Genetologic Research

Natalie Jeremijenko
OneTree, 2000

Natalie Jeremijenko, working at the intersection of contemporary art, science, and engineering, has completed an impressive number of projects individually and in collaboration with the artists’ collective, the Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT). She creates “spectacles of participation” using robotics, genetic engineering, and digital, electromechanical and interactive systems, aimed at exposing, disrupting and redirecting the power that technology exerts on the human and natural environment.

Jeremijenko’s projects have included: Suicide Box, a vertical motion triggered camera unit which monitors and records activity around San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge; BitPlane, a device designed to circumvent the security systems of high tech corporate campuses in Silicon Valley; and BitRocket, which allows users to make accurate head counts at public demonstrations, and to document crowd interactions with police and security forces. For her Feral Robotic Dog Pack project Jeremijenko reprogrammed robot dogs “for semi-autonomous deployment” and set them loose to detect toxins in the local environment.

Many of Jeremijenko’s works investigate our disposition toward and impact on other species and the larger ecology. Her Uphone Sparrow Report used mobile phone networks to capture live data on the vanishing populations of sparrows around New York and London, while her robotic geese encouraged human controllers to learn about, and interact with, wild geese, instead of hunting them. Jeremijenko’s large-scale public artwork OneTree is 1,000 genetically identical micro cultured Paradox Vlach clones grown with the goal of providing a “public platform for ongoing discussions around genetic engineering.” A related software component measures the C02 in a computer’s immediate microenvironment, while Stump is a printer queue virus that counts the number of pages consumed by the printer; when the equivalent of one tree’s worth of pulp has been consumed, it automatically prints out a slice of tree.

Cloning has made it possible to Xerox copy organic life and fundamentally confound the traditional understanding of individualism and authenticity. In the public sphere, genetics is often reduced to ìfinding the gene for (fill in the blank),î misrepresenting the complex interactions of the organism with environmental influences. The swelling cultural debate that contrasts genetic determinism and environmental influence has consequences for understanding our own agency in the world, be it predetermined by genetic inevitability or constructed by our actions and environment. The OneTree project is a forum for public involvement in this debate, a shared experience with actual material consequences.

OneTree is actually one hundred tree(s), clones of a single tree micropropagated in culture. These clones were originally exhibited together as plantlets at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, in 1999. This was the only time they were seen together. In the spring of 2001, the clones will be planted in public sites throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, including Golden Gate Park, 220 private properties, San Francisco school district sites, Bay Area Rapid Transit stations, Yerba Buena Performing Arts Center, and Union Square. A selection of international sites are also being negotiated. Friends of the Urban Forest are coordinating the planting. Because the trees are biologically identical, they will render the social and environmental differences to which they are exposed in subsequent years. The treesí slow and consistent growth will record the unique experiences and contingencies of each public site. The tree(s) will become a networked instrument that maps the microclimates of the Bay Area, connected through their biological materiality. People can view the tree(s) and compare them, a long, quiet, and persisting testament to the Bay Areaís diverse environment.

Julian LaVerdiere
Laurus Nobilis (Transgenic Laureate), 2000

Laurus Nobilis is the true laurel of classical antiquity. It was perceived as a symbol of immortality in ancient Greece and Rome, where it also became the emblem of nobility and victory. The Laureate was a crown woven of sprigs of laurel and was worn on the brow of each triumphant Roman general as he rode his chariot around the Circus in celebration. Conversely, withering or diseased laurel was believed to be a portent of disaster.
ìIt is thought the king is dead; we will not stay, the Laurel trees in our country are all withered, and meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven.î William Shakespeare, Richard III. The laurel is also symbolic of poetry and wisdom and is still honored today in the titles Poet Laureate and Nobel Laureate. As with plant genealogies, the code of our own genome is being deciphered and the wondrous and frightening implications of genetic determinism are gathering momentum. The gift of genius and strength may soon be obtained by intentionally reconfiguring our genetic building blocks. Enlightenment may be achieved through the administration of regenerative medicine. The illuminati will be cultivated in the test tube, not the temple. Scholastic study, trial, error, and happenstance will be rendered obsolete as a means of determining the intellect. Laureation will occur as commonly as germination.
GENIUS WILL BE DESIGNED TO ORDER AND GROWN ON TREES.

