FAR-OUT ART AND MUSIC BASED ON BIOLOGY
If you think the free-form jazz of Ornette Coleman, the
abstract art of Jackson Pollock or John Cage’s 4’33’’ are too far-out, consider
the art of experimental artist/musicians Eduardo Kac and Peter Gena who used
Biology to do their Art and Music.
WHAT EDUARDO KAC DID
(see image above)
In his live Art entitled ‘Genesis’, Eduardo:
1.
Took a passage from the Bible (Genesis 1:26) “Let
man have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and
over every living thing that moves upon the earth."
2.
Translated it into the dots and dashes of Morse
Code
3.
Using an algorithm he designed, he then
translated it to DNA’s A, C, T, G
protein base pairings to have a design
for a strand of DNA
4.
He then synthetically manufactured and injected this DNA strand into live bacteria.
5.
Using an electron microscope and with connection
to the world wide web, he let the public view it.
6.
The public are invited (via the Internet ) to activate
a switch and zap the bacteria with ultraviolet light, causing the bacteria DNA
to mutate.
7.
The A. C, T, G pairings are thus continuously
reshuffled, and the reverse translation back into text displayed on the screen.
8.
The mutation that took place in the DNA had
changed the original sentence from the Bible.
9.
The mutated passage was then posted on the web
site.
WHAT PETER GENA DID
(see image above)
In his DNA Music works of art Peter:
1.
Worked with Geneticist Charles Strom, to translate DNA
sequences from cells of various organs of the human body into musical notes via
an elaborate algorithm that took into account pitch, intensity, speed, duration
etc. The parameters of the translation can be seen in this .pdf shared from my
Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/s/b7yz86fve4g9r08/CIMXI-gena-strom.pdf?dl=0
.
2.
A score or manuscript is thus generated and can
be played by musical groups e.g. an orchestra.
3.
For a particularly eerie example of his music
titled He, Himself and Me using the DNA of Male Testosterone cells, see http://www.petergena.com/dihydtest.html
. You must have a Quick Time Player installed on your device to hear this.
4.
Or you can hear some shorter length examples
from my Dropbox links:
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