Leonardo
Genetic Art and the Aesthetics of Biology Author(s): Steve Tomasula Reviewed work(s): Source: Leonardo, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2002), pp. 137-144 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1577194 . Accessed: 26/03/2012 18:57 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
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GENERAL
ARTICLE
Genetic
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Art
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Biology SteveTomasula
Thingskeepgettingcuriouserand curiouser -Alice, after chasing a rabbit down its hole and finding herself in Wonderland Art Expo, Sometime Soon: Gallery dealers yawn as the usual assortment of people with tattoos (artists), face-lifts (collectors) and natural bodies (tourists) move about the usual assortment of looping video, modernist antiques and mice that chirp bird songs. Sound far fetched? It may not be, given the birth of Alba, a rabbit genetically engineered to glow green. Created by Chicago artist Eduardo Kac, Alba, the first mammal genetically altered to be a work of art, was to have been part of a performed social event entitled GFPBunny.In it, Kac and the rabbit were to live together first in a faux living room within the Grenier a Sel in Avignon, France, then with Kac's real family in his real home in Chicago. What happened instead was that Alba was confiscated by the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, the research lab in which Kac's biologist collaborators worked; the lead biologist himself was reprimanded. The public debate Kac hoped to generate did ensue, however, with some members of the French and German press equating Alba's confiscation with artistic censorship and others characterizing Alba as a work of decadent art, citing the fact that the rabbit was given the ability to glow by infusing its cells with the protein that allows jellyfish to glow under the sea. The lab now has a new director, so Alba may yet come to Chicago. But in any case, the discussion is sure to widen, as Kac is at the leading edge of a growing number of artists who work in genes, cells and other biological materials as a sculptor might work in bronze [1]. Manipulating a medium that ranges from bacteria and molds to plants to animals, artists such asJoe Davis, David Kremers, George Gessert, Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr, Brandon Ballengee, Andrea Zittel, Laurie Stein, Natalie Jeremijenko and Antero Kare fashion biological objets d'art, memento mori or living artworkslike Alba-animals or other organisms whose bodies serve as sites of artistic performance [2]. As did early photographers, these artists work close to the development of the techniques they use, often collaborating with biologists. Also similar to early photography, the practice is spreading partly because increasing familiarity with lab technique allows it to, but also because it speaks to its cultural moment, specifically the widespread belief that because of the breathtaking pace of biotechnology, "our way of life," as culture criticJeremy Rifkin puts it, "islikely to be more
ABSTRACT
The creation ofAlba,the firstmammal genetically engineeredto be a workofart, accentstheincreasing number of artistswhotakeas their medium plants,cells,genesand otherbiological materials. Like traditional artists,thesebioartistsraisetraditional art issues;butsincetheirwork thegapbetween art collapses andscience,representation and form,theyalsomarry biological therichtradition ofmanipulating nature foraesthetic reasons,the ethicalcomplexities createdby biotech revolution and today's thehistorical ramifications of aesthetic to judgment applying humans.
fundamentally transformed in the next several decades than in the previous one thousand years" [3]. By stripping bio-science of its pragmatic function and recontextualizing it as aesthetics, gene artists reanimate issues Duchamp would have appreciated, especially those of authorship and originality, and the nature and purpose of art (Fig. 1). But since these traditional art concerns are figured within the context of our very biology, genetic
Fig. 1. Stratagene ad in Nature (14 March 1996). (? Stratagene) While Duchamp may have dismissed tradition by painting a mustache onto a copy of the Mona Lisa, today the avant-garde seems to have relocated to the biotech lab, ushering in an age where science will be able not only to copy the actual model, but also to modify her genes so that she could grow an actual mustache.