Karl S. Mihail & Tran T. Kim-Trang
The Creative Gene Harvest Archive, 1999

plastics, glass vials, human hair, text; 16 x 36 x 10 in.

The end of the twentieth century witnessed a heightened interest in biotechnology in the general populace due to the many discoveries and breakthroughs in the life sciences. Nothing is more important to the earthís inhabitants and our ecosystem today than the life sciences. Artists were amongst those so piqued, resulting in an increase in artistic production, particularly in the year 1998. Recognizing this unique moment in our cultural history and the ripeness of the art world, we at Gene Genies Worldwide© launched a series of projects to engage both artists and scientists, like ourselves, in a dialogue on the culture of genetics. An example of such a project is The Creative Gene Harvest Archive. The Creative Gene Harvest Archive is a display of hair samples from people who are representative of creative individuals. The archive, with samples harvested by Gene Genies Worldwide©, is the cutting-edge of art and genetic engineering. This never-before-seen collection, existing nowhere else in the world, was generously lent for this exhibition by Gene Genies Worldwide©

Garnet Hertz
Experiments in Galvanism, 2003/2004

Clicking on “LEFT LEG” or “RIGHT LEG” activates motors inside of the frog’s body. These motors make the frog’s legs physically move in the gallery space. After clicking the leg activation links, a “LEFT LEG ACTIVATED” or “RIGHT LEG ACTIVATED” screen is displayed for about two seconds while the specimen’s legs are in motion.

‘Garnet Hertz has implanted a miniature webserver in the body of a frog specimen, which is suspended in a clear glass container of mineral oil, an inert liquid that does not conduct electricity. The frog is viewable on the Internet, and on the computer monitor across the room, through a webcam placed on the wall of the gallery. Through an Ethernet cable connected to the embedded webserver, remote viewers can trigger movement in either the right or left leg of the frog, thereby updating Luigi Galvani’s original 1786 experiment causing the legs of a dead frog to twitch simply by touching muscles and nerves with metal.

Experiments in Galvanism is both a reference to the origins of electricity, one of the earliest new media, and, through Galvani’s discovery that bioelectric forces exist within living tissue, a nod to what many theorists and practitioners consider to be the new new media: bio(tech) art’.

– Sarah Cook and Steve Dietz

Garnet Hertz at work…, 2005
(photo by Steve Dietz)

http://animalliberationfront.com

Bryan Crockett
Ecce Homo, 2000

marble and epoxy, 30 x 40 x 70 in.

Transgenics is the practice of transplanting genes from one species to another, thus creating genetic hybrids that can develop characteristics of both species. Consider what is happening with genetics. For instance, the oncomouse is the first patented transgenic lab mouse, engineered to have a human immune system for the purpose of oncology research. In this way, the practice of genetics can be understood as an analogy to the worlds of allegory and mythology. Like the Satyr or Minotaur, the oncomouse is the literalization of a clichÈ man/mouse. That is why I have chosen to reinterpret the ultimate figure of salvation, Christ, through the ultimate actor of contemporary science, the oncomouse. This sculpture is intended to be a monument to the test object of modern science, human kindís symbolic and literal stand-in personified. This human-scale, fleshy mouse, sculpted with the pathos of classical sculpture, stands in a gesture reminiscent of Christ revealing his wounds. Almost six feet tall he is nude (as is the oncomouse) and his flesh is a very convincing pale skin tone. Upon further inspection, however, one realizes the mouse/man is actually sculpted in flesh-colored marble. The lifelike sculpture and skin texture makes the sculpture oscillate between a living creature and a strong likeness, evoking the Pygmalion myth.

