GFP Bunny

 

So this is the post where we talk about the glowing green bunny! A few things to know:

1. The bunny, whose name is Alba, is fluorescent (GFP stands for green fluorescent protein) meaning that she glows green under blue light.

2. She’s not the first organism to have been genetically engineered to do this; scientists have used the DNA of GFP to make insects and mice do this for some time. She’s just the first to be called art.

Alba’s owner, the bio-artist Eduardo Kac, made a lot of people pretty angry with this… piece? It seems weird to call a living organism that. But I think that was part of his point.  In his essay “GFP Bunny” Kac states the core point of this “project” to be (this is a super long quotation but I think it’s worth including the whole thing):

1) ongoing dialogue between professionals of several disciplines (art, science, philosophy, law, communications, literature, social sciences) and the public on cultural and ethical implications of genetic engineering; 2) contestation of the alleged supremacy of DNA in life creation in favor of a more complex understanding of the intertwined relationship between genetics, organism, and environment; 3) extension of the concepts of biodiversity and evolution to incorporate precise work at the genomic level; 4) interspecies communication between humans and a transgenic mammal; 5) integration and presentation of "GFP Bunny" in a social and interactive context; 6) examination of the notions of normalcy, heterogeneity, purity, hybridity, and otherness; 7) consideration of a non-semiotic notion of communication as the sharing of genetic material across traditional species barriers; 8) public respect and appreciation for the emotional and cognitive life of transgenic animals; 9) expansion of the present practical and conceptual boundaries of artmaking to incorporate life invention.

I think a lot of people who don’t read Kac’s essay on his piece assume him to be a mad-scientist with a God-complex, or at least a quack who wanted to gain attention by acting like a mad-scientist with a God-complex. But as his statement suggests, many of the objections that people raise in response to the GFP Bunny are exactly what Kac wanted to people to think about in making his piece: the potentially disturbing effects of genetic engineering on our treatment and definition of life, the recognition of all organisms (animal, human, organic or transgenic) as life worthy of respect, and the potential expansion of the definition of art to include biological creations.

The GFP bunny relates to our class because it’s a piece of artwork generated from a code – only in this case, the code was genetic, not digital. It’s a conceptual piece of art, too – it challenges our definitions of what art is. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I don’t think that just because something challenges definitions, it is necessarily art. That’s my problem with conceptual art in general. I guess Kac’s piece works because it did illicit a big reaction, like DuChamp’s urinal. But it’s a bit creepy too. Do we want life to be art? I think about a future where we could design our own children.