Eduardo KAC's genesis: art, internet, and genetics in the 1990's

Eduardo Kac's Genesis (1999) is a transgenetic artwork that serves as an amalgamation of and retort to the revolutionary developments in science and technology of the 1990s. The inception of the work is a line Kac derived from the Old Testament book of Genesis: "Let man have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." This was translated first into Morse code and then rendered in the genetic code letters of A, T, G, and C. From this was created an "artist's gene" out of E. coli. The bacteria was presented in the center of the exhibition space and projected onto the gallery wall, adjacent to the bible quote and genetic sequence. Music synthesized from DNA accompanied the artwork. Audience members viewing the piece remotely from the Internet had the opportunity to swath the bacteria in UV light, causing gene manipulations. Upon conclusion of the exhibition, the genetic code was translated back into English. This thesis will discuss Genesis as an artwork indicative of a distinctive period in contemporary art in which technological and scientific developments served as inspiration, medium, and subject. The paper begins with a detailed description of Genesis, and an explanation of its relation within the trajectory of Kac's artistic career. This is followed by a discussion of the liaison between developments in the field of genetics and the reactions of both Kac and other contemporary artists to these technological advancements. Subsequently will be an exploration of the elements of language and communication utilized in Genesis, encompassing the significance of the Biblical text, English language, Morse code, and the interactive art element afforded by the incorporation of the Internet. The paper concludes with an analysis of Kac's scrutiny of belief systems, an inquiry into the ethics and deception of the artwork, and a suggestion of the work as a portrait of collected cultural consciousness.

EDUARDO KAC’S GENESIS: ART, INTERNET, AND GENETICS IN THE 1990’S by Alexandra Yost A Senior Honors Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The University of Utah In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Honors Degree in Bachelor of Arts In Art History Approved: ____________________ Dr. Paul Monty Paret Supervisor ____________________ Dr. Brian Snapp Chair, Department of Art History ____________________ Dr. Paul Monty Paret Department Honors Advisor ____________________ Dr. Sylvia D. Torti Dean, Honors College May 2013 ABSTRACT Eduardo Kac’s Genesis (1999) is a transgenetic artwork that serves as an amalgamation of and retort to the revolutionary developments in science and technology of the 1990s. The inception of the work is a line Kac derived from the Old Testament book of Genesis: "Let man have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." This was translated first into Morse code and then rendered in the genetic code letters of A, T, G, and C. From this was created an “artist’s gene” out of E. coli. The bacteria was presented in the center of the exhibition space and projected onto the gallery wall, adjacent to the bible quote and genetic sequence. Music synthesized from DNA accompanied the artwork. Audience members viewing the piece remotely from the Internet had the opportunity to swath the bacteria in UV light, causing gene manipulations. Upon conclusion of the exhibition, the genetic code was translated back into English. This thesis will discuss Genesis as an artwork indicative of a distinctive period in contemporary art in which technological and scientific developments served as inspiration, medium, and subject. The paper begins with a detailed description of Genesis, and an explanation of its relation within the trajectory of Kac’s artistic career. This is followed by a discussion of the liaison between developments in the field of genetics and the reactions of both Kac and other contemporary artists to these technological advancements. Subsequently will be an exploration of the elements of language and communication utilized in Genesis, encompassing the significance of the Biblical text, English language, Morse code, and the interactive art element afforded by the incorporation of the Internet. The paper concludes with an analysis of Kac’s scrutiny ii   of belief systems, an inquiry into the ethics and deception of the artwork, and a suggestion of the work as a portrait of collected cultural consciousness. iii   TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii EDUARDO KAC’S GENESIS 1 EDUARDO KAC AND BIO ART 5 GENETIC PORTRAITURE: THE 1990S HUMAN GENOME PROJECT IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE 8 LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICAION IN KAC’S GENESIS 21 ETHICS: CRITIQUES BY AND OF KAC 34 CONCLUSION 40 BIBLIOGRAPHY 42 iv     EDUARDO KAC’S GENESIS The dimly lit gallery containing Eduardo Kac’s Genesis pulses with a neon blue and green light. The dark walls are tinged with a faint hue and viewers seem to glow softly as they glide between the various elements of the exhibit. The room evokes the hushed reverence of a memorial or an austere museum display. This pensive aura is at times supplemented, but largely jarred and shattered by the sound reverberating through the space. The synthesized music varies from soft, whirring hums and growling bass to sharp cracks juxtaposed with shrill, prolonged tones. The tempo alters tremendously and rapidly with sudden crescendos in volume. Reminiscent of a low-budget sci-fi film, the chaotic noise gives the viewer an impression of being transplanted into an otherworldly space. The hues permeating the square room emanate from the displays on three of the uniformly spaced walls. Depersonalized by their abundance, the letters C, G, A, and T appear in nine rigid, succinct lines on the left wall. The seemingly randomly ordered characters form a rectangle of apparently patternless text. Reflected on the right wall in the same eerie sapphire tones is a phrase derived from the first book of the Bible: "Let man have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." The fonts of these two texts are an exercise in contrasts, correlated with their sources. The genetic code of cytosine, guanine, adenine, and thymine, represented by their first letters, are formatted in block capital lettering, perhaps reflecting a formalized view of science. Though the calligraphic font of Monotype Corsica is taller and more 1   2 flowing, perhaps being more alive and humanistic. It dominates the opposing wall with equal prominence. The center wall connecting these contrasting texts is the item that first demands attention: a perfect circle with a diameter longer than an average person’s height. It looms in front of the viewer, containing a profusion of florescent green dots set against a blue backdrop akin to the coloration of the two texts. Confined in the perimeter of the circle, a plethora of green specks is the only mobile item on the three walls. They effervescently float within their enclosure, forming constellations of Milky Way washes, or distributing into smaller distinct clumps. A plinth squarely rests equidistant between the three emblazoned walls, topped by a glass box. Visitors to the gallery revolve around its centrifugal yellow glow. In the glass enclosure is a Petri dish containing bacteria, resting on a vitreous ultraviolet (UV) light box. On either side gracefully arch a microscope illuminator and a flexible microvideo camera. The contents of the Petri dish are constantly projected onto the middle wall. The dish is periodically flooded by UV light, under the control of audience participants who have remote access to the gallery through the Internet. As the Petri dish is exposed to light, the correlating music in the gallery mounts in intensity. On first entering the room, it was difficult to immediately gauge the relationship between the various items. Initially, it became apparent that the bacteria contained on the plinth is projected onto the center wall, and one could assume the combinations of C, G, A, and T on the right wall contained the genetic sequences of which the bacteria comprises. One might assume the music was meant to displace and immerge the viewer in the exhibit, and the quote from the book of Genesis was simply a clever relation to the   3 shared etymological root with “genes.” However, the correlations are more intricate and more abundant. For the initial step in creating the artwork, Kac translated the implication-fraught line from Genesis into Morse Code. Though Morse Code is outdated and defunct as an international medium of messaging, it was chosen as an emblem of the inception of the information age and globalized technology. Morse Code represents the pinnacle of longrange transcontinental and transoceanic communication by electric wire a century ago, in which individual letters and punctuation were assigned dots and dashes that could be conveyed by electric pulses, by flashes of light or even puffs of smoke. In Kac’s translation, sequences of dots and dashes were assigned one of the four base pairs. Using this code, Kac translated the quote from Genesis into DNA sequence. This DNA sequence was then synthesized de novo in a lab, generating a synthetic “gene.” The resulting synthetic gene was cloned into a DNA vector and transferred into E. coli bacteria. These ‘biblical’ bacteria are displayed alongside an adjacent colony of