Comments on week 10 readings
I believe Mr Wilson and I have a problem......he never manages to catch my attention. All he does is a quick overview of projects done or being done by artists around a main theme. Well the theme this week is transgenic art and artificial life, which I find extremely interesting, eventhough I do not approve of everything being done. I believe that there are some barriers that should not be crossed. To avoid unecessary blah blah on my side I will give an example of a project he mentionned that I like. Yves Amu Klein's "Octofungi" consists of a living sculpture that analyses the tranquility of its environment and will react by either fear or interest upon the different type and amplitude of change from the original environment. If a ball rolls on the floor away from him, he might be interested, but if a loud drum is being played consistently i guess he will be scared and hide. I thought that was a smart project which did not inplicate the desire to play God, or gene manipulation. The second article, "Transgenic Art" by Eduardo Kac, focuses on this science/art. he tells us that new technologies affect the way we see things today: like our body. We create cyber bodies when we use avatar, we compare our body to digital images displayed on the street, we accept more and more plastic surgery and neuroprosthesis. He says "Art needs to raise our awareness of what firmly remains beyond our visual reach but which, nonetheless, affects us directly". I personnaly believe that not seeing genes and not being able to control them will not affect us directly, it is as he says, our code of life, it has been working for a while and still is.....why do we feel we have to know everything? there will always be something new....we just create more problems by investigating all the time.
anyway...after giving a clear definition of transgenic art Kac comes back saying that he supports the initiative of artists to try and create new breeds of animals, because endangered species are becoming extinct. I wonder why........maybe because we investigated worlds that did not belong to us in the first place, just like we are doing now. Because of the human greed, we ran out of a "ressource", and now create new ones to start all over again, AND this simple fact of "creating" a new ressource for studies is one itself....on the long term, people will accept this and be thankful, pretty sad if you ask me. Kac even finishes his text by saying so, "To be human will mean that the human genome is, not a limitation, but our starting point". He does mention humans and not animals, but that implies even more the acceptance of such technologies in our everyday lives. I did a big jump here, let me go back a little. Before talking about human gene manipulation, he talks about his own project, GFP K-9: Green fluorescent protein (for) canine, which consists of creating a new breed of dogs that will be fluorescent green. I swear. He also gives examples of how gene manipulation is already part of our society, likes pigs that produce human protein, the catalina macaw who is man made, or the plant "Lafrance" made by Guillot in 1867.
After discussing quickly the difference between breeding and genetic engineering he explains how genes work. I am not a big fan of genetic engineering but I must admit that this part was quite interesting, he made it sound so simple.
After all this talk and making me feel that I he is a crazy God wannabee unconscious mad man, he did mention quickly before closing off that these animals should be loved and taken care of the way "older' breeds are, if not better. That issues such as adaptation and survival should not be taken lightly. He started gaining points in my book until he talked about future plantimals and animans......yes.....you read that right........Mixing animals and plants, and animals and humans.......my god.
link: http://www.wettropics.gov.au/pa/pa_glowing.html
anyway...after giving a clear definition of transgenic art Kac comes back saying that he supports the initiative of artists to try and create new breeds of animals, because endangered species are becoming extinct. I wonder why........maybe because we investigated worlds that did not belong to us in the first place, just like we are doing now. Because of the human greed, we ran out of a "ressource", and now create new ones to start all over again, AND this simple fact of "creating" a new ressource for studies is one itself....on the long term, people will accept this and be thankful, pretty sad if you ask me. Kac even finishes his text by saying so, "To be human will mean that the human genome is, not a limitation, but our starting point". He does mention humans and not animals, but that implies even more the acceptance of such technologies in our everyday lives. I did a big jump here, let me go back a little. Before talking about human gene manipulation, he talks about his own project, GFP K-9: Green fluorescent protein (for) canine, which consists of creating a new breed of dogs that will be fluorescent green. I swear. He also gives examples of how gene manipulation is already part of our society, likes pigs that produce human protein, the catalina macaw who is man made, or the plant "Lafrance" made by Guillot in 1867.
After discussing quickly the difference between breeding and genetic engineering he explains how genes work. I am not a big fan of genetic engineering but I must admit that this part was quite interesting, he made it sound so simple.
After all this talk and making me feel that I he is a crazy God wannabee unconscious mad man, he did mention quickly before closing off that these animals should be loved and taken care of the way "older' breeds are, if not better. That issues such as adaptation and survival should not be taken lightly. He started gaining points in my book until he talked about future plantimals and animans......yes.....you read that right........Mixing animals and plants, and animals and humans.......my god.
link: http://www.wettropics.gov.au/pa/pa_glowing.html
posted by Bastien at 8:15 AM
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