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Show THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH HONORS COLLEGE EDUARDO KAC'S GENESIS: ART, INTERNET, AND GENETICS IN THE 1990'S Alexandra Yost (Monty Paret) Department of Art and Art History University of Utah 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 1990's. The inception of the work is a line Kac extracted from the Old Testament book of Genesis: "Let m a n 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 exhibition space and projected onto the gallery wall, adjacent to the bible quote and genetic sequence. The exhibition was accompanied by music synthesized from DNA. Audience members viewing the work 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. Following will be a discussion of the liaison between developments in the field of genetics and the reaction of both Kac and other contemporary artists. Subsequently will be an examination of the influence of the Internet on this and other 1900's artwork and the implications of globalization in the creation process. Correlating with this will be an exploration of the elements of language and communication utilized in Genesis. The paper will conclude with an analysis of Kac's scrutiny of belief systems, and an inquiry into the ethics and deception in the artwork. Alexandra Yost Monty Paret 255 |