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LEONARDO, Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 137-144, 2002
137
Fig. 2. Hugo De Vries, one of the rediscoverers of Mendel's theory of trait propagation, standing beside an Amorphophallus titanum. (Photo: C.G.G.J. van Steenis. ? Library of the Biological Centre, Faculty of Science, University of Amsterdam.) Mendel's thinking figured prominently in biological folk art.
look to the future to see genetic art."Exotic orchids, hairless Chihuahuas and numerous other plants and animals developed for aesthetic reasons "constitute a vast unacknowledged genetic folk art... stretching back thousands of years" [4] (Fig. 2). Darwin himself drew on the aesthetics of breeding to support his theory of natural selection. Identifying the "astonishing variety"of pigeons as a good test case, Darwin joined two of London's pigeon clubs and kept every breed he could obtain. Studying the numerous aesthetic differences altered by pigeon fanciers, including variations in size, habits, plumage, egg shape, voice, color, disposition and manner of flight, as well as those markersbelow surface differences such as skeletal arrangement, he concludedagainst the opinion of the time-that these radically different pigeons were all descended from the rock pigeon (Columbalivia). More germane to this discussion, Darwin noted that the enormous variation in many domestic animals was the result of "adaptation,not... to the animal's or plant's own good, but simply because man found one kind of plant or animal 'beautiful in his eyes."' Or, as one of the breeders he quotes put it, selection is "'the magician's wand, by means of which he may summon into life whatever form and mould he pleases"' [5].
art fundamentally erodes the boundary between art and nature. By collapsing the metaphor of art as a mirror on life with life itself, by making art that mirrors biological processes and the network of OUT OF THE FIELD AND INTO commercial concerns that configure our THE MOMA dawning biological age, gene artists enMyintentionis to tellof bodieschanged/ Todifferentforms... gage questions raised by their scientific/corporate/government -Ovid, Metamorphoses counterparts: What does it mean to alter a natural evolutionary process millions of years old? How will people think of Plant Aesthetics themselves, and their relation to others, As might be expected, the first recognionce boundaries such as "plant"and "an- tion of the aesthetics of biology as a form imal" have been eroded? How will we of high art rather than folk art came with think of conventions such as "human- the breakdown of genres precipitated by ness" once we are able to customize peo- modernism. In the wake of the Museum ple? In short, as Kac's GFPBunny asks, of Modern Art's 1934 show MachineArt, what does it mean for a society to bring photographer and flower breeder Edinto existence a rabbit that glows green? ward Steichen mounted a solo exhibition at MoMA of his genetically altered delphiniums: flowers that he had experiGENETIC FOLK ART mented on for 26 years, "using living materials,"as he put it, "to make poetry." Whyhas manjust thesespeciesof animalsfor his neighbor;as if nothing but The results were flowers of gigantic size a mousecould havefilled this crevice? and colors never seen before, which were described by reviewers as "breathtaking." -Henry David Thoreau At the heart of Steichen's success were the genetic mutations he was able to inAs genetic artist and flower breeder duce in his plants through the use of George Gessert says, "Wedon't have to colchicine, a drug that he was by coinci-
138
Tomasula,Genetic Art and the Aesthetics of Biology
aII Fig. 3. Brandon Ballengee, Hymenochirus Morphfrom HBAB#4 1 (detail, cleared and stained by Stanley Sessions, Hartwick College). (? Brandon Ballengee) Biological folk art gives way to conceptual art that uses biology: In HymenochirusCurtipes,Ballengee attempts to breed living frogs "backwards" to re-create a species that was once common in Congo but is now believed to be extinct. One of his specimens is shown.
dence taking for his gout. Applying the drug to plants, Steichen was able to double their chromosome count and thereby circumvent a naturallyoccurring fire wall against the propagation of mutation: the fact that hybrids are often sterile. Or as Steichen explained, by forcing normally sterile experimental plants to be fertile, he was able to force the flow of "nature's progress" to 'jump its banks and find a new outlet" [6]. These new outlets were worksof art that Steichen considered as original as his photos. And as with his photos, he sought to use his delphiniums as vehicles to make high art popular, the seeds he created functioning-like photos-as multiples. (Significantly,Steichen wasalso co-curator of MoMA'sFamilyof Man photo exhibit, an exhibit meant in part to demonstrate the biological relation of all people.) Prophetically, he saw what an open book the breeding of life forms as art could be, recognizing that artists after him would "bringus flowers beyond any of our present concepts or imaginings" [7].
