The Art of the Gene: Editor’s Introduction

368 ©2000 Richard Smoley A s you know, this year’s Digital Salon has entries in three categories: gallery artworks, Web sites, and computer animations and digital videos. As I contemplate the main themes that seem to be on the minds of our essayists, I find myself wondering whether someday the Salon will include another category: genetic creations. Will jurors of the future have to consider glow-in-the-dark dogs or llamas bred so that witty remarks are spelled out in the markings of their fur? Perhaps some nostalgic wunderkind of the future will sculpt the DNA of an ordinary cow to recreate its extinct ancestor, the wild aurochs of old Europe. Others may take genetic material from stuffed dodoes and passenger pigeons and resuscitate lost species. Such reflections may provoke a frisson of horror in those who wonder if we are not playing fast and loose with our own fates by such blithe manipulation of the code of life. In their essays in this issue, both Suzanne Anker and Amy Youngs discuss George Gessert’s project in which he hybridized wild irises and sowed his creations around the San Francisco Bay Area. There is nothing particularly menacing about new breeds of irises, of course— flower aficionados are constantly fussing with the colors and shapes of their favorite beauties. But will we wake up someday to find that some madman has cooked up a killer virus and set it loose on the public? We worry when governments play with germ warfare. Will the advances of science place this possibility in the hands of ordinary people as well? Editorial hand-wringing about these matters is so much in fashion that I hope you will excuse me if I avoid it here. But I think it may be valuable to step back and reflect on the philosophic background of the New Genetic Order and what it may mean for the art of today and tomorrow. In the most ancient times, the universe was seen as having a fixed order that applied not only to the natural sphere but to the human arena as well. It was not until the fifth century B.C. that those irreverent busybodies, the Greeks, challenged these assumptions. The Sophists of that era drew a sharp distinction between what they called physis—“nature”—and nomos or “convention.” Nature is the immutable order of things, but there is nothing particularly immutable about the rules and regulations of society. In the U.S., we drive on the right, while the British drive on the left. Each is an arbitrary convention that works equally well. While it would create havoc if there were no law that said which side of the road to drive on, it hardly matters which side you choose. Like all such distinctions, this apparent opposition between nature and convention is somewhat simplistic. Moreover human beings have long since found that they can meddle in the laws of nature. As Suzanne Anker suggests, you may worry about the genetic manipulation of animals, and then you may go and pat the head of your dog, completely oblivious to the fact that man’s best friend is nothing more than a wolf that has been genetically manipulated by millennia of selective breeding. One could make the same point about almost all the plants and animals on which we rely for companionship and sustenance. As is well-known, the corn plant has diverged so much from its wild progenitor that botanists are not even sure what this ancestor was. If genetic art is going to progress and thrive, then, it would be well to reflect on the principles that should inform it. And this question cuts to the heart of the state of the contemporary art scene. Despite the ceaseless new upheavals that are constantly being proclaimed in the art world—which sometimes seems to be obeying Chairman Mao’s exhortation to “continuous revolution”— the philosophical underpinnings of contemporary art seem to be at The Art of the Gene Editor’s Introduction RICHARD SMOLEY LEONARDO, Vol. 33, No. 5, pp. 368–369, 2000 369 a stalemate. For all the technical wizardry now at our disposal, for all the Web sites...