Morality Calculus is a bioart installation that interrogates the prevalent mechanistic view of life in synthetic biology. Through the creation of hybrid bread fermented with yeast-human cells, the artwork embodies the act of reducing complex lifeforms to mere collections of engineering parts, akin to ‘lego bricks.’

The installation poses the questions: If living organisms are perceived as mechanical vessels containing functional genetic components, how do we ‘calculate’ the moral status of a yeast-human cell? Is it a mere combination of the moral status of source organisms, defined by the ones with higher moral status or affected by the resulting traits they exhibit?

These queries are further complicated by the vast ecology of shadow organisms that have contributed to the cell adhesion experiment for the yeast-human cell, by providing resistance genes, gene-editing enzymes, or serums for culturing media. Often being backgrounded by the effective components they provide, the search for these organisms in the databases has been highly challenging. The hidden labourers shown in the exhibition hint at the multitude of life at stake in the artwork’s central question: the moral implications of simplifying complex lifeforms into functional units.

In essence, Morality Calculus invites viewers to confront the ethical dimensions of synthetic biology’s mechanistic world-view, provoking discussions on the moral status of engineered lifeforms and the often-overlooked contributions of countless more-than-human labourers to scientific endeavours.