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manipulation of Darwinian principles, chickens can be improved. In this case, only those chickens that are the best fliers will be able to breed. Presumably, if the offspring of the better-flying chickens were themselves recycled through Zittel's BreedingUnit, a superior breed of chickens would eventually emerge. Stripped as it is of commercial concerns, though, Zittel's Breeding Unit simultaneously asks, better for what?-and by so doing foregrounds the motivation for manipulating any animal's heredity, be it for commercial gain, or aesthetic judgment. Darwin himself pointed out how hens were bred to be an anomaly-a bird that doesn't fly well-so that they might be better brooders [8]. Since those that can fly are less willing to hatch eggs, and since these inefficient breeders are usually slaughtered, Zittel's BreedingUnit shows how contingent on circumstance "better" breeding can be. That is, the landscape her "window on the world" portrays is a biological practice that she parodies in order to make visible its own inherent complexities.
Animal Aesthetics The body of a Flemish Giant Rabbit should have a "mandolin"shape. The fur should beglossy,and full of brightness. Sevencolorsare recognized:black, blue,fawn, lightgray.... -American Rabbit Breeders Association, JudgingFlemish Giant Rabbits By bending nature to aesthetic taste and functional need, people have created some 66 breeds of domestic rabbits, 136 breeds of dogs, 40 breeds of catsand, of course, numerous other animals-even though the inbreeding associated with the creation of "purebreds" sometimes creates health problems, e.g. the congenital hip disease suffered by a disproportionate number of German shepherds. It is this nexus of function/aesthetics, as well as actual biological/aesthetic practice, that informs artworks such as Brandon Ballengee's HymenochirusCurtipes(Fig. 3), or Andrea Zittel's BreedingUnitforReassigningFlight. Designed like an "experiment" in selective breeding, Zittel's installation is constructed so that chickens must fly through increasingly higher portals in order to lay their eggs. Its clinically minimalist arrangement of partitions and nesting boxes stands as a stark schematic of the implication that through human
GENETIC ENGINEERING-
JUST ANOTHER NAME FOR BREEDING? They are all advancing every day towardsa goal with whichtheyare unacquainted.
Fig. 5. Illustrationfrom GalvinEltonFos-
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theFeatures. Fromclassicaldisquisitionson the proportionsof the ideal bodyto contemporaryclaimsthatbiologyexplainswhyMiss America'ship-to-waist ratiohas remaineda constant0.7 over the years,people have
always passed judgment on the aesthetics of the human form, and linked them to nonaesthetic qualities. Here, pencil renderings are used to map character on the shape of jaw lines: "1. Lower jaw projecting... This is the face of the degenerate, one with hatred and murder lurking in his heart. 2. Short upper lip-excessively nervous temperament, wanting in control, excitable. In a woman it shows a person inclined to be hysterical; usually of artistic and literary ability" [30].
-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracyin America One assertion often heard from both the gen-tech and gen-art communities is that the genetic engineering of plants and animals is just an extension of the genetic folk art long practiced by animal and plant breeders. And, of course, there are parallels between animals that have been genetically engineered in a lab and those created by selective breeding, e.g. mules or Pekinese dogs. Yet the blue roses being developed by Calgene Pacific of Australia [9] or the headless frogs developed at Bath University in England as a possible model for the creation of headless human organ donors [10] tell a different story. Unlike Zittel's BreedingUnit, genetic manipulation allows biological steps to be skipped in ways they never could through natural selection (Fig. 4). Also unlike Breeding Unit, not every step in these processes need make evolutionary sense. So while Steichen would repeatedly grow and
plow under whole fields of flowers in his search for a single mutation that could be incorporated into the delphinium line, his genetic-engineering counterpart has an increasing repertoire of mutations he or she can incorporate at will-none of which need make any sense other than the satisfaction of some "fancy."Bio-engineers can press the fastforward button on evolution, or pause it by creating a sidestep, exact duplicates, as in the MissyplicityProject, a program at Texas A&M to clone Missy, the pet of a $2.3 million anonymous donor [11]. More profoundly, the ability to cross species-plants and animals that could never breed together-allows for creatures that Darwin's pigeon club could never have fancied, e.g. the human/cow embryos developed in the search for offthe-rack human organs, or tomatoes that carry the gene of a deep-water cod fish to make them less susceptible to freezing [12].
