Glowing Bunny Artist Comes to Duke

GFP Bunny artist Eduardo Kac - the first artist to create a genetically altered mammal as part of his work - will come to Duke University on Monday, Nov. 6, for a symposium on his work and its implications. Recently, Kac received widespread media attention when the director of the French government lab where his GFP Bunny was genetically engineered declined to release the albino rabbit, which appears white in daylight but glows green under ultraviolet light. Kac will talk at Duke about the animal, named Alba, and his other works using genetic engineering or digital technology. The symposium, "Art, Genetics, and Ethics: The Transgenic Art of Eduardo Kac," will include a multi-disciplinary panel of Duke professors, who will respond to Kac's use of genetic engineering as an artistic medium. A question-and-answer session involving the audience will take place at the end. The event will be held in the Levine Science Research Center Auditorium, from 7 to 9:30 p.m. It is free and open to the public, but no reserved seats are available. Seating is limited. Symposium organizer Edward Shanken said the event will focus on the ethical questions raised by Kac's work and the implications of genetic engineering and biotechnology for the future, given rapid advances in these fields. "To raise these questions in an artistic form allows them to be entertained in a wider context," Shanken said. A doctoral candidate in Duke's department of art and art history, Shanken has published widely on the subject of art and technology, and is the editor of a forthcoming book from the University of California Press, titled Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness by Roy Ascott. The panel of respondents will include: Kalman P. Bland, professor of religion, and author of The Artless Jew: Medieval and Modern Affirmations and Denials of the Visual. Bland teaches courses at Duke on medieval and modern Jewish thought, and has a rabbinic degree from Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. Elizabeth Kiss, director of Duke's Kenan Institute for Ethics (a program promoting moral reflection and commitment in personal, professional, community and civic life). She is associate professor of the practice of political science and philosophy at Duke, and is interested in moral and political philosophy focused on human rights. Joseph Nevins, James B. Duke professor of genetics and chair of the department of genetics at Duke. He is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and is recognized for his research on mammalian cancer gene regulation. His response will address the use of transgenic technology for scientific goals. Dr. Jeremy Sugarman, director of Duke's Center for the Study of Medical Ethics and Humanities, which aims to promote excellence in scholarship and teaching in medical ethics and the humanities in medicine. An associate professor with dual appointments in the departments of medicine and philosophy, Sugarman conducts research focusing on ethics and physician-patient communication. Scientists now routinely engineer transgenic animals, most specifically transgenic mice, for use in research into cancer and other diseases. However, this kind of technology for artistic research is new, and has not been met with the same degree of ethical acceptance on the public's part. "It is unclear why genetic engineering carried out in the name of science is more acceptable than the same process done in the name of art," Shanken said. "Art has always made valuable contributions to the understanding of technology and its social ramifications, and Kac's work opens up new dimensions of discussion about the ethics of genetic engineering." The GFP Bunny possesses genetic material from two species, thus making it transgenic. It was created by splicing together its own DNA with a gene for a green flourescent protein taken from a jellyfish. The initials "GFP" stand for "Green Flourescent Protein." Assisting the artist Kac in his project were French artist and curator Louis Bec and scientists Louis-Marie Houdebine and Patrick Prunet. Shanken said the genetically altered rabbit represents only part of Kac's project. "He is an artist and writer who investigates the philosophical and political dimensions of communications processes," Shanken said. As a result, controversy surrounding the glowing rabbit is part of the GFP Bunny project, Shanken said. "It's about dialogue. It's about the cultural and social context of art. It's about breaking the boundaries between genetically altered and wild-type animals." A key component of Kac's project is the integration of the glowing bunny into the artist's family home. The artist had intended on taking the rabbit back home to Chicago to study the socialization process between transgenic beings, such as Alba, and genetically homogeneous and unaltered (wild-type) beings, such as his wife and young daughter. The rabbit, however, remains in the hands of officials at the French government lab on the outskirts of Paris, where the glowing animal was engineered. Kac was born in Rio de Janeiro, and today is an assistant professor of art and technology at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This fall, his installation, "Genesis," was included as part of "Paradise Now?," an exhibit held at Exit Art in New York City. In it, Kac took a Biblical passage, translated it into Morse Code, then translated this into DNA code and, finally, injected the DNA code into a bacteria. Internet surfers from across the world were able to log onto the gallery's Web site and view the bacteria. A strong ultraviolet light above the bacteria was then activated, and the bacteria mutated. The Duke symposium is being co-sponsored by the university's Center for Genome Ethics, Law and Policy; its Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory; its Center for International Studies; its Center for the Study of Medical Ethics and Humanities; its department of art and art history; the Kenan Institute for Ethics; and the vice-provost office of interdisciplinary studies.

On the Web: more about Kac's work can be found at http://www.ekac.org . More about Shanken's work can be found at http://www.duke.edu/~giftwrap.

Written by Linda Haac.