Projeto de Arte e Ciência, feito por integrantes do Labjor e em colaboração com o Museu de Imagem e do Som (MIS) de Campinas.

1. • Davi Santaella • Flávia Dourado • Enio Rodrigo • Hércules Menezes • Luiz Juttel • Murilo Alves •
love
love me not
Biotechnology and
Contemporanity
Projeto de instalação
desenvolvido pelos alunos
do Programa de Pós-
Graduação em Jornalismo
Científico da Unicamp

2. PRESENTATION Stem cells, transgenics, assisted reproduction,
DNA, biofuels, genetic therapies, biodiversity,
cloning... Can biotechnology truly help us to survive
the 21st century? Will it provide all the answers? Solve
our problems once and for all? Or will it bring us new
inexorable pretensions to achieve absolute truth. Sitting
at the edge in between these two scientific momentous,
today’s biotechnology is something to come.
ones? We’re living an era of questioning and
reconstruction, in which new economic, social and
Our culture is marked by the hegemony of cultural orders are being established, even though its
scientific knowledge and by the conflicting dichotomy final configuration still unclear. Science – considered by
between different images of science – sometimes most the only reasonable way to explain the world and
portrayed as panacea, others as a main cause for human to guarantee our survival thru the 21st century – isn’t
suffering. Socially constructed polarized representations free from those questions and can be found surrounded
and stereotypes boosted by exaggerated perspectives by ethical, financial and moral debates as common as
for scientists’ capacity to promote either good or evil, those which affect any institution of our time.
particularly in the field of biotech and its applications.
Biotechnology may be the best representation
The existence of stigmatized and paradoxical of this problematic, since it was created right in the
visions of science – expressed through the propagation middle of this crisis. Ethical conflicts, economic interests,
of clichés, commonplaces and hyperbolic and religion and possible benefits – filled by stereotypes –
standardized images – it is both cause and symptom surround both the scientific practice and the imagination
of an institutional crisis: the crises of science. It lacks – powered by media’s dichotomist representations –,
an identity that integrates its diverse representations cracking wide-open the institutional crisis that affects
and flexes its rules. Science is under transformation, in science.
between the Modern and Post-Modern ages. Divided,
therefore, between an imprisoning dualist past, a rigid
and dogmatic way to produce knowledge, and a
future, already under course, which can free it from its

3. General Specific
Goals “Love me, love me not”, is an artistic installation
created by students from Unicamp’s Post Graduation
Program on Science Journalism, and its objective
is to critically discuss scientific contradiction, media
discourse involving science and the future of our
•Big Brother:
It aims on revealing the conflict generated by
stereotyped and dualist visions of biotechnology in
media’s discourse, assuming that the news commonly
society, all facing new challenges brought by reproduces prejudices and polarized representation
contemporaneity. of science and ends up associating it to the odd and
fantastic.
We propose to discuss biotech thru art,
enlarging the scope for debating, moving it away
from the technical arena and from the representations •Hidden messages
constructed by the media. Therefore, we want to It allows visitors to engage in a sensorial
expose the conflicts faced by science, to question the experience to understand the “biotech’s hidden
role of scientific activity, its products and its producers; discourses”, as well as to realise themselves as part of
and show it thru stereotyped visions of science. this knowledge building process.
We also wish to criticise science thru interactive •Black boxes
and ludic ways, showing that significant information It plays with the idea that science lives inside
can be effectively communicated using unconventional hermetic, closed and mysterious black boxes, filled by
and non-academic supports. Science and particularly indecipherable and incomprehensible contents. Like
biotechnology cannot be exclusively discussed inside the boxes used to store critical and secure information
technical arenas. It should and must be discussed by in airplanes, they hold precious knowledge, ideas,
everybody, through different means and forms of methods and truths that could only be accessed and
knowledge like art. understood by a community of chosen and prepared
people – the scientists.
(continue)

4. Specific (cont.)
Goals •Self-portrait
It shows scientists’ own vision of themselves
thru the usage of photography.
•Science or fiction
It critiques a stigmatized view of science
commonly present to the general public – an either
magical or miraculous science, an omnipotent power,
constantly admired or feared. It also criticises media’s
tendency to overemphasize bizarre, fantastic and
extraordinary aspects when covering science.

5. PEÇAS
descrição das
Big Brother
Six old television sets or computer monitors showing
close-up images of a man preaching opposing visions
of biotech – both negative and positive – filled by
stereotypes. This pieces has been directly inspired by
George Orwell’s masterpiece “1984”.

6. PEÇAS
descrição das
Black Boxes
This pis is formed by a set of - Visualization boxes: five boxes will have small holes thru which visitors
eight black wooden boxes, can look in it. Boxes are lighten inside to allow visualization of its contents
approximately 40x40x40cm – objects or images referred to biotechnology;
each, divided into two kinds:
- Touch boxes: three boxes have side holes that allow visitors to explores its
contents using their hands without seeing what’s inside it.

7. PEÇAS
descrição das
Self-portrait
This piece is a picture exhibition. We will ask three This piece also has a large wooden panel shaped and
biotech scientists to choose and build a scenario that painted as a sheep – drawing used by Biotecnologias
most represents his or hers daily activists, which will de Rua. The animal’s head is a cut-off, allowing
be photographed. Resulting pictures will be presented visitors to give Dolly their own faces.
using acrylic holders and facing it image will be a
mirror that reflects the self-portrait.

8. PEÇAS
descrição das
Science or Fiction This piece is made of three different objects:
1) A slide projector shows images, 2) A metal shelve, similar to the ones 3) A printed collage banner filled
photographs and newspaper headlines used in drugstores, holds tagged with images and facts that surpasses
which present biotechnology thru glass jars filled by colourful candy normality and show that biotech lives in
sensationalist approaches. Visitors have that resembles pills. Tags’ inscription the realm of spectacular, unusual and
access to a remote control and can explain the indication of each particular sensational. Above it, visitors can read:
change the projected slide at anytime. “medicine” – pills of happiness, pills Science or Fiction?
of beauty, pills of seduction, pills of
intelligence, pills of richness, pills of
youth and so on.

9. PEÇAS
descrição das
Hidden messages
Held in a black painted corridor or room with entrances
blocked by black curtains, this piece can only be explored
using UV portable light beams – provided at the entrance
door –, which allow visitors to walk around and read
hidden messages regarding biotechnology written on the
walls using ultraviolet sensitive paint.

10. O grupo de autores/artistas/realizadores/projetistas é composto por jornalistas e cientistas que atualmente
Grupo
cursam o curso de Especialização em Jornalismo Científico do Laboratório de Estudos Avançados (LABJOR) em
Jornalismo da Unicamp. O presente projeto se insere na criação de um espaço de releituras sobre a Ciência e
paralelos contemporâneos, para a matéria de Multimeios ministrada pelo Prof. Honoris Causa Paulo Martins.
O grupo é composto por:
Davi Santaella
Radialista e diretor cinematográfico
Enio Rodrigo Barbosa Silva
Designer e mestrando em história da arte.
Flávia Dourado Maia
Jornalista e redatora.
Hércules Menezes
Biólogo. Livre docente em imunologia. Professor de imunologia e biologia evolutiva do homem.
Luiz Paulo Juttel
Jornalista e pesquisador em filosofia da mente e ciências cognitivas.
Murilo Alves Pereira
Jornalista especializado na área ambiental.