Tomasula,Genetic Art and the Aesthetics of Biology
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That is, all life, be it a tumbler-pigeon, cow, tomato or human, is composed of the same four-letter genetic alphabet: the chemical bases adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine, abbreviated as A, G, C and T. This simple fact means that the genetic manipulation of one species has direct implications for all others. Indeed, as genetic engineering practices become more common, and as the language of gene splicing and plant and animal modification takes its place in everyday parlance, it becomes increasingly clear that people are finding it less natural to think of species as independent entities. In the popular press, in our everyday conversation and in the lab, a mindset can be seen developing in which animals and plants are discussed as if they were particular arrangements of data that can be patented, sorted and rearranged. Thus, when a lab at the University of California at San Francisco found the genetic "switch"to aging in roundworms, human minds naturally drift to their own mortality, their own switch [13]. Similarly, analogies made through genetic art take on the immediacy of nonfiction. Their truths become not only poetically true, but literallytrue. The aesthetics of genetic art are inextricably bound up with the genetics of humans, the aesthetics of humans-and the motives to act on those aesthetics.
140
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Fig. 7. At the on-line auction site Ron's Angels, bidders can pay up to $150,000 for the eggs of "Venuses"-women with the aesthetic features of models-in order to, as the site puts it, create "a better-looking version of you" <http://www.ronsangels.com>. (? Ron Harris, used with permission)
that were to make a reality of the Aryan aesthetics depicted by artists Arno EVOLUTION/REPRODUCTION/ Breker, Joseph Thorak and others [15] BREEDING (Fig. 6). But it is important to remember The art of a culture alwaysmanifests what that before Nazi Germany set out on its that culture values in the aesthetics of the eugenic course, the forced sterilization human form, be it the fleshy bodies of of "undesirables,"as well as a number of Peter Paul Rubens or the chiseled female other eugenic programs, had already bodybuilder Robert Mapplethorpe re- been adopted by nine other nations, inpeatedly photographed. As every artist cluding the United States, where those knows, to represent a body is to comment deemed to carry a genetically inferior inupon it. But this relationship is recipro- heritance (e.g. a propensity for a variety cal; the aesthetic beliefs fostered by art of undesirable characteristics from feearejust as often articulated within the site blemindedness to moral laxity) were of real bodies. barred from immigrating. Conversely,orIn the nineteenth century, Sir Francis dinary American "worthies"competed in Galton, Darwin's uncle and a pioneer in Fitter Family contests held at state fairs in which, like livestock, whole families fingerprinting and statistical science, turned to England's National Portrait were judged on the basis of their aesGallery for evidence of what he suspected thetics for breeding desirability, and was a degeneration in the English "breed- which survive today in the form of Miss ing stock."Noting among other evidence Illinois contests, Miss Indiana contests that the cheekbones painted in Hans and all the other Miss State contests leadHolbein's time (ca. 1540) were higher ing up to the national Miss America than those painted during his own life championship [16]. It was not until the atrocities of Nazi (1822-1911), Galton argued for British "worthies"to protect themselves from ge- concentration camps were exposed that netic extinction through the implemen- eugenics fell out of favor [17]. When it tation of the science he fathered and did, a number of journals and institunamed "eugenics" [14] (Fig. 5). Today tions, such as TheAnnals of Eugenicsand we associate eugenic thinking with its full the Laboratory for National Eugenics, flowering in Nazi sterilization and elimi- dropped the word from their titles, in nation programs, as well as the youth in- these two cases becoming the Annals of doctrination and SS breeding programs Human Geneticsand the Galton Labora-
THE AESTHETICS OF HUMAN
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Fig. 9. Eduardo Kac, Genesis,1999. (? Eduardo Kac. Photo ? Otto Saxinger.) View of engineered bacteria, Biblical text and the DNA code that carries the text.