fluorescent yellow E. coli, allowing for color combinations and the resulting green glow of the bacteria. When bacterial cells are exposed to UV light, the light causes mutations in DNA sequences within those cells. Normal mutation rate in the strain of bacteria utilized in this exhibition is only 1 in 10^6 base pairs per generation (or cell division). Exposure to UV light significantly increases this mutation rate. At the close of the exhibit, the DNA was extracted from the bacteria and sequenced, and the DNA sequence was translated into Morse Code, which was then transcribed into English. The line now read: "Let aan have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing   4 that Ioves ua eon the earth." Although the occurrence of mutations in DNA sequences are thought to be random, it was a striking coincidence that the gender-specific descriptor was distorted and “moves upon” phonetically resembles “loves you.” The synthesized sound permeating the gallery is derived from algorithms that converted the DNA sequences found in tissues and viruses. A mixer reads multiple combinations of these sequences simultaneously with timbre and tempo increases as Internet participants control the UV light mutating the bacteria. The audio animation of the display increased the dynamic tension provided by the Internet participants. The UV light pulses that they controlled actually led to the mutation (alteration or in some sense, destruction) of the message within the bacterial DNA. However, while the extent of UV exposure was under the control of the Internet participants, the outcomes of the mutations, the specific changes in the Genesis phrases, were not.   5 EDUARDO KAC AND BIO ART Genesis is a fusion of previous themes in Kac’s trajectory. In the early stages of his career, Kac explored mixed media, as well as the concept of creating pictures out of text and the potential of pictograms. He proceeded to experiment in ‘Holopoetry,’ ‘Biopoetry’ and ‘Digital Poetry.’ Within these self-termed conceptualizations, Kac dissected the idea of poetry as performed by animals and across time and space.1 In these works he grants an element of sentience to his animal subjects and begins to explore the shapes and conjunctions between letters and their resultant meanings and ambiguities. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Kac became immersed in telecommunications art involving new technologies, participation of a globalized audience, and the translation of various medium through atypical forms. In Conversation of 1987, he transmitted sequential video images over a phone line. The still images were distorted into abstract combinations of colors and lines, indistinguishable from their original visual intent. Elastic Fax of 1991 utilized images transmitted by fax from artists worldwide to display in an uncut 99 foot-long roll of thermal fax paper.2 Walking along the scroll, the audience member experiences the sensation becoming a moving projector, animating the sequential images. This collaborative piece immersed the spectator in the work as they engaged in viewing it.                                                                                                                 1 Michael Joyce, Other Mindedness: The Emergence of Network Culture (University of Michigan Press, 2001), 192. 2 Eduardo Kac, “Elastic Fax I,” 1991, accessed January 25, 2013, http://www.ekac.org/elasticfaxone.html.   6 During the 1990s, Kac added the elements to his work that would later define and distinguish Genesis. Audience participation became a vital component, as did the use of the Internet. Simultaneously, Kac introduced a biological element to his work and began hinting at the relationship and power dynamic between humans and the natural world. In Teleporting An Unknown State (1996), Kac strove to create “a new sense of community and collective responsibility.”3 A seed in a completely dark gallery was able to germinate and grow due to light being emitted through a video projector suspended above. As with Genesis, remotely located individuals were able to control the light via the Internet. The survival of the plant was dependent on the attention and cooperation of isolated viewers; if the plant received too little or much light, it would shrivel and perish. In 1997, Kac coined “Bio Art” with his piece Time Capsule, in which he implanted a microchip under his own skin. Though the majority of Kac’s work does not directly relate to an exploration of his own body, this piece intended to comment upon the increasing interface between humans and technology and the growing reliance on electronics. The chip was registered and accessible online and Internet participants were able to view and manipulate the information contained within.4 Since Genesis, Kac’s most influential piece is also his most infamous: GFP Bunny (2000). In the same fluorescent green color scheme of his biblical bacteria, Kac created Alba the rabbit. Her unique hue is due to the transgenic insertion of a green fluorescent protein (GFP) gene from a jellyfish that allows her to glow green under UV                                                                                                                 3 Krzystof Ziarek, The Force of Art (Stanford University Press, 2004), 81. 4 Chris Salter, Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance (MIT Press, 2010), 250.   7 light. The use of transgenic GFP as a reporter of gene activity and cellular functions has had such a large impact on scientific research that Drs. Martin Chalfie, Osamu Shimomura, and Roger Y. Tsien, the discoverers and developers of GFP as a research tool, received the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Kac’s GFP Bunny exposes the complex interactions between genes, organism, and environment. The etymology appears to be ironic, since ‘alba’ means white in Latin. The work has become symbolic and integral to the public debate over humanity’s right to manipulate and influence nature. It is perhaps a forerunner of the current debate and contentious politics on the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) as sources of food and medical supplies. Kac has promoted the piece as a tool to instigate discussion and explore the complex social questions and dialogue between professionals of various disciplines. Predominantly, the work calls into question the functional and conceptual boundaries of art making.5 Though GFP Bunny caused significantly more public uproar, many of the concepts unearthed by this piece are inherent in Genesis.                                                                                                                 5 Eduardo Kac, Telepresence and Bio Art (University of Michigan Press, 2005), 266.   8 GENETIC PORTRAITURE: THE 1990S HUMAN GENOME PROJECT IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE The 1990s was an era of rapid scientific development. Concepts that were previously nonexistent suddenly became readily available and a rising interest in genetics infected both the public and scientific spheres. Artists reacted to the intrigue, panic, and paranoia of these discoveries by creating genetic portraiture. Most often self-focused, these pieces, some of which I describe in detail below, explore a power dynamic between art and science and tapped into the ability of the field of genetics to inform of our most unique and fundamental components. In the midst of the genetics-related art movement, Kac’s Genesis explores potential gene manipulation and our place as creators in a newly begotten position of supremacy over the natural world. Though Alba the GFP Bunny remains Kac’s most contentious piece, there are striking similarities in the processes used to create the two works. Kac has no qualms over soliciting assistance and collaboration; biologists in advanced levels of their field generated the biological materials that were central to both pieces. Kac designs the ideas behind his artwork and takes great effort to meticulously research the production elements necessary to creation. With all of his pieces, he provides a detailed explanation of the process in a dialogue comprehensible to laypersons. However, he does not directly produce the work. Though the outsourcing of concepts to craftsmen is by no means uncommon in the contemporary art world, both Genesis and GFP Bunny are reliant on the expertise of scientists.   9 Genesis is by no means the first contemporary artwork to utilize science as a tool for portraiture. Robert Rauschenberg 1967 Booster employed the then-modern technology of x-rays to challenge the medium of painting, as well as create a to-scale model of his body in the groundbreaking six-foot lithograph.6 This piece challenged the traditional notion of self-portraiture as only encompassing the exterior of the body. Previously, anatomical drawings were used for instructional tools in the medical field and remained in the realm of science. Rauschenberg claimed the method of x-ray technology as a tool for art, but implicitly imposed a painterly tone in his piece by swathing the xrays in sketches and masking a corner with a photograph of an empty chair. Curiously, works like Booster failed to induce a succession of science-themed art. In that era, science dominated the public mind with both powerful and high-impact discoveries ghat gave great promises for societal advancement, such as the revolutionary discovery of the double helix of DNA in 1953 and the polio vaccine, and the darkly powerful potential for destruction with the advent of the nuclear bomb. Counter to those creations, art escaped into increasing abstraction, concerning itself with the exploration of line and form. This climaxed in the Minimalism of the 60’s and from there, art exploded outward into a disparity of realms. Concepts that were previously marginalized or nonexistent dominated the art world. Viewers became accustomed to cultural and social critique, an eschewing of the gallery space, and deeply personal explorations of the artist presented for public display. Yet science and art remained disparate.                                                                                                                 