[-empyre-] Living Experiments

[Adam Zaretsky]

Hacking the Human Genome

Lets take a moment to think about the changes in relationships between
ethics and aesthetics in terms of inborn (bred) cultural design of the human
form, consciousness, duration and sensual range. I mean, as we find
ourselves in a new reproductive technology crisis, future human children are
becoming design issues. Is it just another kind of pollution?

Just Another Kind of Pollution

In human culture, IGM has had its precursors. The laws of sexual attraction
have always been bent by the pollution of arranged marriages. The cancer
maps of environmental toxicology reveal other sources of genetic pollution,
the errors we have created in the name of industrial metabolic devolution,
toxic waste (for instance BPE, DDT, cesium-137, etc.) There are also forces
of mutagenesis geologically and astrobiologically present in our ecosphere.
Without our influence, organic and so-called natural disasters have
influenced anatomy through flexible fitness regimes: cosmic radiation
fluctuations, tannins in the water, belladonna. The beauty of our felt form
is the result of all sorts of environmental hardship. The rate of rate of
rate of rate of change does change and the shape of living things to come do
alter to fit. The question of pollution reshaping human genealogical
integrity is therefore situational to say the least. It is perhaps still
wild.

IGM: Tailored Wilding

Intentional Inheritable Genetic Modification of the Human Genome (IGM) is
the making of transgenic humans. The ethical dimensions are faceted: who
decides, which traits, towards what imagined end, who is born, how true to
type, who judges, who births, what is the architecture or cultural form
appropriate to the transgen-posthuman and finally, what are the aesthetics
of the new, laterally engineered types?

Bioart as the Doing-Of Key Technologies

IGM Key Technologies Targets ­

Human gene insertion potential sites on the human body are:

1. The whole somatic body of women and men (including germ cells)
2. Targeted ovaries and testicles
3. In vitro or in situ sperm and ovum
4. Post fusion zygote or blastula
5. Human Embryonic Stem cells (HESc), isolated lines in tissue culture
6. Developing human embryos and/or embroid bodies (preimplantation embryos)
7. Primordial germ cells (presperm or pre-eggs also known as spermatogonia
and oogonia.)

IGM Key methods:

1. Minimally invasive germcell access: physical (often surgical) getting to
potential sites
2. Which genes to pick and why: a taxonomy of all possible traits in the
life world
3. Transcript for alterity: designing vectors and cassettes for trans gene
infection of the human genome
4. Methods of transport: getting the infectious construct (plasmid or raw
DNA) into the germline nuclei, i.e. 1) genegun, 2) microinjector, 3)
plasmids 4) electroporators, 5) agrobacteria and 6) lipofection.
5. Inbreeding kindred: methods of stabilizing a human novel transgenic line

IGM spaces of interest:

1. Divisions of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility
2. Departments of Obstetrics & Gynecology
3. IVF/fertility clinics
4. Hospital based gene therapy trials
5. Transgenic animal production
6. Abortion clinics ­ family planning
7. Surrogate mother agencies
8. Sperm donor agencies
9. Medical waste embryo disposal or medical research reuse containers
10. International Space Station (ISS), HESc in orbit research ongoingŠ

The challenge, to an artist non-expert, is to take a hands-on approach to
the mechanisms of new reproductive devices and practice inventive methods of
genetic alteration. The research includes continued analysis of the
burgeoning technology¹s potential effect on future, posthuman concepts of
race, class, gender, disability and sensuality. But the artistic process
here is based on materials, methods and time based, new media sculptural
results that have agency and volition beyond the technique used to mold
them. Bioart experiments on the bench are based on the doing-of key
technologies while allowing for a feeling-with the post alteration being as
a post-person familiar.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20130918/22201c71/attachment.htm>