Fig. 8. Joe Davis, Microvenus,1987. (? Joe Davis) An icon of Venus, genetically coded.
tory, even if some continued to study the relations between biology, aesthetics and behavior [18]. Related concepts such as "genetic hygiene" matured into the language of "genetic counseling," with its natal screening for gender and a rapidly increasing number of the 4,000-5,000 known genetic diseases [19]. As suggested by artists Karl Mihail and Tran T. Kim-Trang'sCreativeGeneHarvestArchive, an ongoing work that claims to bring together thousands of genetic samples taken from creative people, the concept of the "best"genetic profile cannot help but echo all efforts to improve people, including aesthetic ideals in the form of hair texture or bodily proportions [20]. To put the implications of genetic art and human bodies in today's context, it helps to remember that every year approximately 149,000 Americans pay an average of $1,500 to have their hips reduced; 62,000 face lifts are performed at an average cost of $4,700 each. In sum, close to 2 million people, or one in every 150 people in the U.S., will undergo aesthetic surgeries such as laser or chemical skin smoothing, breast augmentation, thigh and/or buttock lifts, tummy tucks, nose reshaping, ear repositioning, foreskin reconstruction, penile enlargements and implants, hair transplants and other procedures [21]. And this list does not include ordinary tattooing and piercing, or those would-be parents who bid up to $150,000 in on-line auctions for the eggs of women with the features of a fashion model (Fig. 7). Combined with similar statistics from other countries, a picture develops of how normal it is for people
in industrialized nations to spend a lot of money on shaping their bodies. And it is not just a matter of money. Anyone who has seen video of the French artist Orlan's plastic-surgery performances knows of the bleeding and pain that can be involved. Still, the operations Orlan undergoes as art have become so commonplace that she has had to have silicon bumps implanted in her head as a way to distinguish her aesthetic project from those of non-artists such as Cindy Jackson, who underwent some 27 operations simply because she wanted to have the proportions of a Barbie doll [22]. From the Stone Age Venusof Willendorf to the Renaissance Venusde Milo to contemporary idealizations/deformations of the human form, then, the art of the body and particularly biological art reverberates with the traditional resonance between art, human aesthetics, technology and other non-aesthetic practices. But as with the difference between traditional breeding and genetic engineering, the linkage between bio-art and science changes in kind, not just in degree, when both spheres overlap to create Venus herself, be it through in-vitro fertilization of eggs bought at auction, or the genetic manipulation Joe Davis performed on bacteria to create his Microvenus:a genetic artwork that bears within its DNA an encoded icon of Venus (Fig. 8). By translating Davis's schematiclike sketch of the female figure into an artist gene, a length of human-made DNA whose sequence of amino acids carries the code for this figure, Davis narrows the divide between art and non-art,
particularly bio-engineering. By placing this synthetic gene within living bacteria and thereby creating an art/organism hybrid, Davis raises issues of traditional representation, not least of all the act of using the vulva (one possible reading of the resulting image) as a stand-in for the complete female form. But he also erodes the distinction between art and nature in the way pioneered by Orlan, who undergoes her aesthetic surgeries in part to "preparethe world for widespread genetic engineering" [23]. The process used to create Microvenuscould well be incorporated into the engineering of a human Venus, the "micro"of Davis's title implying that beauty lies not so much in the eye or any surface feature as it does at the level of the genome. Once the human genome is sufficiently known to allow hospitals to accurately knock in or knock out the genes responsible for particular characteristics such as facial symmetry, Davis's Microvenussuggestively asks,will parents elect to not use the technology? In a world of beautiful people, will the refusal to do so constitute an act of irresponsibility? Once we can manipulate our own appearances genetically,will we be able to resist?The billions of dollars (not to mention the pain) spent each year on tattooing and aesthetic surgery says otherwise. And if the manipulation of genes for aesthetic purposes comes to pass,will designer colors follow? Delphinium-purple eyes? How about a human that glows in the dark? When asked why one would clone a woolly mammoth, as the DiscoveryChannel is attempting to do with DNA from one of the