6 “Let the World In, Technology and the News,” National Gallery of Art, 2013, accessed February 20, 2013http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2007/rauschenberg/technology.shtm.   10 In 1990, science was once again vigorously propelled into public debate. The United States Department of Energy and National Institutes of Health joined forces and, after receiving the endorsement of Congress, began work on what was to be a thirteenyear project to map the genetic code. The Human Genome project was declared complete in April of 2003.7 In that time, the more than three billion DNA nucleotides in the human genome were sequenced and a massive scientific potential harnessed. For supplement and comparison, researchers sequenced the genomes of mice, the E. coli bacteria, and now many other organisms. These parallel studies assisted in technology development and the understanding of human gene functioning.8 The Human Genome Project was particularly relevant to the artistic world due to the impact it on a public knowledge of and hope for the use of DNA sequence information in medical applications. Ars Electronica, the organization that commissioned and first showcased Genesis cited in its Catalog that the project provided “genetic engineers equipped with the tools of information technology made available by the Computer Age [to] open up…boundaries upon which our civilization has increasingly pinned its expectations and hopes for continued prosperity.”9 Genetic engineering was                                                                                                                 7 Francis S. Collins, Eric D. Green, Alan E. Guttmacher, Mark S. Guyer, "A Vision for the Future of Genomics Research," Nature 835 (2003). 8 “History of the Human Genome Project,” last modified January 15, 2013, http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/project/hgp.shtml. 9 Gerfried Stocker and Christine Schöpf, “Ars Electronica 99 LifeScience: Preface,” Ars Electronica Catolog (1999), accessed January 23,   11 expected to solve all problems, from international starvation to genetic defects, to the hope of increasing of life expectancy. Simultaneously, a degree of confusion and mistrust surrounded the Human Genome Project and its subsequent spinoffs. Researches collected large quantities of blood, cheek swabs and sperm samples from public donors who were selected from the community, but only a few were processed. The secrecy surrounding the utilized donations was meant to protect donor identities but sparked a debate over the concept of ownership and privacy (interestingly, some individuals in Utah ended up serving as the reference genomes in the initial project). It became possible to patent DNA sequences of disease-causing genes, which is hotly debated and currently working its way through the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Myriad Genetics (a Salt Lake City genetics company). Medical-insurance companies considered incorporating genetic proof of the propensity for a disease into the category of preexisting condition. In reaction, the 1995 Genetic Privacy Act decreed that a person’s genetic code is “powerful and personal” and the information gleaned by research should be protected and “unauthorized collection and analysis of individually identifiable DNA must be prohibited.”10 Ethical debates over the misuse of DNA to classify or target individuals are widespread and theories emerged                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           2013http://90.146.8.18/en/archives/festival_archive/festival_catalogs/festival_artikel.asp? iProjectID=8319. 10 George J. Annas, Leonard H. Glantz, and Patricia A. Roche, “The Genetic Privacy Act and Commentary,” (Boston University School of Public Health: Health Law Department, 1995).   12 about the potential of “ethnically specific bioweapons.”11 Clearly the ability to understand the human genome is a powerful, and sometimes dangerous, tool. In parallel with the Human Genome Project were advances in cloning. With her birth in 1997, Dolly the Sheep became the first mammal to be successfully cloned from an adult cell.12 Although cloning was first done in the 1960’s in frogs by John Gurdon and others (he shared the 2012 Nobel Prize with Shinya Yamanaka who discovered induced pluripotent stem cells), it did not catch the public attention until it became feasible in warm fuzzy mammals. The possibility of human cloning was widely debated and genetics became a topic of fear and misunderstanding, but also one of fascination. For the first time, the potential for replication of one’s genome was a looming prospect. Artists latched on to these developments with astonishing rigor. Gary Schneider spent a year and a half in a medical center, proffering samples of his hair, sperm, blood and cheek-tissue to create the 1997 work Genetic Self-Portrait.13 Like Rauschenberg’s Booster, the final results were displayed through black-and-white photographs. The fifty-five works in the installation display a sundry of miscellaneous views of Schneider’s body: looming pictures of his retina, gnarled strands of hair, nine panels devoted solely to a cross-section of saliva. The works venture into the realm of                                                                                                                 11 Peter Phillips, Censored 2001: 25 Years of Censored News and the Top Censored Stories of the Year (Seven Stories Press, 2001), 83. 12 “Dolly the Sheep,” Science Daily: Science Reference, accessed March 4, 2013, http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/d/dolly_the_sheep.htm. 13 Gary Schneider, “Genetic Self-Portrait: 1997-1998,” accessed February 20, 2013.http://www.garyschneider.net/portfolio.cfm?nk=7856.   13 abstraction, but the process of creation was clinical, meticulously detail-oriented, and educational. Schneider reveled in “the opportunity to harvest this most intimate biology of myself”14 in a way that is distinctly personal. The contents of the exhibition were documented by Dr. Dorthy Warburton and transformed from microscopic samples to large-scale photographs in Schneider’s studio. The project was informative for Schneider and grated Dr. Warburton a new perspective on her work. Prior to the collaboration she had “never perceived her work as having to do with art.”15 This is somewhat surprising, since biological and materials scientists have been holding competitions within their profession for the most visually artistic representations of microscopic samples for many years. For example, the microscope company Nikon has sponsored an annual “Small World” artistic photomicroscopy competition since 1977.16 Perhaps Dr. Warburton’s comment reflects a self-internalized bigotry, present in many non-scientists, that simplistically views scientists as non-artistic and non-aesthetic. In Corps Étranger (1994) Mona Hatoum parallels the concept of biological selfportrait exemplified by Schneider. Hatoum underwent an endoscopic procedure, allowing a device to breach the typical boundaries of the body and map her internal organs.17 The                                                                                                                 14 Vince Aletti, “A Photographer Enters the World of Genetic Biology to Create a Portrait of the Artist as a Y Chromosome,” Out, March 2000, 40. 15 Barbara Pollack, "The Genetic Esthetic," Artnews 99.4 (2000): 133. 16 “Microscopy: Small World Competition,” Nikon, accessed March 22, 2013, http://www.microscopyu.com/smallworld/. 17 Michella Arfiero, "Measure The Distances: A Conversation With Mona Hatoum," Sculpture (Washington, D.C.) 25.9 (2006): 29.   14 resulting video footage was projected on a circular video screen installed in the gallery floor. The audience steps into a white cylindrical shell to view the camera’s journey through Hatoum’s orifices. Exterior shots are accompanied by the sound of breathing and the internal shots are accompanied by the sound of heartbeat. The enlarged images are intriguing but rendered in a monstrously repulsive scale, and presented on the ground as if they are discarded litter. The medium of the endoscope, “borrowed from medicine”18 was performed by a doctor with the intent of showing Hatoum’s body as “probed, invaded, violated, deconstructed, by the scientific eye.”19 Hatoum’s work overlaps various sub-genres in contemporary art. As a female artist from the Middle East, she seeks to explore our relationship to the “foreign body” presented beneath the audience’s feet. The endoscopic shots have an anonymity that is universal. According to Hatoum, “we are very close to our bodies, but the fact is we are completely unfamiliar, we are strangers to our insides.”20 However, in breaching the bonds to explore her body in a magnified, intimate manner, she depersonalizes it to the point of collective human portraiture. The enlarged organs portrayed could belong to almost anyone. Joan Fontcuberta’s Hemograms (1998) also makes the personal universal. In this series, she asked friends and relatives to let their blood drip onto transparent film, which                                                                                                                 18 Sabine Russ, “Corps Étranger,” 1996, accessed February 5, 2013, http://www.zingmagazine.com/zing3/reviews/020_body.html. 19 Janine Antoni, “Mona Hatoum,” BOMB 63 (1998), http://bombsite.com/issues/63/articles/2130. 