Purposeful mutations on mice as an artistic process

And the painter too is, as I conceive, just such another -- a creator of appearances, is he not?
Of course.
But then I suppose you will say that what he creates is untrue. And yet there is a sense in which the painter also creates a bed?
Yes, he said, but not a real bed. [597a]

Then if he does not make that which exists he cannot make true existence, but only some semblance of existence; and if any one were to say
that the work of the maker of the bed, or of any other workman, has real existence, he could hardly be supposed to be speaking the truth.

[598b]
Which is the art of painting designed to be -- an imitation of things as they are, or
as they appear -- of appearance or of reality?
-Of appearance.
Plato, Republic 39 (595a-602b)


Transgenic art, a term proposed by E.Kac , is based "on the use of genetic engineering techniques to transfer synthetic genes to an organism or to transfer natural genetic material from one species into another, to create unique living beings".
The artist, , will study the gene over-expression that cause skeletal overgrowth on transgenic mice. The aim is to get mutant animals with extended skeletal system as a model for a superhuman anatomy.


Is Nature, in the end, becoming the artificial product of humanity, which will be a tautology to civilization?

Organisms created in a lab display inherent restrictions compared to those in "natural" environments with more intense antagonism. From the idea of "unchanging", "fixed" species to evolving organisms and now to "population thinking organisms", morphology always reveals the laws behind forms. At the end, selection will classify all new variants, urging each alternate to face discrimination. The genetic program of organisms is a computing system as well as the center for performing certain behaviors. At the same time genes will be our highest form of reflection with the environment. It is rather premature but not pointless to speculate that genetic data may include us in the role of a decisive designer; from humans to Meta-, Super-humans or the Afterman, species evolve into one another. By artistic means, the aestheticizing of evolution is the ultimate product of modernism; either inside or outside nature, the natural body may now acquire the individual consciousness of each regenerative organ or tissue, thus becoming a body in excess, a body that reappears after postmodernism, retaining its functional and consciencial anatomical unity-perpetually evolving in new organizational levels.




Proposal for gene overexpression on transgenic mice with skeletal overgrowth.
(The images are indicative of the normal and mutant animal )