Back in 1997, a rather bizarre photograph suddenly became very famous. It showed a totally hairless mouse, with what appeared to be a human ear growing out of its back. That photograph prompted a wave of protest against genetic engineering, which continues today.

Gary Schneider
Genetic Self-Portrait: Irises, 2002

© Gary Schneider

This project stems from an intriguing offer Schneider received in 1996 to make photographs in response to some of the revolutionary discoveries that were emerging from the Human Genome Project, an international research team that is attempting to map the more than 100,000 genes that compose human DNA. Combining his interests in self-portraiture and biology, Schneider consulted with doctors and geneticists, examined diagnostic and forensic photographs, as well as X rays, radiographs, photograms and micrographs of specimen samples of various parts of his own body. Gary Schneider extends the self portrait beyond the figure in front of a camera and into the depths of the elemental nature of the individual.

Hair, 1997

© Gary Schneider

Tumor suppressor gene (MLL) on chromosome 11 and on Nucleus, 1997

© Gary Schneider

Chrissy Conant
Chrissy Caviar, 2002

White Sturgeon roe, or Beluga caviar, one of the world’s greatest delicacies, is usually marketed in metal tins or glass jars. I am reassigning the use of small, glass jars, in order to create a conceptual art object. By slightly adjusting the standard wording on the product label to reflect its new, unique contents, and replacing the usual image of a fish with a photograph of myself, reclining in elegant evening wear, I am creating a new product: Chrissy Caviar®, of the Human, Caucasian variety. Placed inside each jar there is, instead of fish roe, one of my eggs. Combined with human tubal fluid, each egg is anaerobically sealed inside the same sort of biology specimen research and transport tube that scientists use for mouse and human eggs and/or embryos (note: mouse and hamster eggs are physically and genetically similar to human eggs, and they are used by in-vitro fertilization labs for practice and research purposes). Each filled tube is suspended in a clear, viscous silicone-based liquid, inside each jar, and sealed. The series includes twelve jars, based on the idea of hens’ eggs being commercially packaged by the dozen.

www.chrissycaviar.com

Eduardo Kac
GFP Bunny, 2000

“Alba”, the green fluorescent bunny, is an albino rabbit. This means that, since she has no skin pigment, under ordinary environmental conditions she is completely white with pink eyes. Alba is not green all the time. She only glows when illuminated with the correct light. When (and only when) illuminated with blue light (maximum excitation at 488 nm), she glows with a bright green light (maximum emission at 509 nm). She was created with EGFP, an enhanced version (i.e., a synthetic mutation) of the original wild-type green fluorescent gene found in the jellyfish Aequorea Victoria. EGFP gives about two orders of magnitude greater fluorescence in mammalian cells (including human cells) than the original jellyfish gene.

The first phase of the “GFP Bunny” project was completed in February 2000 with the birth of “Alba” in Jouy-en-Josas, France. This was accomplished with the invaluable assistance of zoosystemician Louis Bec and scientists Louis-Marie Houdebine and Patrick Prunet. Alba’s name was chosen by consensus between my wife Ruth, my daughter Miriam, and myself. The second phase is the ongoing debate, which started with the first public announcement of Alba’s birth, in the context of the Planet Work conference, in San Francisco, on May 14, 2000. The third phase will take place when the bunny comes home to Chicago, becoming part of my family and living with us from this point on.
Alba is a healthy and gentle mammal. Contrary to popular notions of the alleged monstrosity of genetically engineered organisms, her body shape and coloration are exactly of the same kind we ordinarily find in albino rabbits. Unaware that Alba is a glowing bunny, it is impossible for anyone to notice anything unusual about her. Therefore Alba undermines any ascription of alterity predicated on morphology and behavioral traits. It is precisely this productive ambiguity that sets her apart: being at once same and different. The mystery and beauty of life is as great as ever when we realize our close biological kinship with other species and when we understand that from a limited set of genetic bases life has evolved on Earth with organisms as diverse as bacteria, plants, insects, fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals.