20 Pollack, "The Genetic Esthetic," 136.   15 was then used as a negative for enlargements on photographic paper. Blood is a symbol for "birth and death, sadness and passion, inheritance and identity.”21 It evokes a reference to AIDS, a virus that even the most healthy genome cannot vanquish. Additionally, blood was the fluid collected from female participants in the Human Genome Project. It contains the code to our unique genetic sequence, but in Fontcuberta’s project, the identities were un-translated and indistinguishable from one another. In “Garden of Delights” (1998) Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle collected DNA samples from forty-eight participants. These were sent to the Wake Forest University School of Medicine Genetics Laboratory in Winston-Salem where they were processed and electrophoresed and probed with radioactive markers, which resulted in columns of bands on x-ray film, called autoradiographs. Technically, at the time this approach was used to determine the “genotypes” of individuals, and if the appropriate genetic markers were used, could assess genetic relationships, for example in paternity testing. The artist transformed the autoradiographs into cibachrome prints, introducing colors, blurring of bands and over-exposure of films. In the exhibition, they were presented in groups of three, labeled only with the first names of the participants. The clusters imply corresponding genetics, but the sixteen original participants were allowed to choose any two fellows and often selected spouses, lovers, friends, or colleagues. Manglano-Ovalle arranged the sets to refer to 18th century Spanish “casta” paintings, in which triptychs were used to demonstrate the offspring of interracial relationships. Also referenced in the                                                                                                                 21 Joan Fontcuberta, "Joan Fontcuberta," Aperture 155 (1999): 53-54.   16 work is Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights” which portrays the offspring of Adam and Eve falling from grace into immoderate hedonism.22 As is suggested by the pieces they reference, the life-sized pieces in ManglanoOvalle’s work have an eerie, almost creepy feeling. Manglano-Ovalle attempts to classify and differentiate the groupings of people. By giving the first names, he leads an audience member to assume "Robert, Kelly, and Lydia" are a different race than "Luis, Chetas, and Pedro." The unnatural colors are segregated into distinct schemes. The human genomes represented are exorbitantly more parallel to each other than they would be to any other species and one could not determine the ethnicity or gender by viewing the work in isolation. However, Manglano-Ovalle stresses difference. Like Fontcuberta’s Hemograms, Hatoum’s endoscopy or Schneider’s Genetic Self-Portrait, the audiographs are tied to a specific individual, but simultaneously uncover the commonplace, indiscriminate nature of human genomes. Relevant to Kac’s piece, the vast majority of viewers cannot determine the source of a genetic sequence simply by viewing it on a gallery wall. Common through all these pieces is the fact that many scientists are becoming progressively more willing to collaborate with artists in the pursuit of their artistic aims. Dr. Warburton, when queried as to why she would devote such extensive quantities of time and energy to Schneider’s Genetic Self-Portrait answered: “people have a distorted image of what we scientists do, as if genetics are all-powerful. When artists treat these                                                                                                                 22 Linda J. Dougherty, "Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle: Southeastern Center For Contemporary Art (SECCA)," Sculpture (Washington, D.C.) 18.2 (1999): 66-68.   17 images as almost sublime, they are able to convey the significance, beauty, and meaning of this project to ordinary people.”23 This speaks to a presiding notion that scientists are incapable of displaying the artistic elements of their work in a manner comprehensive to the public. There is a serotype that scientists are too logical to be creative, and that rationality and art are somehow irreconcilable. However, multiple exhibitions and publications present a compelling contradiction. Princeton holds an annual competition to encourage its scientists to “capture moments of beauty in their day-to-day research.”24 The Bridges Organization holds a yearly conference to reconcile and draw connections between art and mathematics.25 Those who are immersed in the field will readily convey that there is value placed within the scientific community towards “elegant” solutions to problems. It is important to dispel the notion that the scientific method renders those who utilize it bereft of aesthetic sensibility. Perhaps the predominant view of scientists is mollifying, and makes the general public more comfortable with the overwhelmingly powerful aspects of science if they can find some fault or deficit in practicing scientists, by assuming they are incapable of a normal level of aesthetics. The interplay and alliance between scientists and artists call into question the ownership of the resulting art objects. If scientists are creating objects that can be deemed                                                                                                                 23 Pollack, "The Genetic Esthetic,"137. 24 Jennifer Pinkowski, “Seeking Art in Science,” Time, 2010, http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1995575_2148904,00.html. 25 “The Bridges Organization: art and mathematics,” Bridges, accessed March 14, 2013, http://www.bridgesmathart.org/.   18 artistic, is it fair to render them mere footnotes while the self-proclaimed artists propagate their fame and promote their careers? On occasion, scientists will assert their possession. For instance, Kac struggled to find a lab willing to assist him in production of GFP Bunny. Conflict arose when Alba was born and the head of the institute refused to release Alba for a planned exhibition. She would end up dying of natural causes, trapped in the lab that spliced in her phosphorescent gene. This conflict might not have been just due to a conflict over artistic authorship or the egos involved, there are strict federal regulations on the release of genetically modified organisms from laboratories into uncontrolled spaces or the environment.26 In his description of Genesis, Kac extensively explains the scientific aspects of his work, but credit to the synthesizer of his E. coli bacteria, Dr. Charles Strom, is only mentioned in the last sentence of online documentation and completely omitted from his Ars Electronica essay.27 In the power dynamic between art and science, especially in the field of transgenetic art, scientists are vital. But the career-profiting egos of artists such as Kac render them as side-notes, instead of attributing them as integrated part of a                                                                                                                 26 “Genetically Engineered Animals,” U.S. Food and Drug Administration, last modified November 11, 2012, http://www.fda.gov/animalveterinary/developmentapprovalprocess/geneticengineering/ge neticallyengineeredanimals/default.htm. 27 Eduardo Kac, “Ars Electronica 99 LifeScience: Genesis,” Ars Electronica Catalog (2009): 45-55, accessed January 23, 2013, http://90.146.8.18/en/archives/festival_archive/festival_catalogs/festival_artikel.asp?iProj ectID=8342.   19 multidisciplinary artist process. Perhaps this is why scientists do not collaborate more with artists, but instead share most of their aesthetic within their profession. In contrast to much of the genetic-themed artwork spurred by the Human Genome Project and advances in cloning of the 1990s, Genesis does not attempt to create a portrait of a single individual or group of people. Kac does not ascribe to the theme of distinguishing his own genetic uniqueness, nor does he endeavor to quell the fear surrounding DNA ‘fingerprinting.’ Instead he chose to create an “artist’s gene” from a unique sequence that, in its complete form, is found nowhere else in nature. However, the implication that the gene is utterly isolated from reality is not wholly accurate. Based on a BLAST analysis (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) that this author performed on the DNA sequence used by Kac, it becomes clear that up to a continuous 32% of the sequence is found on multiple chromosomes in the human genome.28 Any given person contains approximately a third of the arrangement of this sequence of base pairs. This links to another pressing point: the simplicity of splicing this gene into any naturally occurring sequence. The versatility of E. coli makes it a prime canvas for insertion of new genetic material, but Kac could just as easily have conducted this procedure using sequences derived from the human genome. Up to 32% of the gene is already present within our genome and although the adding/modifying of the additional portion of the sequence would cross prevailing ethical boundaries, it would not have been an impossible task. Although Kac stayed away from creating an augmented human gene, the choice of                                                                                                                 28 “BLAST Assembled RefSeq Genomes,” National Center for Biotechnology Information, accessed March 22, 2013, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/Blast.cgi?CMD=Web&PAGE_TYPE=BlastHome.   20 E. coli is significant in that, along with mice, it was the only other genome fully sequenced by the Human Genome Project at the time. Resoundingly, this speaks to the theme that we are more similar to other organisms in nature that we like to believe. Genetic manipulation already occurs on a regular basis in the agricultural sector, and transgenic chimeras such as GFP Bunny further expose the increasing ease in which species lines can be crossed. The scientific developments of the 1990s made it possible for artists to explore the intricacies of their own biology and personhood in novel and previously impossible ways. In relation to the often highly invasive and extremely personal work of other artists, Genesis may seem impersonal at first glace. However, Kac explores, on a genetic level, how humanity as a whole relates to a wider conception of nature.   21 LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICAION IN KAC’S GENESIS The etymology of “genesis” is a Greek word of the same name. It translates as “origin, creation, generation.” Both it and “gene” stem from the Latin “genus” which means “race, stock, kind; family, birth, descent, origin.”29 In dissecting this work, it is important to keep in mind the origins from which it sprang. The 1900s saw the genesis of the Information Age. Kac’s piece is indicative of an epoch in which certain systems of communication were defunct and new ones rapidly rose to prominence. This section will discuss the use of the Biblical text, significance of the English lexicon, and the purpose of the employment of Morse Code. Overarching these elements is the significance of the Internet as propagating the category of interactive artwork, which serves as a communicative interplay between artistic, audience and art. The foundational line of Genesis was selected as an explicit critique on a commemorated text that embodies a firmly held cultural notion. According to Kac, “This sentence was chosen for its implications regarding the dubious notion of (divinely sanctioned) humanity's supremacy over nature.”30 The Bible is perhaps the single most significant and well-know book in human history. From its inception, millennia of religions, wars, and creeds have adopted factors within as their guiding principles. It is used as the justification for the full range of human behavior and guided the morality of a large portion of the world’s population. Through artists’ devotion or the wishes of                                                                                                                 29 “Genus,” Online Etymology Dictionary, accessed March 22, 2013, http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=genus&allowed_in_frame=0. 30 Kac, “Genesis,” 46.   22 patrons, components of the Bible have served as the source material for countless works of art. There are a multitude of reasons why the Book of Genesis has proved inspirational for a subject matter. Due to its place as the primary book in the Bible, it heralds as the inception of a revered text. The intense visual imagery spattered throughout the book provides fuel for dramatic depictions. Within this book, humanity is not only granted preeminence over all other living creature, but falls from grace; a blunder that precipitates a hellish demise and the eventual coming of the Messiah. Titian’s The Fall of Man, later mimicked by Michelangelo, depicts Eve’s mortal choice of plucking the apple of wisdom. As referenced in Manglano-Ovalle’s piece, Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights portrays the torturous Gehenna confronting those who act against God’s will and succumb to worldly pleasures. Weaving through these Genesis-themed artworks is the concept of the counterbalanced destruction that correlates with creation. The purity in the ‘Garden of Eden’ left panel of Bosch’s work or Titian and Michelangelo’s paintings is overshadowed by the knowledge that the serenity will later spiral into drama and woe. The quintessential, to the point of kitschy, example of an artwork that embodies the moment of creation described in Kac’s Genesis is, naturally, Michelangelo fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It represents the moment immediately prior to the impartment of the supremacy and dominion with which Kac is concerned. Michelangelo’s piece has been appropriated or parodied for every conceivable advertisement or societal critique. However, despite its current commercialization, the   23 work emblemizes the languid peace of childlike powerlessness. Unaware of the planet he is about to be bestowed, bereft of supremacy, Adam is tranquil. The Bible is not a universal venerated text, not all cultures are permeated with a model of punishment through damnation, or the supremacy of humankind. As a determinant of cultural ethics, the Bible’s sway extends solely to the areas in which Judeo-Christian religions are paramount. In looking at a map of the distribution of the world’s religions, it is readily apparent that the areas with a mostly Christian population are definitively North and South America, Europe and Australia.31 There are numerous revered religious texts from which Kac could have plucked a line. However, Kac didn’t select a quote from the Islamic Quran, the Buddha’s Sutras, or the Hindu Vedas, but instead chose a text that prevails largely in the Western world. Therefore, one must assume that the use of the Bible and the explicit critique he intends Genesis to address is a “dubious notion” marred in the thinking of a particular area of the world. Kac makes his intentions more clear with the chosen lexicon of English. The most authentic and original format in which the Bible quote could be presented is in the language of Hebrew. There is some divisiveness regarding the quantity of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, with 22, 23, and 29 being the most frequently cited numbers.32 This discrepancy could have potentially caused problems when translating the text into Morse Code. Additionally, the argument could be made for the improved audience accessibility                                                                                                                 31 “Geographic Distribution of Major World Religions,” accessed March 14, 2013, http://www.worldreligions.psu.edu/maps-introduction.htm. 32 Edward Horowitz, How the Hebrew Language Grew (KTAV Publishing House, Inc: 1993), 103.   24 with the use of English. However, the piece was commissioned by Ars Electronica 99 and first exhibited in Linz, Austria. Accommodation via translation was a necessary element for the German or Austro-Bavarian-speaking residents of the gallery location. The use of an unoriginal Bible quote results in an artistic statement that is not immediately apparent. Unless one has a copy of the text on hand, the quote “Let man have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” seems familiar and accurate. However, upon putting multiple editions of Genesis side by side, it is revealed that there is no line that matches the phrasing used in the artwork. Genesis 1:26 and Genesis 1:28 are fairly similar to one another and both contain elements of the sentence displayed on the gallery wall. Out of the twenty-seven Bible editions compared by this author, the following examples from the New International Version and King James Version were chosen as the most common Bible translations: Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." -Genesis 1:26 New International Version And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. -Genesis 1:26 King James Version God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." -Genesis 1:28 New International Version And God blessed them, and God said unto them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” -Genesis 1:28 King James Version   25 The quote used in Kac’s artwork matches Genesis 1:26 more closely, save for the omissions and of “cattle,” “over all the earth,” and “creeping.” Also, all of these compared examples contribute words to Kac’s version: “fowl” from King James, “creature” in NIV, “dominion” in KJV. Kac cut the quote short for Genesis, eliminating the notions of subduing the earth though the propagation of the human race as well as the creation of human kind in the image of God. If Kac had used either of the complete, unedited Bible passages, it would have added credence to his claim that humans presumptuously act as if they are allowed to control and use nature in any way they please. It is unclear why Kac limited the length of the foundational sentence in Genesis. Perhaps