The collaborative artist group body___manufacture™ (bm) was formed in 2002 with Sylvia Kranawetvogl, Erik Hable and Peta Clancy. The bm artists aim to create a forum for discussing issues in science, culture and society through exhibitions and other events.
 
Our attitudes toward man's handling of the possibilities offered by biotechnology borders between fascination, shock and criticism. What affect do the insights offered by the biotechnological sciences, more specifically genetic technology and neurology, have on man's image of himself? No institution, no teaching, no ideology, no philosophy and no religion can point us the way forward to the future. Only we ourselves can decide whether there is any purpose in walking about as cyborgs. Art poses questions about technical possibilities, without being able to answer them. Art does not compete with the sciences. Science threatens to become a replacement for religion. Art poses the question of our self-understanding: what wishes, pretensions, ideas do we have? What is it we want from life? What is happiness?

Review from 2002 showing of the installation in Melbourne at RMIT Project Space

Inside info from the gene, Keith Gallasch
I slip off my shoes and slide into a giant white, inflated gene dotted with tiny speakers that quietly squeak, keen and whistle over a deep techno-rumble from white loudspeakers, and peer at a computer screen that takes me on a lightweight tour of some possibilities on the genetic manipulation and body management front. These are promoted as being ”available form your chemist soon.” There are various Bio Tools, appearing as rotating 3D organisms with accompanying explanatory texts. Apparently you’ll be able to take these in capsule form—one is “a friendly body-owned bacterium helping you stay well…it regulates its own life and replication.” Then there’s Nano-Med swimming about with its little propeller and retractable tools, and the Viral Vector that can re-arrange your body systems, even gender. The whole set-up is mildly satirical, sparely designed and written, but with enough truth and anxiety in it to allow for a contemplative session, preferably on your own, inside a pulsing gene…You feel like you’re somewhere in the future, or in Kubrick’s 2001. *copyright RealTime; www.realtimearts.net*

http://www.realtimearts.net/nextwave/kg_body.html