This paper will explore the challenges of presenting unmediated liveness of living tissue engineered sculptures and overcoming the perceptual stillness of the semi-living. By looking at the work of The Tissue Culture Art Project which since 1996 has used living tissue in its artworks, the author explores the strategies of dealing with the presentation of “aliveness” in living, yet seemingly motionless, “objects”.

Tissue engineering promises to replace and repair body organs but has largely been overlooked for artistic purposes. In the last 6 years, the authors have grown tissue sculptures, “semi-living objects,” by culturing cells on artificial scaffolds. The goal of this work is to culture and sustain for long periods tissue constructs of varying geometrical complexity and size, and by that process to create a new artistic palette to focus attention on and challenge perceptions regarding the utilization of new biological knowledge.