Alba is undoubtedly a very special animal, but I want to be clear that her formal and genetic uniqueness are but one component of the “GFP Bunny” artwork. The “GFP Bunny” project is a complex social event that starts with the creation of a chimerical animal that does not exist in nature (i.e., “chimerical” in the sense of a cultural tradition of imaginary animals, not in the scientific connotation of an organism in which there is a mixture of cells in the body) and that also includes at its core:
1) ongoing dialogue between professionals of several disciplines (art, science, philosophy, law, communications, literature, social sciences) and the public on cultural and ethical implications of genetic engineering;
2) contestation of the alleged supremacy of DNA in life creation in favor of a more complex understanding of the intertwined relationship between genetics, organism, and environment;
3) extension of the concepts of biodiversity and evolution to incorporate precise work at the genomic level;
4) interspecies communication between humans and a transgenic mammal;
5) integration and presentation of “GFP Bunny” in a social and interactive context;
6) examination of the notions of normalcy, heterogeneity, purity, hybridity, and otherness;
7) consideration of a non-semiotic notion of communication as the sharing of genetic material across traditional species barriers;
8) public respect and appreciation for the emotional and cognitive life of transgenic animals;
9) expansion of the present practical and conceptual boundaries of artmaking to incorporate life invention.

‘I will never forget the moment when I first held her in my arms, in Jouy-en-Josas, France, on April 29, 2000. My apprehensive anticipation was replaced by joy and excitement. Alba — the name given her by my wife, my daughter, and I — was lovable and affectionate and an absolute delight to play with. As I cradled her, she playfully tucked her head between my body and my left arm, finding at last a comfortable position to rest and enjoy my gentle strokes. She immediately awoke in me a strong and urgent sense of responsibility for her well-being’.

Savage
Back to the flock, 2003

Jumper, umpicked, rolled into a ball and left in a field somewhere.

Damien Hirst
Away from the Flock, 1994

Maarten Vanden Eynde
City of a thousand trades, 2007

Birmingham played a leading role as front runner for the Industrial Revolution, changing the world beyond recognition and paving the way for the largest population explosion in human history. In 1791, Arthur Young, the writer and commentator on British economic life described Birmingham as “the first manufacturing town in the world.” The Lunar Society, based in Birmingham, was the brain and fuel for the machine that powered the evolution of human civilization. The members of the Lunar Society were Matthew Boulton, Erasmus Darwin, Samuel Galton Junior, James Keir, Joseph Priestley, Josiah Wedgwood, James Watt, John Whitehurst and William Withering. More peripheral characters and correspondents included Sir Richard Arkwright, John Baskerville, Thomas Beddoes, Thomas Day, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Anna Seward, William Small, John Smeaton, Thomas Wedgwood, John Wilkinson, Joseph Wright, James Wyatt, Samuel Wyatt, and member of parliament John Levett.

In 2007 most of the manufacturing companies have moved out off Birmingham to other parts of the world where labor is cheaper. Together with the companies the knowledge to manufacture things is disappearing. In two generations there will be hardly anyone left who has the ability to make something. The Eastside area is being redeveloped and the predominant manufacturing business will be replaced by a service and culture oriented industry. Some huge factories are already transformed in yuppie-flats. I went around visiting every factory of Eastside to excavate the remnants of the manufacturing industry.

Above the Jennens road I only discovered university buildings and brain parks for the IT sector. In the middle there is Millenium Point and huge shopping areas surrounding the Bullring, one of the biggest shopping centers of the world. Everything is imported. Only in the south east, in Digbeth (the historical center and birthplace of Birmingham) I found manufacturing factories. Half of all the buildings is empty already, abandoned, to let. The others are scheduled to leave within a few years, some even in months. It felt like I was just in time to collect a few samples before it’s all gone. Like a contemporary archaeologist I wandered through the area to look for left overs. I asked the factory owners if they wanted to contribute to the collection of manufactured goods being made in Birmingham anno 2007. I wanted to preserve them for future archaeologists to discover. It was now or never.

