Another NYT story on new media art:
The Wonders of Genetics Breed a New Art
By STEVEN HENRY MADOFF
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/arts/design/26MADO.html
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The article sucks, but I found this passage interesting:
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Yet the science at the heart of the art isn't all darkness, as the
scientists themselves are eager to note. Dr. J. Craig Venter, the
path-breaking geneticist who accelerated the decoding of the human genome
and co-founded Celera Genomics, is circumspect when he's told about this
latest show. "The problem with so much of this work is that it takes the
view of genetic determinism, that we're just the sum total of our genes,"
he said. "But the linear sequence of the genome, while it's an astounding
piece of knowledge, can't alone explain who we are and what will happen to
us. We are a complex business and a complex mystery."
His rival and colleague, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National
Institutes of Health's National Human Genome Research Institute, seems to
take off from Dr. Venter's point, though he had not heard it. "I know the
artist's role is to provoke, and I welcome a consciousness-raising art, but
I wish more of this work would convey the mystery, the elegance, the beauty
of what the genome is about," he said. "The way in which this instruction
book is put together, the dance within the cell that alters in microseconds
in response to thousands of different circumstances and makes the right
decision to keep that cell healthy. It's stunning. There are plenty of
ethical issues to address, but I wish more of that sense of awe was honored."
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-m
Another NYT story on new media art...
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Type: discussion