Genesis Installation

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1999

Genesis Web Interface
Photo: Otto Saxinger.

The gallery display enables local as well as remote (Web) participants to monitor the evolution of the work. This display consists of a Petri dish with the bacteria, a flexible microvideo camera, a UV light box, and a microscope illuminator. This set is connected to a video projector and two networked computers. One computer works as a Web server (streaming live video and audio) and handles remote requests for UV activation. The other computer is responsible for DNA music synthesis.The local video projection shows a larger-than-life image of the bacterial division and interaction seen through the microvideo camera. Remote participants on the Web interfere with the process by turning the UV light on. The fluorescent protein in the bacteria responds to the UV light by emmiting visible light (cyan and yellow). The energy impact of the UV light on the bacteria is such that it disrupts the DNA sequence in the plasmid, accelerating the mutation rate. The left and right walls contain large-scale texts applied directly on the wall: the sentence extracted from the book of Genesis (right) and the Genesis gene (left).