The reactions were overwhelmingly positive. Somehow the necessity to preserve something of this important period in the history of Birmingham does not need much explanation. Almost 90% of all the manufacturing companies participated and did so by giving samples for free. The only three things I had to buy – because they were too valuable and too big – I got with a huge discount. After 30 seconds of suspicion I was welcomed very friendly and personal life stories came on the table accompanied with a cup of tea.
The stories were very consistent and similar: after having worked in the factory for all their lives, often even for several generations, it was not possible to compete with the cheap imported goods anymore. The rents became too high, hiring more people too expensive. The ground was to centrally located and therefor to valuable. They were simply bought out. Offers which they could not refuse… Or their children were not interested or skilled enough to take over the company. They all felt part of a disappearing tribe, the last generation of traditional workman.

I asked two pieces of each object, referring to Noach’s arch and proving somehow the multiplicity of it, the possibility to be mass produced and re-produced if needed. It takes two to tango… The objects are lined up, from small to big, marching to an uncertain future, destiny unknown.

‘I remember Birmingham being epitome of modernity… Birmingham was the future – in a sense it has been the future, but that bit of the future is worn out now and we need a new one’

[Will Alsop, architect]

Dan Havel and Dean Ruck
Inversion, 2005

A black hole is an object with a gravitational field so powerful that a region of space becomes cut off from the rest of the universe – no matter or radiation, including visible light, that has entered the region can ever escape. The lack of escaping electromagnetic radiation renders the inside of black holes (beyond the event horizon) invisible, hence the name. However, black holes can be detectable if they interact with matter, e.g. by sucking in gas from an orbiting star. The gas spirals inward, heating up to very high temperatures and emitting large amounts of light, X-rays and Gamma rays in the process while still outside of the event horizon.

While the idea of an object with gravity strong enough to prevent light from escaping was proposed in the 18th century, black holes as presently understood are described by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, developed in 1916. This theory predicts that when a large enough amount of mass is present within a sufficiently small region of space, all paths through space are warped inwards towards the center of the volume. When an object is compressed enough for this to occur, collapse is unavoidable (it would take infinite strength to resist collapsing into a black hole). When an object passes within the event horizon at the boundary of the black hole, it is lost forever (it would take an infinite amount of effort for an object to climb out from inside the hole). Although the object would be reduced to a singularity, the information it carries is not lost.

While general relativity describes a black hole as a region of empty space with a pointlike singularity at the center and an event horizon at the outer edge, the description changes when the effects of quantum mechanics are taken into account. The final, correct description of black holes, requiring a theory of quantum gravity, is unknown.

Simulated view of a black hole in front of the Milky Way. The hole has 10 solar masses and is viewed from a distance of 600 km. An acceleration of about 400 million g is necessary to sustain this distance constantly.

Jeroen Jongeleen
influenza / city jewels, 1998-2007

more works

Four Framed Hardstone Panels
English (in imitation of an Italian typology)

Getty Center, Los Angeles

Based on a type of inlay dating to the 15oos, specimen plaques such as these were popular from the 1700s as celebrations of nature’s beauty and of the human ability to classify such marvels scientifically.

Wim Delvoye
Marble Floors, 1999

Known for his exceptional transformations of images and objects using processes typically associated with the applied arts (i.e. wood-carving, stained glass, tattoo), Delvoye in his “Marble Floors” has photographed “charcuterie”– precision cut salami, chorizo, mortadella and ham, arranged in geometric patterns based on Italian Baroque and Islamic motifs. The visceral and sometimes unsettling effect this body of work can have on a viewer is balanced by the perfect order and rhythmic harmony of these familiar Baroque and Islamic patterns.

