Editor's introduction
ELECTRONIC ART,
GENETIC ART: SYMBIOSIS AND CONTAMINATION
My goal in selecting the articles for this supplement is twofold: to examine the maturation of electronic art into diverse branches and to reveal the emergence of a new sensibility that expands media propositions into the realm of biotechnology. The multimodal evolution of electronic art can be clearly identified in the practical and theoretical contributions by Vuk Cosic, Jason Salavon, Marcos Novak, Nathalie Houtermans, Ken Rinaldo, and Jordan Crandall. The social and cultural implications of biotechnology in general, and genetic engineering in particular, are explored in artists' articles about their own work (Karen Thornton, George Gessert), as well as in Arjen Mulder's analysis of Paul Perry's work, Fran Dyson's discussion of Natalie Jeremijenko's work, and Paul O'Brien's review of Ars Electronica 99, which had 'Life Sciences' as its theme.
Investigating software-based propositions, Vuk Cosic, Jason Salavon, and Marcos Novak cover a wide spectrum. Cosic discusses his interest in recovering the history of ASCII art and for contributing to it with propositions that include his navigable piece The ASCII Unreal. Jason Salavon develops his own software to manipulate large datasets. Through algorithmic compositional procedures of his choice, the artist creates synthetic or composited images that are unexpected visualizations of elements of pop culture or of his personal experiences. Contradicting those who believe that the notion of 'architecture' must be circumscribed to edified buildings, Marcos Novak discusses his theoretical position based on the notion of "liquid architectures." He explains Alien Space, a piece that dissolves solid form to propose stochastic and cloud-like alternatives, opening up to a merger with music, cinema, theater, databases, and other forms. From contemporary ASCII art and creative dataset manipulation to the question of architecture in cyberspace, we see in these works strong examples of the unique qualities of digital art.
Nathalie Houtermans offers an overview of the exhibition Fables of a Technological Era, which she co-curated with Antoinette te Paske in Rotterdam in 1999. For this exhibition, which took place in a zoo, artists were invited to create works that either would be directly integrated with animal environments or that would reference, even if indirectly, the habitats where they were displayed. In Ken Rinaldo's work, two separate fish contribute to move a kinetic sculpture through the use of robotic elements. Sensors detect the swimming motion in their respective tanks and thus cause the overall structure to move, giving unpredictable behavior to the piece. In his theoretical contribution to the supplement, Jordan Crandall suggests that soon we will no longer find ourselves confined to sitting in front of a monitor and points to the "emerging potentials for interventions within the field of the interface." Seen together, these articles are a clear indication that electronic art will continue to evolve beyond static interfaces and that it will continue to expand into larger, nontraditional contexts.
One such new context is biotechnology. Karen Thornton used the liquid produced by combining a snake's skin and an apple to write the letters of the word shame on individual Petri dishes, in a direct evocation of biblical references. George Gessert hybridizes irises, going against the grain of commercial hybridization which privileges popular forms. Using a technique known as 'hybridoma' (hybrid cells that grow and reproduce rapidly), Paul Perry hybridized one of his own cells with that of a cancerous mouse, thus perpetuating his own genetic material in endless reproduction cycles. Cloning a real tree and planting the clones, Natalie Jeremijenko investigates how environmental factors affect the development of genetically identical organisms. She extends the project into cyberspace, where algorithmic clones are also planted. How will the digital environment affect the artificial life forms? The interface between biology, art, technology, and society was the theme of the 1999 edition of the Ars Electronica festival, in Linz. Celebrating its twentieth anniversary, this year's festival, under the leadership of Gerfried Stocker, raised important questions about the cultural and political implications of new biotechnologies. More than trying to provide closure to the decade or the century, the festival--and this supplement--is a clear indication of how significant this debate will be in years to come.
Eduardo Kac
Art and Technology Department
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Research Fellow
Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts,
University of Wales
