Bio-Art: Lagoglyphs.

A while back, this blog did an entry on a piece called GFP Bunny. For those of you unfamiliar, an artist named Eduardo Kac commissioned a bunny with GFP running through her veins. The rabbit was never allowed to leave the lab, and supposedly died. Kac was mad, starting a "free Alba!" campaign and everything. As per the rest of the art project, the bunny was supposed to integrate with a human household. In protest, Kac made a rather sweet flag with a green bunny on it and put it outside his home. Cute.

This week's entry is not art of the actual rabbit. This is a spin-off that shows just how crazy things got over Alba. Kac, we know you loved your bunny, but a rabbit-based writing system is pushing it.

From Kac's site - more here.

Lagoglyphs are just that - pictograms (I think?) of rabbits printed on silkscreen. Each black drawing is overlayed with a green marking to allude to Alba's GFP-ness.  There are twelve bunnies per sheet, and 12 sheets total, making for a grand count of 144 rabbits. That's a lot of bunnies.

Just to clarify: No, Kac did not create a language based around rabbits. There is no spoken word to accompany these glyphs. There is no cipher to these rabbits. Each rabbit does not equal a phoneme. A writing system is not a language. Kac's a little off for drawing a dozen's dozen of bunnies, but he's not crazy enough to make rabbit-ese.

So, why did Kac do this? It is supposed to "allude to meaning but resist interpretation." Specifically, this piece is the counter to the hubbub generated around Alba. If I'm reading this right, it's basically an attempt to block out the noise- artistically. La la la la, these bunny rants mean nothing!

In a sense, however, Eduardo Kac's dream of having a genetically-engineered organism integrated with a household is slowly becoming a reality. GloFish spring immediately to mind; although not as interactive as a bunny, they're still pets.Glowing rodents are also a thing, and have supposedly been marketed as pets as well. (I saw a site that was supposedly selling glowing mice. It has since ceased to exist.)  How long will it be before Kac is finally reunited with his beloved Alba? Who knows. Just know that it'll happen with the way things are going.

Bio-Art: Cypher.

Have you ever wanted to make a piece of bio-art yourself? Worried that you won't be able to do it without a sophisticated  medical degree? Don't worry; the technology to make things like that happen is becoming more and more accessible in high schools and colleges. For the rest of us, "bio-art" as science defines it has been more or less inaccessible...until now.

Pic credit: Eduardo Kac. 

[salespitch]

Coming soon, to an educational store near you: CYPHER!  Cypher is a transgenics kit containing everything you need to make your own transgenic bacteria. Follow the step-by-step instructions and make the bacteria glow red with renowned bio-artist Eduardo Kac's special gene. You won't believe how easy it is! It's the perfect gift for everyone on your Christmas list!

But that's not all! The DNA in the bacteria is encoded with a poem that Kac wrote specifically for Cypher.  Aside from the usual 4 bases, Kac added in six extra letters, just for this project. These extra letters are absolutely integral to the poem. Don't just create genetic freaks; create mutating, evolving art!\

Ooooh! (Another Kac photo.)

Call 1-800-CYPHER1 today to order your kit for only 199.99! Supplies are limited; act now and receive a bonus transgenic rodent with your order! (Disclaimer: May not be a real number. You may receive an evil  robot monkey instead.)

[/salespitch]

In all seriousness? Cypher was a project created by Kac in 2009 for the Rurart exhibition in France. The idea was to put the power to create life into an artist's hands; again, Kac likes playing God, or at least trolling him. The scientific tools within are arranged like a briefcase or, better yet, an artist's toolkit. It also really works, from what I've read.

By the way: No, you cannot buy these. Insofar as I can tell, only one has ever been made. Time will tell, however; remember when microscopes were only found in science labs?  The same may soon happen with gene splicing and other scientific advances. It's scary, but also exciting...and is guaranteed to sell like hotcakes.

P.S. - You may have noticed that I've expanded the definition of "bio-art" for some of my entries. Simply put, these works tend to either a) use scientific records to postulate their own scientific theories in an artistic fashion, or b) are simply under-recognized. Not all of us can afford expensive biology degrees. Anybody can think about a scientific issue, then make art based around it. It's still creativity in the name of science.