it was simply to decrease the effort of transforming it into genetic code. The prevailing point of comparing the Biblical passages is to cast light on the fact that Kac tailored his own translation of the Book of Genesis. Although it doesn’t vary significantly from other versions, the resulting Book of Genesis [according to Eduardo Kac] contains elements significant to the artwork. The gender-specific pronoun “man” is Kac’s own lexicon. The “them” of Adam and Eve were granted collective and equal dominion over nature in the Biblical text. At the close of the exhibition, the backtranslation of the gene into English revealed “man” had morphed into the nonexistent word of “aan.” In a vaguely ironic twist, gender-neutrality was achieved by eliminating a word not present in any Bible translation. The back-translation also uncovered a poetic twist. “MOVES UPON” was transformed into “IOVES UA EON.” One could easily mistake the “I” for an “l” and read a phonetic version “loves you eon.” Eon, if understood as “an indefinite and very   26 long period of time, often a period exaggerated for humorous or rhetorical effect”33 adds an unplanned but thought-provoking element to the final stage of the artworks progression. Kac utilized random chance in the development of his piece and was rewarded with a phrase that contributes potently to his critique. The effect of these resulting nonexistent words as understood within the parameters of the English language proved poignant. To those not fluent and versed in the intricacies of Hebrew (or any other language Kac could have chosen) the products of the UV-induced mutations would not have been nearly as affective. This revolves back to the question: why English? An initial response might be that Kac was intending to hone in his critique on countries in which English is the official language, specifically the United States. This theory correlates with the connection to the Human Genome Project’s root in the U.S. However, the fact remains that, although the U.S. is the largest Englishspeaking nation in the world, the country only contains 20% of the world’s English speakers.34 As English becomes the common language of every international endeavor and fluently learned as a second language by 300-500 million people, it has morphing into a language that belongs to the world, rather than a single nation. The choice of English by Kac is a choice to appeal to the greatest number of viewers and put the artwork on a globally recognizable scale.                                                                                                                 33 “Eon,” Dictionary.com, accessed February 27, 2013, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/eon. 34 Seth Mydan, “Across cultures, English is the word,” New York Times, April 9, 2007, accessed March 14, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/world/asia/09ihtenglede.1.5198685.html?pagewanted=all.   27 In contrast to the globalized choice of English, Morse Code is an archaic and obsolete method of communication. Morse Code reached the end of its era on February 1, 1991, the final deadline for the international community to switch over to the currently used Global Maritime Distress and Safety System. As the plaintive final message of the French "Calling all. This is our last cry before our eternal silence."35 suggests, Morse Code is associated with an element of nostalgic romanticism. Since its inception in 1831, the cipher has gained an association with espionage, and invention. Termed the “instantaneous highway of thought between the old and new worlds,”36 telegraphy was, as Kac explains “the genesis of global communications.”37 Morse Code as an artistic medium deals with secrecy, symbology and the exploration of transforming one medium to another. A seminal work involving Morse Code is May Ray’s 1924 abstract poem accompanying Francis Picabia’s portrait of Erik Satie in the Dada magazine 391. The poem is a collection of stanzas that resemble blocked-out words of text. The thick-lined poem can be viewed as a collection of dots and dashes and translated from Morse Code into English. However, when the transcription is done, it simply reads as a wordless string of letters and numbers.38 This artwork exposes the ultimate futility in attempting to quantify an abstract description of                                                                                                                 35 “... --- ... .-. .. .--. (SOS, RIP)” The Economist, January 21, 1991. 36 Jeremy M. Norman, From Gutenberg to the Internet: A Sourcebook on the History of Information Technology (Norman Publishing: 2005), 51. 37 Kac, “Genesis,” 47. 38 Kenneth R. Allan, “Metamorphosis in 391: A Cryptographic Collaboration by Fanicis Picabia, Man Ray, and Erik Satie,” Art History 34: 114-116.   28 an abstract painting in plain English. Some ideas do not translate in a straightforward, laconic, or comprehensible manner across mediums. May Ray defied the viewers’ desire to glean a facile explanation of either his or Picabia’s work. This devious artwork proclaims that not all code is comprehensible, especially if one does not have the key. Which, in the case of art, is sometimes contained solely in the artist’s mind and only echoed loosely through a viewer’s supposition. Cerith Wyn Evans utilizes the arcane communication tool in a contemporary setting with his 2003 Morse Code Chandeliers. The grandiose chandeliers, which drip from the ceiling in a cascade of twinkling lights, embody a juxtaposition of two outdated mediums. Appropriate for an orate mansion, the chandeliers seem out of place in a whitewalled gallery setting. Several of the oversized sculptures extend nearly to the floor. The methodically flickering lights evoke the ambiance of a dance hall or the late-night flicker of a cityscape. The original sculpture in the series transmitted a lines from the mystical poet William Blake39 and further installations contained “gently bleating” quotes from Judith Butler, Ian Sommerville, Marta Werner, Michel de Certeau, the Marquis de Sade, Mitsou Ronant, and James Merrill.40 The ability to translate the blinking messages of the chandeliers requires now-recondite knowledge, so nearby video screens translate for the unversed curious in the audience. However, Wyn Evans insists that the optimal                                                                                                                 39 L. Buck, “The medium is the message: Interview with Cerith Wyn Evans,” Art Newspaper 13, November 2003, 31. 40 Marty Carlock, “Words Imagined: Cerith Wyn Evans,” Scultpure 24 (2005).   29 experience occurs when the viewer doesn’t “worry too much about the text, but just look[s] at these beautiful objects.”41 Much as Kac used Morse Code as an intermediary between English and genetic code, a group of artists has found the rudimentary system of dots and dashes useful in conjoining two incongruent mediums. The artists X.J. Shi, Y.Y. Cai and C.W. Chan set out to create music from amino acid sequences found in cellular protein chains. In their method, each amino acid is assigned to a letter in the alphabet, which is then transcribed in its Morse Code short form. Each short form is related to a particular sequence of musical notes. The resulting sonification is garnered from the expression of these short forms. The polyphonic melodic rhythm can be arranged to vary in complexity and contain either a series of single notes or chord progressions. Though the formula only exists in a conceptual form and no amino acid melodies have been recorded, the artists have experimented with the HIV protease and even designated a particular instrument, Chinese guzheng, to be employed in playing the tunes. The ultimate goal is to make the protein music aesthetically appealing and use it as a tool to spark an interest in the properties of microbiology.42 The DNA-synthesized music of Peter Gena is a critical part of Genesis, but it simultaneously stands alone as an independent medium of communication. Discordant and seemingly disjointed, it nonetheless is backed by a complex collection of equations and algorithms. As with the genetic art discussed in the previous section, Gena solicited                                                                                                                 41 Marty Carlock, “Words Imagined: Cerith Wyn Evans,” Scultpure 24 (2005). 42 C. W. Chan, X. J. Shi, and Y. Y. Cai, “Electronic Music of Bio-Molecules: Using Short Music Phrases,” Leonardo 40 (2007): 137-141.   