Eduardo Kac
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Eduardo Kac is an Brazilian contemporary artist internationally recognized for his interactive net installations and his bio-art. Kac was born in 1962 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
In 1997 Kac was the first person to have a microchip implanted in his body. He did this in the context of his work "Time Capsule", as a form of social commentary, in that it causes us to think deeply about the relationship we hold with technology. He put the microchip in the lower part of his leg, on his ankle.
When he was at Telematic Connections (where his work was being exhibited) he mentioned that the reason he chose this spot on his body was that it was where slaves were often branded. The work he had on exhibit was entitled Teleporting an Unknown State, a piece in which Kac enables a plant in a dark room to grow with light sent around the world through the Internet by remote participants.
Kac considers himself a "transgenic artist," or "bio artist", using biotechnology and genetics to create provocative works that concomitantly explore scientific techniques and critique them. Kac's first transgenic artwork, titled "Genesis," involved him taking a quote from the Bible (Genesis 1:26 - "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"), transferring it into Morse code, and finally, translating that Morse code (by a conversion principle specially developed by the artist for this work) into the base pairs of genetics. After obtaining the genes from a laboratory which creates genetic sequences on demand, he implanted the genes into an unspecified bacterium, which he then grew in a petri dish. This petri dish was placed in a box under a UV light which could be activated by online viewers, who could see Genesis by webcam. Kac intended to present the viewer with a philosophical problem, a dichotomy: If the viewer disagrees with allowing man to have dominion over nature as the quote from the Bible suggests, then in order to destroy the idea (i.e. activate the UV light which causes mutation in the genes, thereby altering the statement), he must assert his own power over nature, thereby in a way contradicting himself. A viewer with the opposite viewpoint would have the opposite-but-equally-problematic dilemma.
In what is probably his most famous work, Alba, Kac commissioned a French laboratory to create a green-fluorescent rabbit; a rabbit implanted with a GFP (Green Fluorescent Protein) gene from a type of jellyfish. Under a specific blue light, the rabbit fluoresces green. After a brief stint as an installation work, wherein Kac and Alba would live in a pseudo-domicile in a gallery, Alba was to return home to live with Kac's family. At the last minute, before the scheduled release of Alba to Kac, the lab retracted their agreement and decided that Alba should stay in the lab.
Alba's lifespan remains an open question. She may or may not be dead, but rabbits kept in captivity often do not live a full lifespan of eight to twelve years. GFP plants, fish, and mammals have been long-term residents of science laboratories. The GFP gene is typically used as a type of marker, that, when attached to a separate genetic modification or gene, illustrates where that symbiotic gene manifests in the organism. However, Kac used GFP as a social marker, in a symbolic (not scientific) manner, to raise questions about how society constructs the idea of difference. Notably, since Alba's conception, GFP zebrafish have hit the commercial market under the trademarked name, GloFish.
Kac, in response to the lab's retraction of Alba's liberty, flies a flag outside of his home, sporting a silhouette of a green rabbit.
[edit] References
Fred Forest Art et Internet, Editions Cercle D'Art / Imaginaire Mode d'Emploi, pp. 74-75
Kac, Eduardo. Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007). ISBN: 0-262-11293-0
Kac, Eduardo. Telepresence and Bio Art -- Networking Humans, Rabbits and Robot (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005). ISBN: 0472068105
Rossi, Elena Giulia (ed.). Eduardo Kac : Move 36_(Paris: Filigranes Éditions, 2005). ISBN: 2350460126
Britton Sheilah and Dan Collins (eds.). The Eighth Day: The Transgenic Art of Eduardo Kac (Tempe: ASU / Distributed by DAP, New York, 2003). ISBN: 0972429107
