
or matchboxes, in limited edition.

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This is Oliver Medvedik.

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He is not a vending machine,
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

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about a year ago, and this is what led me
into this bizarre path

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

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Strawberry DNA is really fascinating,
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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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 asked Oliver, "If we can do
this with strawberries,

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can we do this with people?"

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About 10 minutes later,
we were both spitting in vials,

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coming up with a protocol
for human DNA extraction.

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I started doing this on my own.

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This is what my DNA actually looks like.

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And I was at a dinner party
with some artist 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 on Friday nights,

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where people would come over
and we'd do DNA extractions,

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and I would 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 engage with science.

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You can kind of tell from their reactions.

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(Laughter)

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But they became fascinated by it,

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and it was really exciting for me
to see them get excited about science.

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And so I started doing this regularly.

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(Laughter)

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

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but this is what I started doing.

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I started collecting a whole group
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 to make me think
about a couple of things.

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First, this looked a lot
like my Facebook wall.

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So in a way, I created
sort of a genetic social network.

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And the second thing was,

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one time a friend came over
and looked at this on my table

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and was like, 
"Uh ... why are they numbered?

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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

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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 what's going on right now
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, but aren't sure
what's going to be inside.

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But when you open them,
you have different rarities of the toys.

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I thought that was interesting;
I thought about this

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and the caviar vending machine
and the Art-o-mat all together.

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And for some reason, I was one night
drawing a vending machine,

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thinking of doing paintings
of a vending machine.

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The vial of my DNA was sitting there,

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and I saw a beautiful collaboration
between the strands of DNA

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and the coils of a vending machine.

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So I decided to create an art installation
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

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about our increasing access
to biotechnology.]

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(Music)

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[For a reasonable cost,
you can purchase a sample of human DNA

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from a traditional vending machine.]

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(Music)

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[Each sample comes packaged

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with a collectible limited edition
portrait of the human specimen.]

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(Music)

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[DNA Vending Machine treats DNA
as a collectible material

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and brings to light legal issues
over the ownership of DNA.]

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(Music ends)

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Gabriel Barcia-Colombo:

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The DNA Vending Machine is currently
in a couple of galleries in New York,

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and it's selling out pretty well.

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We're in the first edition of 100 pieces,

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hoping to do another edition pretty soon.

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

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like Grand Central or Penn Station,

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next to some of the other
vending machines in that location.

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

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I want to ask the audience a question:

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When biotechnology and DNA sequencing
becomes as cheap as, say, laser cutting

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or 3D printing or buying caviar
from a vending machine,

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

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How much will these samples be worth?

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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)