Arty biohacking.

• Author: Bailey, Ronald
• Position: Briefly Noted - Brief article

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Visual artists often incorporate new technologies into their work, from etching in the 15th century to video in the 20th. Now biotech is a part of the artist's palette.

One of the more original practitioners of "transgenic art"--art using manipulated genes-is Eduardo Kac. In 2000 Kac collaborated with French scientists to create a glow-in-the-dark rabbit, and in 1999 he translated a verse from Genesis into DNA and incorporated it into growing bacteria colonies. In his 2009 piece Natural History of an Enigma, he engineered petunias to express...