Preliminary DANM250 A Page

UnNatural Selection

Collaborative project with DANM graduate students:
Tyler Freeman, Adam Jerugim, James Khazar, Nichole Smith, Synthia Payne, no.e sunflowrfish, and Alan Tollefson.

UC Darnet Presentation Proposal

UC Darnet Resources

GRANTS & FUNDING SOURCES

Deadlines

ARI Major Grant - Deadline Feb 15th
UCARI - Deadline March 1st
UC Darnet - Feb 6rd, for a talk on research. Informational PDF here
How to write an abstract: here

First Preliminary Session Notes

Fourth Preliminary Session Notes

Second Preliminary Session

The Mission Statement

Take these ideas and please edit them! Our goal is to come up with a successful mission statement. Copy and paste and name and date your version.

Cynthia 2/5/06 1:09 a.m. How about a projected landscape movie that morphs with user input. Users enter keywords into a 'gene splicer' and then the words assemble some "thing" that gets incorporated into the ever mutating scene.

James 1/30 9:30pm

Headline:

Unnatural Selection

Group Name:

The Digital Art/New Media 2006 Cohort Genetic Aestheticians

Slogan:

Sculpting nature to make the world a better place to see
Making the world the way we want it
Better living through bio-transversity (kinda a cross between transgressive and bio diversty)
Better living through Crucigenic ™ Transmogrification

Brief Description (One Paragraph):

The world of rational exploration in the fields of science has often gone either unexamined or dismissed by the world of artistic discourse. By co-opting the dialectic of contemporary and historical transgenic research and development in gene splicing, gene modeling, robotics, eugenics, and animal husbandry, we intend to explore these potentially transmogrifying investigations and re-frame them for their potential as a medium of aesthetic expression.

Longer Description (2-3 paragraphs) final copy as submitted to UC DARNET :

The 21st Century presents us with expanded capability developed by science and technology to create new forms of life through genetic modification. We feel it is important to examine this new capability in alternative and unexpected ways as a method to create discourse on the potentials of this new power. By recognizing this future and commenting on its science and culture we hope to develop a critical and ethical response to what seems to be the inevitability of these technologies. In our field of research we choose to explore transgenic plants – plants crafted through gene splicing often combining animal with plant genes. Where do we place these plant/animal hybrids in the taxonomy of life? We answer this question by creating another kingdom that functions in the geno-liminal space between animal and plant. Our research explores this kingdom and its structures by creating new plant forms.

The methods by which we examine this new taxonomy are to adopt a new mode of Manifest Destiny – no longer do we explore and discover but we create from the ground up these new territories. In the style of 19th century photographers and painters working in the west we look to create transgenic landscapes and species. The first of our methods is to develop a transgenic paintbox. We see in the future new possibilities for artists’ materials in genes and the structuring of life forms. Our “paintbox” will consist of a computer program that accesses a database of genes and genetic information that we can then mold and shape into new transgenic plant-animals. The program will create genomes, chromosomes, and images of our new species.

Aesthetics are crucial to the realization of our project. We envision creating entire landscapes molded to our aesthetic criteria and judgments. Through our transgenic landscapes we will formulate a new aesthetic theory of man-made beauty. We will no longer reflect on the external and natural world that is received, but an internal human centered conception of natural beauty. As a ground for our investigation of beauty we return to the 19th painters; Bierstadt, the Hudson River School, et. al. These artists expressed the idea of boundless nature available to man for resources and pleasure. We see the realm of genetic engineering as an equal frontier. These artists created a mythical landscape of abundance that drove the move westward. We too look to create a new mythology of genomic space.

Some catchy phrases:

The Transgenic Sublime
We are the Monets of Genetics
Platonic Plants - Plato posited the existence ideal forms from which all earthly replicas were generated. We can create Ideal Plants genetically from which all plants will be generated. Thus we can create Ideal Landscapes of these plants based on our conception of the beautiful in landscape. -- Elliot

Please add to these lists:

What realizable projects do we want to do:

Synthia 012806a:

put it all inside a traveling box for easy transportation
an algorithmic calculator - see what results one might get with various recipes applied to various hosts: a kind of crossing ground.

James 1/30 9:30pm (based on meeting notes):

Create our own Tree of Life
Create fighting plants (Tyler)
Create landscapes of transgenic lifeforms based on 19th century landscape paintings
Create models and dioramas of our transgenic lifeforms
Create a Genetic Wiki - one where you can wiki-edit lifeforms

Elliot(email 2/2)

Computer based
- A legos-like virtual building blocks of genes toward creating aesthetically driven life forms.
- In relation to the above - a gene building block database.
  - not real genes - too much science.
  - we create the genes
- Evolutionary algorithmic design system: see Golem Project
Real artificial life
- Transgenic landscapes
  - Raise 'em and shoot (photograph) 'em
  - Based on 19th century landscape painting.
Conceptual
- Realign the tree of life with a new transgenic kingdom (needs a better name than transgenic)
- All this landscape has got me thinking: In Texas (of course) there are a number of safari shooting ranges; exotic animals collected in parks and bred for rich people to play Teddy Roosevelt and shoot them down. What if we created a transgenic animal shooting park? Very Blade Runner....

What materials/supplies/tools do we need?

James 1/30 9:30pm (based on meeting notes)

Transgenic Seeds
Program engineering time
Growing lab (lights, hydroponics, greenhouse?)

New Additions:

Relevant/Interesting links

Invasives (man's inhumanity to landscape...)

Other Interventions

Links of Paintings:

Possible Images

Which come from:

From Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite by Albert Bierstadt:

And a possible reintroduction of the tree:

Thomas Moran (American, 1837–1926)
On the Catawissa Creek, 1862