Jan Fabre
De benen van de rede ontveld, 2000
(Legs stripped from reason)

Jan Fabre is an artist, theatre-maker and author. He was born in Antwerp in 1958. In the late seventies he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Art and the Municipal Institute of Decorative Arts and Crafts in Antwerp. His first works date from that period. Jan Fabre makes installations, sculptures, drawings, films and performances. Over the years he has built up a sizeable body of work and has become internationally acclaimed.
In 2000 he wrapped the respectable columns of the Aula University building in Ghent, Belgium with layers of ham. Slowly the ham started to rot and turned green of fungi, imitating the marble structure even more. The commotion was incredible. The citizens of Ghent complained that it was such a waste of good food (thinking of all the poor people around). Initially the exhibition organisation replied that it was secondary Parma ham, ready to thrown away anyway, but the Parma ham company declared that they don’t have secondary ham. All their ham is prime meat! When the smell was unbearable, the work was removed.

Maarten Vanden Eynde
Preservation of the Berlin Wall, 2007

The Berlin Wall, known in the Soviet Union and in the German Democratic Republic as the “Anti-Fascist Protective Rampart,” was a separation barrier between West Berlin and East Germany, which closed the border between East and West Berlin for 28 years. Construction on the Berlin Wall began on August 13, 1961, and it was dismantled in the weeks following November 9, 1989. The Wall was over 155 km (96 miles) long. A no man’s land was created between the barriers, which became widely known as the “death strip”. It was paved with raked gravel, making it easy to spot footprints left by escapees; it offered no cover; it was booby-trapped with tripwires; and, most importantly, it offered a clear field of fire to the watching guards.

Over the years, the Wall went through four distinct phases:

1. Basic wire fence (1961)
2. Improved wire fence (1962-1965)
3. Concrete wall (1965-1975)
4. Grenzmauer 75 (Border Wall 75) (1975-1989)

The “fourth generation wall”, known officially as “Stützwandelement UL 12.11″(Retaining wall element UL 12.11), was the final and most sophisticated version of the Wall. Begun in 1975 and completed about 1980, it was constructed from 45,000 separate sections of reinforced concrete, each 3.6 m high and 1.2 m wide, and cost 16,155,000 East German Marks. The top of the wall was lined with a smooth pipe, intended to make it more difficult for escapers to scale it. It was reinforced by mesh fencing, signal fencing, anti-vehicle trenches, barbed wire, over 116 watchtowers, and twenty bunkers. This version of the Wall is the one most commonly seen in photographs, and surviving fragments of Wall in Berlin and elsewhere around the world are generally pieces of the fourth-generation Wall.

Maarten Vanden Eynde, Berlin Wall, 2006

‘For the exhibition Turn to Stone in the Museo Mineralogico Campano I send a postcard to the museum containing a small plastic box with a piece of the Berlin Wall. I donated the work to the director with the specific question to preserve the Berlin Wall by adopting the piece in the permanent collection. He agreed and from now on the postcard stands in the display surrounded by other mineral stones.
The small stone contains the story of the whole wall and preserves an important part of human history. It represents World War II, the cold war, communisms and all the personal stories that are connected to the Berlin Wall. It’s a memory of the past for the future.’

Simon Starling

The British artist Simon Starling refers to objects or individuals in his projects, which embody the possibilities and ideas of Modernism. Based on extensive research, he elucidates the meaning of the vocabulary of Modernism, as well as the structures, on which this myth is based. By transforming auratically charged objects, reconstructing them or transferring them to different contexts and materials, he questions their original intentions and conditions. In this, unlike the avant-garde that focused on a break with history, his new definitions stress the continuation of history and its variations.

Rescued Rhododendrons, 2000, Filmstill

Playing with contextual shifts also characterizes Starling’s project “Rescued Rhododendrons”, in which a historical development is reversed, and which Simon Starling shows as a video installation in the gallery of Secession. The video work deals with returning the plant “Rhododendron ponticum” to its original site. Imported from the south of Spain to the north of Scotland in the mid-18th century, it is considered a weed there today. In the course of an announcement for a sculpture project in the
Scottish landscape, Simon Starling learned that the rhododendrons were to be uprooted and destroyed, so that they would not alter the original heathland ecosystem. Starling counteracted this plan and set out with the plants – in a red Volvo 240 Estate as transportation – on a rescue mission to return them to their original homeland.