Tomasula,Genetic Art and the Aesthetics of Biology
141
The community voice with which a court speaks underscores the fact that it is societies that determine how a given technology-or art-is received. A society of people and how they understand themselves is at the heart of all such controversies, be they the neo-eugenic practices of a commercial fertility clinic, the privacyissues surrounding an individual's cells, or those of the biopiracy that the Third World accuses the First of engaging in by reaping millions of dollars after patenting biological resources found only in their rain forests. Thus, some of the more telling examples of genetic art are those works, such as Eduardo Kac's interactive installation Genesis,that address the relationship between society and its manipulation of life (Fig. 9). Entering the exhibition space of Genesis (1999), the viewer stands before a magnified projection of bacteria in a petri dish. Like the bacteria in Davis'sMicrovenus,these bacterial bodies are written in the same genetic language as our bodies, as are all bodies, even if some of them carry a synthetic gene Kac fashioned by arranging genetic material to encode the quote from the biblical book -' i...iii:. of Genesis excerpted above. The artistry and significance of Genesis is not in Kac'screation of aesthetic objects, however. Rather, its meaning unfolds as its viewers participate in the social situation he has orchestrated. Visiting Genesisat home via the Internet, or by using a computer in the gallery that is :~,...o~..~-. Fig. process by 10. which The Kac proposed to create the glowing dog GFP K-:...-.---f.: networked through the Internet, likewise i progress, 199&present, (O Eduardo Kac)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.... :"'"i. ' '? viewers constitute a worldwide community that is able to operate an ultraviolet light trained on the petri dish. When they do, the petri dish flashes blue as if animated by a primordial spark, the bacteria glow. Those bacteria that carry the Fig. 10. The process by which Kac proposed to create the glowing dog GFP K-9, work in text of Genesis as part of their bodies give progress, 1998-present. (? Eduardo Kac) off cyan light; those without it give off yellow. More importantly, as viewers activate 10,000-year-oldbeasts found preserved in when artist Larry Miller publishes his Ge- the ultraviolet light they become Kac's ice, one paleontologist working on the netic CodeCertificate,in which he states, co-authors by accelerating the natural "I... hereby forever copyright my unique mutation rate of the bacteria, changing project responded, "Whynot?" [24]. genetic code, however it may be scientif- both bodies and encoded message as Kac ically determined, described or otherwise demonstrates when at the end of the exPLAYING GOD? empirically expressed,"he is notjust mak- hibit he translates the synthetic DNA Let man have dominion over thefish of ing a hypothetical assertion [25]. For we code back into English: read Miller's Certificatewith the knowlthe sea, and over thefowl of the air, and LET AAN HAVEDOMINIONOVER over every living thing that moves upon edge that the Universityof California and THE FISH OF THE SEAAND OVER two of its researchers patented a patient's the earth. THE FOWLOF THE AIRAND OVER cells without his knowledge, then sold this EERYLIVING THINGTHATIOVESUA -Genesis information to, among others, Genetic EONTHEEARTH Inc. for 75,000 shares of stock and In an age when people are increasingly Need it be said? Commerce abhors a $330,000. In an appeal, the California vacuum-and already a plethora of com- Supreme Court ruled that the patient, looking to chromosome stains to explain panies have applied for over 100,000 named John Moore, had no property the difference between Cain and Abel, patents on genes or parts of genes. So rights over the tissues of his body [26]. Kac's Genesisputs his audience in a posi*
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Fig. 11. Cartoon by Gatrevens in Kladderadatsch,Germany, 1933. From Plato to Jesse Helms, art that does not affirm a particular set of values or politics is often deemed "decadent."
tion to consider tradition-or its erasure-as one factor in their response to the biological course we are just beginning to navigate. The evolution that viewers communally alter underscores how the use of technology is not always planned, its consequences not always foreseen, nor benign.
