My DNA vending machine

Vending machines generally offer up sodas, candy bars and chips. Not so for the one created by TED Fellow Gabe Barcia-Colombo. This artist has dreamed up a DNA Vending Machine, which dispenses extracted human DNA, packaged in a vial along with a collectible photo of the person who gave it. It’s charming and quirky, but points out larger ethical issues that will arise as access to biotechnology increases.

This is a vending machine in Los Angeles.

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

It's a caviar vending machine.

This is the Art-o-mat,

an art vending machine that sells

small artistic creations by different artists,

usually on small wood blocks or matchboxes,

in limited edition.

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

but he is one of the founders of Genspace,

a community biolab in Brooklyn, New York,

where anybody can go and take classes

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

or learn how to take strawberry DNA.

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

and this is what led me onto this bizarre path

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

Because strawberry DNA is really
fascinating, because it's so beautiful.

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

before I saw it in this form.

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

don't necessarily engage in science in this way.

I instantly joined Genspace after this,

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

can we do this with people as well?"

And about 10 minutes later, we were both

spinning it in vials together and coming up

with a protocol for human DNA extraction.

And I started doing this on my own,

and this is what my DNA actually looks like.

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

and I was telling them about this project,

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

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

And I started having these bizarre dinner
parties at my house on Friday nights

where people would come over

and we would do DNA extractions,

and I would actually capture them on video,

because it created this kind of funny portrait as well.

(Laughter)

These are people who don't necessarily regularly

engage with science whatsoever.

You can kind of tell from their reactions.

But they became fascinated by it,

and it was really exciting for me to see them

get excited about science.

And so I started doing this regularly.

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

but this is what I started doing,

and I started collecting a whole group

of my friends' DNA in small vials

and categorizing them.

This is what that looked like.

And it started to make me
think about a couple of things.

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

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

a genetic social network, really.

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

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

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

And I hadn't even thought about that.

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

But that made me think about collecting toys,

and this thing that's going on right now

in the toy world with blind box toys,

and being able to collect these rare toys.

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

But then, when you open them up,

you have different rarities of the toys.

And so I thought that was interesting.

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

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

thinking about doing paintings of a vending machine,

and the little vial of my DNA was sitting there,

and I saw this kind of beautiful collaboration between

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

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

called the DNA Vending Machine.

Here it is.

(Music)

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

["For a reasonable cost, you can purchase a sample

of human DNA from a traditional vending machine."]

["Each sample comes packaged with a collectible

limited edition portrait of the human specimen."]

["DNA Vending Machine treats DNA

as a collectible material and brings to light

legal issues over the ownership of DNA."]

Gabriel Garcia-Colombo: So
the DNA Vending Machine

is currently in a couple galleries in New York,

and it's selling out pretty well, actually.

We're in the first edition of 100 pieces,

hoping to do another edition pretty soon.

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

like Grand Central or Penn Station,

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

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

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

when biotechnology and DNA sequencing

becomes as cheap as, say, laser cutting or

3D printing or buying caviar from a vending machine,

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

And how much will these samples be worth?

And will you buy someone else's sample?

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

Thank you.

(Applause)