Bio-Art: K9 and Ruppy.

Remember Eduardo Kac's GFP Bunny project? The one in which Alba, the glowing green bunny, was supposed to be integrated into normal bunny life?  He intended to take that project to the next level by creating a GFP dog (GFP K-9). It fell through, but here's a nice Photoshopped prototype:

Pic by Kac. Disclaimer: Actual dog may vary.

Luckily for Eduardo Kac, scientists in South Korea have been hard at work making glowing puppies real. They have made glowing dogs with an on-off switch. They also made Ruppy, a beagle that glows red, in 2009. I would make a joke about eating dog, but dog research is actually legitimate in some cases. In Ruppy's...you make the call.

Ruppy was spliced with a RFP (red fluorescent protein), making her the first transgenic dog ever.  In plain English, that means she glows red beneath ultraviolet light. The pigment is not nearly as widespread as someone like Kac would like it to be; only the spots that would normally be white on a beagle's coat wind up glowing red. Still better than nothing. Remember, we got no proof that Alba actually glowed except her slightly green coloration.

She is also a cloned dog, which opens a few more cans of worms. When you get to cloning dogs as well as mice, rabbits, and rats, you now have conclusive proof that many species of mammals can be cloned safely. This naturally opens the door to questions about human cloning. Dogs are pretty darn close to people in society ("low-class people" or "high-class animals," I've heard). You would have to be living under a rock to not get how controversial cloning humans is. Dog cloning is getting there.

Let's be perfectly honest: What reason would science have to make a glowing dog other than "hey, look, we made a glowing dog!"?  You can make the "genetic disease research" argument all you like. There are very few reasons to make dogs glow. Sure, if they had a natural glowing gene that only dogs had, that'd be a good reason to breed glowing dogs; as-is, we can probably stick with rabbits and rats when it comes to treating Parkinson's.The clip in a link cited several diseases that dogs and humans have in common, but part of me just thinks they're pulling an Eduardo Kac and making their genetic research look cool in the process.

The most plausible reason to experiment on dogs is to look at things that change with age, specifically fertility. The same scientist who made Ruppy is working on a project with oestrus triggers. We can only assume that a hose will be involved. Whether these tests will be repeated on humans or not remains to be seen.

Bio-Art: Move 36.

The possibilities of technology are terrifying. We're afraid of either a robot apocalypse, in which the robots dominate humanity in every way, or a zombie apocalypse, in which the general populace will have even less free will than usual. Given that our cell phones and computers know every little detail about us, the former is actually more likely.

Computers are smart. Very smart. They're so smart that, in an epic chess match between chess champion Gary Kasparov and the computer Deep Blue, the computer made a subtle move that ultimately won the game instead of a faster move that would have resulted in short-term gain. Commentators and viewers were both stunned. That match in 1997 went down in history as the match between "the greatest chess player who ever lived and the greatest chess player who never lived." It was ended by the historical "Move 36."

From Kac's website.

Then Eduardo Kac made an art piece (2004), also called "Move 36," to showcase the terrifying possibility of technology rising above humanity. Wait, what? That's a plant. It's a plant on a chessboard made of sand and dirt with screens showing trippy visuals and nice lighting. Aside from the plant's positioning on the chessboard, it doesn't look like it has much to do with tech surpassing its creator.

Fear is truly skin deep with this piece. The wild type of that plant has straight leaves. Kac created a gene that made the leaves curl using a binary version of Descartes's "Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am)." The Latin phrase was translated into binary, then four two-digit combos were linked with a nitrogen base in DNA. This single gene is what makes the piece truly work.

Descartes was the thinker largely responsible for the idea that the body and mind were separate. He called the body a "machine" that the mind was operating. (This has in turn caused a massive psychosis in Western culture, but I won't talk about the aftershock here.) It was planted right where man lost to the machine and itself blurs the boundary between animate and inanimate. On another level, having a plant with "I think therefore I am" in its veins is kinda scary in itself.No, the plant can't think...as far as we know.

Yeah, you BETTER start worrying about vegetable rights!