To BE CONTINUED Wow!Don 'tyajust lovethenewMillennium! -Reply of a nine-year-old girl when told that a rabbit with her name had been engineered to glow green The cloning of Dolly the sheep may have symbolized one of those rare shifts in world-perspective similar to that of the
first pictures of earth from space. But the speed with which cloning, fashion tattoos, cyborgs, Pokemon (pocket monster), prosthetic makeup, transgenic food and the whole body-alteration business has been absorbed into the culture would be amazing if it were not for the fact that we were so obviously ready for the revolution when it came. Still, it is often surprising to learn how far out in front of the general public the avant-gardeof the lab can be. The techniques used to create genetic art are themselves well known, even commonplace in the world of the labs where they were created. For example, the technique used by Kac and Davis to inject E. colibacteria with artificial DNA has been in use in labs since the 1970s. Mammals that glow have been in existence for about 5 years in the form of mice, for example, with fluorescent tu-
mors that could be studied without the need to kill the mice and perform an autopsy [27]. So if the controversy caused by genetic art like Kac's rabbit is due to anything, it is due to the fact that science has become just that-art. Following the plan Kac originally devised to create a glowing dog titled GFP K-9,his biologist collaborators Louis Bec, Louis Marie Houdebine and Patrick Prunet first used an artificial mutation of a gene from a Pacific Northwestjellyfish (Fig. 10). Called GFP for Green Fluorescent Protein, the name refers to the fact that cells carrying this protein will glow a bright green when exposed to blue light. By introducing this gene into a fertilized rabbit egg, Kac's associates were able to introduce jellyfish DNA into the germ line of an albino rabbit, that is, a rabbit that usually has white hair, pink eyes and no skin pigment. Just as browneyed parents with a blue-eyed ancestor will sometimes give birth to a blue-eyed child, the albino rabbit that had been impregnated with eggs carrying GFP DNA gave birth to one rabbit that appears white until exposed to blue light, whereupon it gives off a bright green glow. This was Alba, the centerpiece of Kac's installation GFPBunny. As with the bacteria in Genesis,Kac's rabbit is not so much an art object as an art organism that Kac hopes to integrate into society, starting with his own family. By doing so, he would have underscored how much a part of our normal, domestic lives genetic engineering has become, for all its extraordinary implications. Alba eats, sleeps and interacts with humans as any rabbit would, even if at the same time she is the Eve of a new line of glowing, transgenic mammal-jellyfish. By focusing attention on societal change that often takes us unawares, Kac's project, like all art that questions the status quo, inherently draws critical attention to itself. Alba, like Davis's Venus, like other works of genetic art, will not be used to research cancer or any other medical condition. And since they are "useless," they are seen as "decadent"-as decadent as the ornamental, i.e. non-pragmatic, goldfish and flowers destroyed by the Red Guard during Mao's Cultural Revolution (Fig. 11). Yet in place of the discussion inspired by this decadent art, there is too often the rationale of the multinational company, the research lab, the specialist. In discussing a plan that would allow people to use headless clones of themselves for spare parts, one biologist expressed the narrowness of consideration that
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seems all too common in the world of many specialists, in this case that "there are no ethical issues because you are not doing harm to anyone" [28]. Journals are filled with examples of the inability (or refusal) of the specialist to look beyond the immediate concerns of the lab or the research grant. The exclusion of lay audiences from these discussions leaves the void to be filled by the concerns of commerce, which can be notoriously focused on short-term gain, even if in the aggregate their ramifications are far reaching and only break into public consciousness after they have permeated the culture (e.g. the surprise many Americans express when they learn that 60% of the processed food they eat already contains some genetically modified ingredients). This is not to say, of course, that genetic art owns the moral high ground. Intention in art, even noble intention, doesn't go very far. And works such as GFPBunny canjust as easily be read as assaults on the intrinsic value of any species. As the of Robert Indiana's boutique-ization LOVE sculpture can attest, any art form can be pressed into any sort of service. And just as there is modernist kitsch, there will be genetic kitsch, genetic propaganda, and a multitude of other "useful" forms. But at this particular moment, the witness genetic art bears to the changes taking place in our species deserves attention. For, as evidenced by the recent insertion by scientists of Alba's green-glowing, rabbit nee jellyfish gene into a line of primates-that class of animals that includes humans-change is occurring, whether artistsjoin in the discussion or not [29].
