FEMS Yeast Research, 21, 2021, foab042 https://doi.org/10.1093/femsyr/foab042 Advance Access Publication Date: 21 July 2021 Perspective PERSPECTIVE Fermenting Futures: an artistic view on yeast biotechnology Anna Dumitriu 1,2 , Alex May 2 , ¨ Ozge Ata 3,4 and Diethard Mattanovich 3,4, * ,† 1 Brighton and Sussex Medical School, University of Sussex, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 9PX, UK, 2 School of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, Hertfordshire AL10 9AB, UK, 3 Institute of Microbiology and Microbial Biotechnology, Department of Biotechnology, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), 1190 Vienna, Austria and 4 Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology (acib GmbH), 1190 Vienna, Austria ∗ Corresponding author: Department of Biotechnology, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Muthgasse 18, 1190 Vienna, Austria. Tel: +43-1-47654-79042; E-mail: diethard.mattanovich@boku.ac.at One sentence summary: Fermenting Futures is a BioArt project exploring the significance of yeast biotechnology from a cultural perspective, seeking to engage arts audiences and the general public in the history and future of yeast science and technology. Editor: John Morrissey † Diethard Mattanovich, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0907-4167 ABSTRACT BioArt is a new discipline where artists employ materials and techniques of modern life sciences and create novel meanings of biology, often involving living organisms such as tissue culture, bacteria and yeasts, which may also be genetically engineered. The authors have engaged in a collaboration to develop ‘Fermenting Futures’, a project designed to explore the significance of yeast for early human history by enabling baking and brewing, all the way to industrial biotechnology and synthetic biology with their potential contributions to fight the climate change. Research in two of the authors’ lab provides the materials and thematic lines for the artists to develop their installations. The two main pieces reflect on fermentation as a metabolic trait of baker’s yeast and its enormous transformational power for human society, and on the application of synthetic biology to enable yeast to grow and produce materials from carbon dioxide. The role of BioArt to support public engagement and science dissemination is discussed, highlighting the importance of collaborations of scientists and artists on equal terms, as showcased here. Keywords: art; bioart; public engagement; synthetic biology; yeast; biotechnology INTRODUCTION Over the last few decades we have observed an increasing inter- est of art in life sciences, which led to a new art discipline, BioArt. Artists employ materials and techniques of modern biosciences for their work. In ’BioArt: Altered Realities’, William Myers defines BioArt as either utilizing biology as an artistic medium or seeking to alter the meaning of biology in its outcome (Myers 2015), as opposed to representing biological entities using nonbi- ological media. On the other hand, a growing number of science funds, including the European Commission, request researchers to utilize transdisciplinary approaches for the dissemination of their work. This is remarkable as in the 20th century, life science emphasized its independence from humanities and arts, stress- ing a fundamental difference in methodology. This separation is manifested by the formation of life science faculties at many universities, while in the past, arts, philosophy and science were most often organized together. Artists have always been keen to integrate novel develop- ments of science and technology to develop new art forms and Received: 8 June 2021; Accepted: 19 July 2021 C  The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of FEMS. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com 1 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/femsyr/article/21/5/foab042/6325171 by guest on 20 September 2023