Artistic Simulacra in the Age of Recombinant Bodies

Enveloped in the rhetoric of a brave new world of genomic application, surrounded by a culture enlivened by hopeful medical breakthroughs, and awash in media rumors of secret stock trades and biotech deals, a groundswell of artistic activity has been inhabiting the interface of technology and culture, biology and body, algorithmic computing and artistic creation for almost two decades. Of particular cultural and artistic importance is the combination of interdisciplinary research and creative production brought about by the arrival of The Human Genome Project. Employing concepts articulated by Walter Benjamin, most notably "artistic simulacra," this essay considers the range and cultural stakes of artworks, exhibitions, and catalogues that dialogue with the Human Genome Project, as well as the cultural stakes of such artistic experimentation. It demonstrates how projects in digital and technological art have articulated with prophetic forcefulness the complex sociocultural challenges facing humanists in an increasingly corporatized intellectual and political culture.