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References
and Notes
1. See Eduardo Kac, "GFPBunny,"LeonardoElectronic Almanac, 10 October 2000; <http://mitpress2. mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/BKISSUES/archive.html>. 2. For an overview of these and other bio-artists see the exhibitions and archive at Genomic Art <http:// www.geneart.org>. 3. Jeremy Rifkin, The BioTechCentury (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1988) p. 1. 4. George Gessert, "Notes on Genetic Art," Leonardo 26, No. 3, 205-211 (1993). 5. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species(New York: Random House, 1993) pp. 39-50. Originally published 1859. 6. RonaldJ. Gedrim, "EdwardSteichen's 1936 Exhibition of Delphinium Blooms," HistoryofPhotography 17, No. 4 (1993) p. 356.
19. Kevles [16] pp. 252-253. 20. Gerfried Stocker and Christine Schopf, eds., Life Science:ArsElectonica99 (New York:Springer-Verlag Wien, 1999) p. 334; Leonardo, Gallery 34, No. 3 (2001) p. 184. 21. The American Society of Plastic Surgery Statistics <http://www.plasticsurgery.org> (15 November 2000); Sander L. Gilman, Making theBodyBeautiful: A CulturalHistoryof AestheticSurgery(Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1999) pp. 4-6. 22.Jacqueline Urla and Alan C. Swedlund, "The Anthropometry of Barbie,"inJennifer Terry andJaqueline Urla, eds., Deviant Bodies (Bloomington, IN: Indiana Univ. Press, 1995) pp. 298-300. Number of surgeries updated in Guinness WorldRecords2000 (New York:Bantam Books, 2000) p. 253. 23. Gilman [21] p. 323. 24. Larry Agenbroad, quoted in Talbot [11] p. 22.
8. Darwin [5] pp. 175, 325.
25. Larry Miller, quoted in Dorthy Nelkin, "The Gene as a Cultural Icon," in Stocker and Schopf [20] p. 245.
9. DavidBarboza,"Ground-LevelGenetics, for the Perfect Lawn,"TheNew YorkTimes(9July 2000), National section, p. 18.
26. Andrew Kimbrell, TheHuman BodyShop:TheEngineeringand MarketingofLife(San Francisco:HarperSanFrancisco, 1993) pp. 207-209.
7. Gedrim [6].
10. Rifkin [3] p. 31.
27. Yount [12] pp. 93-106.
11. Margot Talbot, "Clone of Silence," New YorkTimes Magazine(16 April 2000) p. 21.
28. Rifkin [3] p. 31.
12. For an overview, see Lisa Yount, Biotechnology and GeneticEngineering(New York:Facts on File, 2000). 13. Karen Hopkin, "Making Methuselah," Scientific American10, No. 3 (Fall 1999) p. 32. 14. Francis Galton, Inquiriesinto Human Facultyand Its Development(London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1928) pp. 4-5, 211-220. Originally published 1907. 15. George L. Hersy, TheEvolutionofAllure:SexualSelectionfromtheMediciVenusto theIncredibleHulk (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996) pp. 160-161. 16. DanielJ. Kevles, In theName of Eugenics:Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity(New York: Knopf, 1985) pp. 60-61. 17. Ellen A. Brantlinger, Sterilizationof Peoplewith MentalDisabilities:Issues,Perspectives and Cases(Westport, CT: Auburn House, 1995) p. 32. 18. Martin Brookes, Geta Gripon Genetics(East Sussex, U.K.: Ivy Press, 1998) p. 59.
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29. A.W.S. Chan, KY. Chong, C. Martinovich et al., "Transgenic Monkeys Produced by Retroviral Gene Transfer into Mature Oocytes," Science 291, No. 5502, 309-312 (2001). For further reading see also George Gessert's valuable Art and Genetics Bibliography in Leonardo On-Line <http://mitpress2. mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/spec.projects/ art+biobiblio.html>. 30. Galvin Elton Fosbroke, CharacterReadingthrough Analysis of the Features(New York: Putnam, 1914).
Manuscript received 25 October 2000.
Steve Tomasula is a fiction writer and critic who teaches in the program for writers at the University of NotreDame. His recentessays on art and culture have appeared in the New Art Examiner, the Iowa Review and Kunstforum.