Eduardo Kac

(Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1962)

Pioneer of bioart, he applies biotechnology techniques and organic materials in the creation of his artistic works. Transgenic art that proposes the union between art, science and life through technology. With his work he opens the debate about the artistic implications of the genomic era. Now that we can manipulate the original matter of life, it is necessary for it to also become a code for art. In his controversial work GFP Bunny, from 2000, the first chimera animal becomes a possible emblem of the post-natural condition and opens a polarized debate about the limits of science. In Natural History of the Enigma, awarded in 2009 with the Golden Nica, Ars Electronica's highest award, Kac has created a new variety of petunia that does not exist in nature. Edunia shows a pink color that is related to the artist's skin color, because the flower incorporates a gene from Kac himself. This gene is expressed in the vivid red veins of the flower that distance it from its natural “relatives.” Kac aspires to a certain form of immortality, hoping that when he is gone his genetic legacy will live on in Edunia, and that it will be incorporated into the catalog of living forms of nature.

He participates in Medialab Madrid with the multimedia installation Move 36 (2004), which refers to the dramatic move made by the computer called Deep Blue against the world chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997. The installation sheds light on the limits of the human mind and the increasing capabilities developed by computers and robots, inanimate beings whose actions often take on a force comparable to subjective human agency. The installation features a chessboard of earth (dark squares) and white sand (light squares) in the center of the room. There are no chess pieces on the board. Located exactly where Deep Blue made its Move 36, there is a plant whose genome incorporates a new gene that I created specifically for this work. The gene uses ASCII (the universal computer code for representing binary numbers as Roman characters, online and offline) to translate Descartes' statement, "Cogito ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am) into the four bases of genetics.