30 help from a scientist, Dr. Charles Strom, who elucidated the properties of amino acids and codons. Together, they developed a method to convert these characteristics into music. Though the music in Genesis is a loop of Kac’s “artist gene,” Gena’s DNA mixer can potential read multiple DNA sequences to convert cellular processes into the medium of music. The tempo and volume of the music are tied to the audience’s control of the UV light, which contributes to the viewer’s immersion in the exhibition.43 The concept of genetic music is intriguing. However, like Man Ray’s poem, the cross disciplinary productions doesn’t always translate well, and Gena’s at times kooky or repellent music is not wholly suited to extol the complex processes of DNA. A theme of globalization pervades through all of the methods of language and communication present in Genesis. The Bible serves as a foundational text that forms an ethical umbrella over Judeo-Christians across the world. Despite its variant translations, it provides a consistent and relatively interchangeable set of moral codes for all of the faiths that follow it. English too has become a global unifier. Though its dialects and nuances alter by location, it has granted ease in communication between a multitude of countries. Morse Code was a universal system of communication for decades and helped unite the world through its simplistic sequence. Music causes different affiliations dependent on the listener, but the tonal arrangements are universally comprehensible. However, the component in Kac’s work that unites all of these elements and supersedes their significance in worldwide globalization is a new information technology that, in 1999 was still relatively novel. The Internet began its boom in popularity with the 1993 introduction of the web browser. By 1995 email was reality available, simple to                                                                                                                 43 Kac, “Genesis,” 53.   31 operate and had reached a critical mass of usership. The webpage created for Genesis in 1991 is rudimentary by modern standards. It gives no description of the piece, nor explanation of the process of creation. The user is simply presented with an image of the petri dish, headed by the title and the option to “click the button on the left to mutate bacteria” with a descriptor of the light’s current status and an option to listen to the DNAsynthesized soundtrack.44 Like the rest of Genesis, the link to the original website is no longer existent and a screen shot documented on Kac’s webpage is its only manifestation. Use of the medium of the Internet transforms Genesis into an interactive artwork. Previously, the audience only had to choose whether to look or not look at a piece. Interactive art shifts the function of an audience member away from mere spectator into what has been termed a “(v)user”: a participant who is both a viewer and user.45 The crux of interactive art is that the contribution of the (v)users results in assorted types of navigation, assemblage, or contribution to an artwork, which transcends the purely psychological activity demanded of viewers in traditional art.46 Interactive art rejects the customary notion that an audience member should maintain a respectful distance and reverence for art. It turns museums into sites of dynamic and participatory experimentation, where meaning is created or destroyed, not simply presented.47                                                                                                                 44 Kac, “Genesis,” 50. 45 Miroslaw Rogala, “The virtual and the vivid: Reframing the issues in interactive arts,” Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research 8 (2010): 299. 46 Christiane Paul, Digital Art, (Thames & Hudson Inc, 2003), 67. 47 E. Edmonds, L. Muller, M. Connell, “Living laboratories for interactive art,” Codesign 2 (2006): 196.   32 In the 1960’s participatory artwork took on a political tone, with artists formulating “constructed situations” to engage the audience in the creative process in performance-centered pieces.48 In the 1970s and 80s, artists began to incorporate live broadcast and technological elements that responded to the (v)users actions.49 With the rise of computer-based interactivity in the 1990s, participatory art took on a decidedly digital tone. The work of art no longer presented the spectator with an actualized artwork in which “artistic or technical talent and intention have crystallized.” Instead, the interface between (v)user and art becomes central to the artistic creation.50 Artists began to create art that existed solely in cyberspace, though they often presented the results of the (v)users’ interactions in a gallery setting. A prime example of this variety of Interactive art is Mary Flanagan’s 1998 piece [the perpetual bed] in which (v)users interact with one another in a virtual VRML surrealistic world. The space is emulative of the room on which the artist’s grandmother spent her final days. The narrative is abstract and detritus from these cyber interactions are incorporated into the piece so it becomes a collection and memoriam to the spectators’ experiences.51 A piece like this, that is in constant flux, is a continual work-in                                                                                                                 48 Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London: Verso, 2012), 3. 49 Paul, Digital Art, 18. 50 J. Fourmentraux, “Internet Artworks, Artists and Computer Programmers: Sharing the Creative Process,” Leonardo 29 (2006): 49. 51 Mary Flanagan, “Navigating the narrative in space: gender and spatiality in virtual worlds,” Art Journa. 59 (2000): 83.   33 progress. The artist must choose an arbitrary and definitive end date for the artwork to garner a complete piece. Like the webpage in Genesis, [the perpetual bed] was inventive for its era but not timeless in quality or sustainability. Both pieces were prevented from perpetual development and declared finished after a certain period of time. Like Flanagan’s work, the (v)users of Genesis affect both the artwork and one another. Remote viewers could potentially compete with one other to determine whether or not the UV light was turned on. Audience members in the gallery were inundated with noise as the gallery became filled with crescendos of music and an escalating tempo. A defining characteristic of artwork that incorporates a remotely located interaction is that (v)users are not accountable for their actions. They can manipulate the work from a point of blissful isolation, unaware of the reactions they elicit from other participants. In Genesis, the audience member is allowed to make a choice whether they wish to remain a passive observer or influence the outcome of the work. Those who participate become a type of contributing artist, removing the ultimate trajectory of the work from Kac’s control. Much like the transmission of Morse Code or the signals of the Internet, the genes of Kac’s E. coli constantly communicated with themselves in a matrix of electromagnetic surges and circuits. As with Wyn Evans’ chandeliers or Shi, Cai and Chan’s music, the viewer is not required to interpret, analyze, or expend the effort to comprehend the process and significance of the artwork. One can simply sit back and observe the whirling bacteria in their silently shimmering “babble of voices.”52                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           52 Carlock, “Words Imagined: Cerith Wyn Evans,” 46.   34 ETHICS: CRITIQUES BY AND OF KAC Although the muted light in Kac’s work induces a hushed atmosphere, there is no jejune tranquility to be gained by the implications of the piece. One is awed by the power of a manmade “artist’s gene.” Kac has posed the argument that there is no need for divine sanction, as man has created an organism outside nature. In taking the place of creator, Kac has the power to allow his gene to flourish and propagate, or destroy it. Genesis entices the viewer to participate in this control by allowing them to cause the gene to deviate, through mutation, from the path that would naturally occur. This supremacy confronts the audience with an eerie unease, there is no Sistine-chapel tranquility in this artwork. Kac’s societal critique is multi-faceted. He urges the audience to come to grips with the fact that the world is changing. He insists that the Information Age is not only irrevocable but beneficial. Genesis is not a piece demanding that technology be demolished or progress halted. Conversely, Kac predicted that “the future of art and the future of the Internet will be intertwined”53 and that it was critical for the viewers of 1999 to direct what the internet would become and what new art forms would proceed from these developments. In accepting and embracing the changes in a world infused with technology, Kac nonetheless recognizes the discomfort caused by the revolutions of the 1990s. Even “skin                                                                                                                 53 Eduardo Kac, “Interactive Art on the Internet,” accessed January 30, 2013, http://ekac.org/interactiveartonthenet.html.   35 is no longer the immutable barrier that contains and defines the body in space.”54 Everything is potentially subjected to constant transmutation through the application of neuroprothesis or the malleability of our exterior shell through plastic surgery. Kac declares an urgency in addressing the “emergence of biotechnologies that operate beneath the skin (or inside skinless bodies, such as bacteria) and therefore out of sight.”55 The specific biotechnology he endeavors to address in Genesis is genetic manipulation. Plants and meat that would otherwise have taken years of careful breeding could be altered within one generation. In his critique of the societal ethics of a Bibleinfluenced Western world and the globalized population that connects to it, Kac demands the viewer tackle their places within the invisible biotechnologies and the limits to which they should be employed. If not contained under glass and held a safely sequestered distance, the E. coli which contain Kac’s gene could be incorporated into the food we eat, the medicines we consume or the objects that surround us. They could surmount our penetrable skins without our knowledge and become part of our bodies. Their ancestors colonize our gut. Although this knowledge might cause unease, it begs the question of what other invisible, man-made operators do we readily allow to contact us? Kac states that, more than simply                                                                                                                 54 Eduardo Kac, “Ars Electronica 99 LifeScience: Transgenetic Art,” Ars Electronica Catalog (2009): 36, accessed January 23, 2013, http://90.146.8.18/en/archives/festival_archive/festival_catalogs/festival_artikel.asp?iProj ectID=8340. 