Originally published in Indie Planet, June 2000.

http://www.indieplanet.com/content.cfm?ccode=1-44-47-4385&scode=DS&cName=ART#top

Crossing the Line

by Steven Shaviro

Art today is all about crossing boundaries. There's always someplaceyou're coming from, but you are unlikely to remain there. The World WideWeb doesn't abolish individual places. But it eliminates the distance betweenone place and another. Any location can be connected to any other location.You can move directly from A to B, without worrying about all the pointsin between.

It's not just physical boundaries, though, that are breaking down underthe impact of new technologies. Cultural critic Donna Haraway identifiesthree sorts of distinctions that are fast losing relevance in the postmodernworld: distinctions between the human and the animal, between the organicand the mechanical, and between the physical and the virtual. All of theseused to be hard-and-fast differences, with no overlap. But now the boundariesbetween them have become rather fuzzy. Scientists manipulate genes, crossingfrom one species to another. Surgeons implant plastic pacemakers in flesh-and-bloodhuman hearts. We navigate through chatrooms and online databases as easilyas we do through freeways and shopping malls.

No artist reflects this situation of fluid boundaries and unexpectedcrossings more fully than Eduardo Kac. Kac is Brazilian, originally fromRio de Janeiro. But he currently lives and works in Chicago. He has exhibitedhis works on four continents. Over the years, he has created works in manydifferent genres, from performance and video to holograms and "visualpoetry." But he has specialized in multimedia interactive pieces thatallow the spectators to become active collaborators in the work, and thatpress against the cutting edge of new technologies. Even before the WorldWide Web existed, Kac was pioneering "telecommunications art"and "telepresence art," using television and fax machines inorder to create real-time "visual dialogues" between participantsin different cities.

More recently, Kac has created interactive art installations that transportthe viewer into virtual-reality settings. Last year, for instance, he madeDarker Than Night, located in the bat cave of a Dutch zoo. Kac constructedan artificial robotic bat that inhabited the cave together with the zoo's300 real (biological) bats. The "batbot" contained a sonar device,analogous to the echolocation that real bats use. A computer received thefeedback from this sonar, and converted it from high-pitched sound intodots of light. By putting on a virtual-reality headset, a viewer couldsee the resulting visual patterns. After all, bats are sonic creatures,whereas primates are largely visual ones. In this piece, Kac was able totranslate the sound-centered world of the bat into the visual terms thatwe human beings can more readily appreciate.

Kac's latest art project is his most audacious yet. Simply put, he wantsto make a fluorescent dog. Kac proposes the new genre of "transgenicart." This would consist in using genetic engineering for aestheticpurposes, instead of just for useful (medical and scientific) ones. Inthe past few years, scientists have analyzed the gene sequence that codesfor GFP (Green Florescent Protein). GFP is a substance produced by certainjellyfish, that allows them to shine with a greenish glow. Researchershave transplanted the GFP gene into the embryos of frogs and mice. Theresultant glow allows them to track embryonic development, and to watchthe growth of cancerous tumors.

Kac proposes to insert the GFP gene into the genetic material of a dog.This would lead to the creation of a new canine breed, one whose fur glowsgreen in the dark. The idea may seem shocking, but Kac points out thatit is only a logical extrapolation of what dog breeders have done already.For hundreds of years, we have been breeding dogs selectively, to createanimals with unusual shapes and abilities. Some breeds are useful for activitieslike herding and hunting, but many more are purely fanciful. There aredogs with odd shapes, like the Dachshund and the Sharpei. There are dogsas tiny as the Chihuahua, and as enormous as the Great Dane. There aredogs as high-strung as the Poodle, and as mean and nasty as the Rottweiler.In this company, a phosphorescent dog doesn't seem all that odd. Kac pointsout that the GFP gene is completely harmless, so his dog won't have thesorts of health problems that affect many of the more specialized breeds.

The fluorescent dog probably won't come into existence any time soon,but it is well within the bounds of scientific possibility. In proposingit, Eduardo Kac reaffirms the role of the artist as an explorer, and acrosser of boundaries. In ancient times, the artist was a shaman, a mentalvoyager into unknown realms. Now that powerful computers and genetic scienceare turning what once was magical into commonplace experience, it takessomebody like Kac to renew our sense of wonder. Kac's experiments in telepresenceart and transgenic art help to remind us just how rich and strange thebiosphere can be, even in this age of ubiquitous technology.

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