Gizmodo
In one of the odder stories we've spotted in some time, an installation called "Victimless Leather" was on display at NY's MoMA. The piece was actually a living jacket crafted from mouse embryonic stem cells, fed nutrients through tubes. But after five weeks, it grew too large for its containment flask and had to be killed.
The exhibit's curator cut the coat off from nutrition and it died thereafter. But the decision haunted her.
I've always been pro-choice and all of a sudden I'm here not sleeping at night about killing a coat...That thing was never alive before it was grown.Personally, it's the image of a pulsating living rat coat that's going to keep me from sleeping. Did anyone see the exhibit? [The Art Newspaper via boingboing]
Comments
That is creepy to the nth level!
What if it was a living cheeseburger? Would she also feel bad if it got too big? What if she ate it?
I see this as no different than cutting off a mole. Those are just a bunch of living cells, too. And probably just as hairy.
And then the coats evolve, digesting our wallets in their pocket stomaches, and eventually grafting themselves to our spines so we become vehicles to do their bidding.
"one of the odder stories" seems like a bit of an understatement.
That is whole new levels of odd.
Is there electricity involved in this experiment?
Is she selling home kits for this?
That is so cool! Work of pure evil genius. Movie coming out next Christmas for that little extra creepyness we all need at that time.
Kill a jacket? This is the stuff of Twilight Zone.
I for one welcome our new....
Aw, forget it, it's too early.
Someone needs to just put Frankensteins' monster together and be done with it. I got my torch ready.
This could be the "victimless meat" that PETA are offering big $$$ for! It doesn't belong in a museum, it belongs on the plate of a vegetarian!
I think I'm going to be sick...
Victimless? What about the fact that I'm not going to sleep right for a week now?
They just changed who the victim is.
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie...
she will yield some healthy mice embryos from which we can harvest stem cells, and grow ectodermal protoplasm from said cells.
Now that wasn't in the book, I'm quite sure.
OK...
They grew a little tiny jacket...
In a lab vessel...
It grew too large for its container... This little tiny, moist, growing jacket...
WHAT IN THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN HERE?!!!!!?
Usually the killing happens before the jacket is made.
i for one welcome our new coat overlords.
wait ... it died?
Stuart Little meets the Silence of the Lambs
But can they grow a Shacky's Pizza yet?
WTF? Is this for real?
I say fry it up and mousejacketburgers for everyone!
ALF v.s. ALF
"Where I'm from, this is ludicrous. It's like having a funeral for a hamburger." - ALF (Alien Life Form, Gordon Shumway)
"Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are call medical research." ALF (Animal Liberation Front, quoting George Bernard Shaw)
why oh why don't they bring ALF back?
Not entirely "victimless" if the embryo was killed to get the stem cells.
I would much rather wear a leather jacket made of mouse than cow, NOT! Hell, I'm a vegetarian and I wouldn't want that stuff.
They should have seen if this could bond to a hairless mouse to become a new entity.
"That thing was never alive before it was grown."
... Nothing that was alive now was alive before it was first grown, either.
Also: creepy. I always thought it'd be cool to have a pair of pants that'd repair itself, but I'd rather not have it do so by bleeding or actually getting scar tissue or something (if you'd keep it alive when wearing it).
I can't wait for Version II: The Sentient Coat.
@mariogalaxyman: So you'd put on a coat because you were cold, then the coat would ask you to put on another coat because it was cold.
Is this the future?
"Where's your jacket?! It's freezing out!"
"I left it in the car overnight and it froze to death. They've got it on life support, but the insurance company is denying the claim due to negligence on my part."
"Time to pull the plug?"
*cries*
This kind of genetic mutilation just makes me sick..Uggh, its enough to make me want to stop eating my mousejacket burger.
so gross.
A mass of one kind of cell, growing uncontrollably until its food source is cut off?
Congratulations, boffins!!! You've created a coat of skin cancer!
My earlier statements elsewhere on lab-meat go something like this...
"Yeah, here's how to make meat more appealing to me: Grow it in a vat."
I think this applies to leather just as well.
@Gann: They could make thinner coats that shiver to keep you warm.
Did she at least make a glove out of it?
What are we doing tonight Brain ?
Same thing we do every night Pinky... We're going to try to take over the world.... Using a giant coat engineered from our own stem cells.
@N@tedog: yeah where is it buried?
Isn't this the kind of foolery that has the right-to-life folks fighting the expansion of stem cell research?
I personally welcome our now Mouse Jacket overlords.
In Soviet Russa Mouse jackets grow you and kill you when you out grow your enclosure.
UPDATE: PETA and the Right to Lifers unite.
Would this be a gadget or should this post be on io9?
@flyboy: Don't you mean our new (mouse) lord overcoats?
and ethics just got trickier.
amazing, though, i'd wear it.
@N@tedog: And, if so, how did it smell?
Funny you shold mention ALF, I believe that they Alf costume was made from cat stem cells turned into a crappy alien costume and left to die in the second season.
Pinky and the Brain just got all to serious.
@DeadWriter: They should bring ALF back seriously!
That is awesome!
Right out of Frankenstein!
I'm telling ya, a Drive-thru organ replacement clinic is not to far in the distant future. Going in for a new organ or two will be like getting new tires on your car today.
OK, I just threw up a little in my mouth.
@reddingofish: It was like 2 days ago
God damn !
I was there in January and all of a sudden both MoMA and the MET have killer Displays up and I missed them_
Both of these would have been freakin' awesome_
I can see it now - the next fad Living Coats - all they have to do is figure out some way to regulate "feeding" the coat without adding in a mouth or "poop shoot"_
And then i suppose the question becomes do you buy one in the local clothing shop or pet store?
.
How did she get it to grow coat shaped? Wouldn't it be more practical to grow a large sheet of leather and then cut it down? You could grow it over a form for seemless sleeves.
Now we just need to grow giant controllable humanoid organisms out of stem cells, and find kids with emotional instability to pilot them.