Morality Calculus is a bioart installation by artist Yuning Chen that recounts the endeavour of creating bread fermented with yeast-human cell hybrids in a synthetic biology lab in collaboration with biologist Dr Elise Cachat.

The installation aims to provoke a discussion on the moral dimension of the part-based analogy prevalent in synthetic biology: if living organisms are seen as mechanical vessels containing functional genetic lego, how do we ‘calculate’ the moral status of a yeast-human cell hybrid? Will it be a mere concatenation of the source organisms, defined by the ones that have a higher moral status or affected by the resulting traits they exhibit?

Presented by Summerhall, ASCUS Art & Science and Design Informatics and The Centre for Engineering Biology, in partnership with Edinburgh Futures Institute