55 Kac, “Transgenetic Art.” 37.   36 making visible the previously invisible, the role of art is to “raise our awareness of what firmly remains beyond our visual reach but which, nonetheless, affects us directly.”56 Genesis also demands the audience address the ethical limits of bio-genetic engineering. It is not a question of if scientists will fervently desire to “play God,” but how society will interpret their work and if it will be allowed. So, why specifically address the ethics of a Bible-adherent area? There are cultures across the entire planet with disregard for nature and a penchant for genetic engineering. According to a 2004 study done at the University of Columbia, the “extremely vulnerable” areas of land are, in terms of sheer area, most prevalent in the non-Western world.57 Likewise, scientists are moving to Asia to take advantage of new labs and fewer restrictions.58 The Biblevenerating world does not have a monopoly on either abuses of nature or desire to push the limits of science into ethically murky territory. Cultures with a foundation of Judeo-Christian ethics exhibit clear ideas about the existence of a soul. These ethics cause restrictions on funding and limitations on the channels of research. A Princeton biologist mapped the world’s biotechnology principles, showing that many countries with Judeo-Christian foundations ban the cloning of human                                                                                                                 56 Kac, “Transgenetic Art.” 39. 57 U.L. Kaly, C.R. Pratt, and J. Mitchell, “The Demonstration Environmental Vulnerability Index,” SOPAC Technical Report 384 (2004). 58 John Tierney, “Are Scientists Playing God? It Depends on Your Religion,” New York Times, November 20, 2007, last modified November 23, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/science/20tier.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&#.   37 embryos, whereas countries with Hindu or Buddhist traditions actively encourage cloning.59 In critiquing the Western world, Kac is not necessarily arguing that we should restrict genetic engineering, but rather that it must be addressed within the cultural notions of faith and ethics. Where should the line be drawn for the production of frivolously generated, genetically-engineered products? Is an artistic pursuit such as GFP Bunny or Genesis a frivolous waste of limited resources and the intellectual capitol of scientists? In critiquing a Judeo-Christian world, transgenetic artists such as Kac must address the “Post-Christianity” that rose to prominence between 1981 and 2000 and relocates the sacred to “residing in the deeper layers of the self.”60 This inwardly-looking religion is best exemplified by the self-portraiture of artists like Schneider, Hatoum, and Fontcumberta who strove to understand their place in the world by mapping their supposedly unique place in it. “Post-Christians” are keen on rejecting the notion of humanity as supreme and granting equality to all life forms, thus contributing to the uproar over GFP Bunny. Might the E. coli in Genesis also be considered unique?                                                                                                                 59 Lee M. Silver, “Laws on Cloning,” New York Times, November 19, 2007, accessed March 2, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/11/19/science/20071120_TIER_GRAPHIC.ht ml 60 Dick Houtman, "The Spiritual Turn and the Decline of Tradition: The Spread of Post-Christian Spirituality in 14 Western Countries, 1981-2000," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 46 (2007): 315.   38 Kac answers these critiques by frequently harping on the importance of responsible care and concern for the life forms created by genetic engineering. He states that “the result of transgenic art processes must be healthy creatures capable of as regular a development as any other creatures from related species.”61 But he flagrantly disregards his own ethical leanings in Genesis. He creates an E. coli bacteria that he intends to subject to mutations, without considering the possible repercussions. The potential of his “artist’s gene” to cause harm is unknown and unaddressed. E. coli exists in more than 700 varieties and is found nearly everywhere. In its typically benign state won’t cause harm. However, if the strain is dangerous, a mere fifty bacteria can kill you.62 Which variety was created by his gene, or the plethora of possible mutations that could have occurred under exposure to UV light? The health and normative reproduction of his “artist’s gene” are polar opposite from the intention of the artwork. In order to fuel a critique on a society with the “dubious notion” that it has free reign to tinker with nature, Kac wound up a hypocrite mirroring the irresponsible engineering he resents. Along a similar vein, haphazardly creating new organisms under the guise of biodiversity is a perilous route. According to the World Wildlife Fund, as many as 2,000 of the 1.4 to 1.8 million scientifically identified species go extinct every year.63 However,                                                                                                                 61 Kac, “Transgenetic Art,” 37. 62 Jenny Marder, “Sprouts? Cucumbers? Authorities Still Searching for Source of E. Coli,” Scientific America, June 6, 2011, accessed March 22, 2013, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=sprouts-cucumbers-ecoli-outbreak. 63 “How Many Speicies are We Loosing?,” World Wildlife Fund, accessed March 22, 2013, http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/biodiversity/biodiversity/.   39 combating this problem without a highly advanced knowledge of the delicate ecological balance can create disastrous results. Australia’s rabbit population is a perfect anecdotal example. In 1859, Thomas Austin released twenty-four rabbits into his property. By 1950, the plague of rabbits had grown so extensive that the Australian government was forced to resort to biological control through the introduction of rabbit-targeting viruses. In the meantime, the rabbits caused the extinction of multiple native plant species and the demise of native marsupials such as the bilby and bandicoot which relied on these food sources.64 Increased biodiversity simply for the sake of biodiversity can have ruinously converse effects.                                                                                                                 64 “Rabbit Problems in Australia,” Animal Control Technologies, last modified March 26, 2013, http://www.animalcontrol.com.au/rabbit.htm.   40 CONCLUSION Kac states that “two of the most prominent technologies operating beyond vision are digital implants and genetic engineering, both poised to have profound consequences in art as well as in the social, medical, political, and economic life of the next century.”65 The very notion of what it meant to be human in the newly created Information Age was at stake in the 1990s. However, Kac insists that these developments and the questions they pose do not justify a cultural ontological crisis.66 They merely demand that humanity evolve to accommodate the immediacy of Internet communication and disassemble the gray areas of ‘if and when and why and what’ we should be tampering on a genetic front. Genesis transcends the mere observational or representational to manufacture a portrait of the cultural consciousness of the 1990s. The Western-world was a patchwork of belief systems and ethical attitudes. The Judeo-Christian and Post-Christian population would react differently to the dogma unearthed in Kac’s biblical quote. But by 1999, no segment of society could deny genetic manipulation was part of the daily life. Every segment was privy to the appeal, potential, and concerns associated with the Human Genome Project. Society had newfound access to countless quantities of information merely a mouse click away and no segment could deny we were globally tied to the rest of the world in an unprecedented proximity. As cultures experienced the growing pains of scientific and technological revolutions, the world shrunk. Through the mediums of a historical sacred text and an outdated medium of communication, Kac created a new life                                                                                                                 65 Kac, “Transgenetic Art,” 38. 66 Kac, “Transgenetic Art,” 38.   41 form. As the collective cultural consciousness was forced to do at the turn of the millennium, Kac utilized the old and familiar to fashion a revamped identity.   42 BIBLIOGRAPHY Aletti, Vince. “A Photographer Enters the World of Genetic Biology to Create a Portrait of the Artist as a Y Chromosome.” Out, March 2000, 40. 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