Thursday, June 2, 2016

Event 4




Maria Antonia Gonzalez Valerio's main idea in her speech is that art and science are intertwined. She leads an art and science group at the University of Mexico and does a lot of influential work in Mexico. She said, "science, art,  and philosophy are producing interpretations of the world, and these interpretations let us see the real world." 


The first biotech was produced in Mexico. Biotechnology is when you produce a mutant of a plant, vegetable, animal,etc. Maria produced mutant blue flowers; one was a super flower that only had petals. The other was transgenic. Maria and her colleagues created a gallery so people could see their GMO flowers. They tricked audience into thinking that GMO’s were toxic. Showed that the general public does not know what GMO’s are. 

Corn is a very important food in Mexico because it is a staple in Mexican's diets and their national identity. Scientists want to grow transgenic corn, but Maria is fighting this. Transgenic corn is illegal to consume in Mexico but is legal to test on. However, animals are being fed transgenic corn and transgenic corn is toxic. The problem of transgenic corn is becoming huge because we don’t know if the corn is transgenic or not because it is not labeled.  



Maria decided to work with  pigs. She went to an international conference and went into a field to look at pig's living conditions. She created a small exhibition, a theatrical production, and ate a dinner with pigs. She decided to clean pig bones for her exhibition but it was way harder than she thought. She wanted to show that pigs are living in horrible conditions such as being in cages so they cannot move. This problem is very close to my heart. I am a big animal lover, and hate the conditions animals are put in before they are slaughtered. We should create cages that are more humane for animals to live in. We should use science to create these cages, and art to make them look nicer so that animals can live in peace before they die. 

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