Although it may seem like an abstract piece, "Move 36" is quite logical...after elaboration. There's so much explanation required that, even after hearing it, I am inclined to call this one of Kac's less-impressive pieces. It's like the rule of thumb that if you need to explain a joke, it's a bad joke; an art piece that needs explanation is barely art. The lighting is really good, and the chessboard is well-designed, but without that explanation, I sense a few head scratches. Glowing, green bunny? Awesome, I want one! RFID chip? OK, that's kinda creepy. Plant on a chessboard? Umm...whatever you say, Kac. Whatever you say.

Bio-Art: Edunias.

Ah, Eduardo Kac. Whenever I miss the chance to see a bio-related movie, I know I can always count on you to monkey with nature in ways that make us question the definitions of things like "art"and "hubris." For those of you new to this column, Kac's specialty is bio-engineered art. The thoughts behind this art are usually pretty cool.

One of Kac's more recent pieces is the Edunia- or, if you prefer, Natural History of the Enigma. Each flower has a sample of Kac's DNA in its veins via a single protein. The idea behind these flowers was to create a man-plant hybrid that did not exist in nature. Way to go Moreau on us.

The Edunia contains Eduardo Kac's flesh and blood...in a way. It actually has a genetic marker in it from Kac's DNA that makes the fluids in the plant's veins turn red. The idea was that the pink petals of the flower and the red of the veins would be analogous to Kac's own flesh and blood. Creepy? Yes. Art? Your mileage may vary.







Wait a second. This sounds familiar. Wasn't there a monster that was part plant, part-human? We're sure Japan has several, but the one that comes to mind is Biollante - a rose created out of plant DNA, Godzilla gene scraps, and the life essence of a botanist's dead daughter. If Kac's stuff gets anywhere beyond a basic gene marker, we're screwed.

The fun does not stop at crazy hybrid flowers, no siree! Kac also made six seed packs, each designed to look pretty and house mutant plant seeds of doom. There were six packets made for the Weis,man Art Museum (Minneapolis, MN)  in 2009. They are not available to the public insofar as I know, but the mere thought of the Edunia breeding is enough to scare me after Biollante. Do not want man-plants.

Bio-Art: (Gene)sis.

Science and religion have been at odds since the ancient Greeks. Yes, really; there was a time in ancient Greece when church and state were not separated, and people got in trouble for saying that the sun and moon were not gods. Fathers of democracy, everyone!

Regardless of who started it, harsh debates between religion and science sprout up every time a new discovery that could cure Alzheimer's hits the presses. Now that we know how sex works, there are questions about exactly when life begins, hindering valuable stem cell research. Let's not get into chimeras and cloning, even though we probably should. The general thesis behind all those things is the same: Creation is God's domain, and even attempting to create new life artificially is an act of hubris. Apparently said hubris does not include Chihuahuas.

From ekac.org.

Then there's (Gene)sis - Eduardo Kac's personal message to God encoded in 4-letter DNA. He took a bit of the Bible, and transferred it into Morse code. "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."- now in GFP DNA for all to see. It's neat that someone translated the beginning of the Bible into a custom gene - a molecule that makes up all life as we know it. In the Beginning was the Word indeed.

We can understand people getting up in arms about human cloning, but this? This is chewing God up, putting him under ultraviolet light, and spitting him out. Alba was all right. How are people not offended by this? Yes, glowing things are always cool, but it's like Eduardo Kac has made himself a lightning rod for divine wrath. This is hubris if I ever saw it manifested into the coolest form possible (aside from creating Satan in a test tube- now THAT would be cool).




After being exposed to UV light so often, the DNA began to mutate. What used to be coherent words (in Morse) became swapped strings of gibberish as the bacteria multiplied. Supposedly there is a site where one can alter the composition of (Gene)sis for oneself, making the process go even faster. I am not sure if this is still up; the URL in my book seems to be wrong and/or dead. 

More importantly, what do you, the readers, think of this work? Is it blasphemy (like Chihuahuas should be)? Does mankind really have a God-given right to tweak nature as it so desires? Eduardo Kac loves to incite discussion, so discuss, discuss, discuss!