Green Light Leonardo Roger F. Malina, Executive Editor Sean Cubitt, Editor-in-Chief The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet, edited by Ken Goldberg, 2000 The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich, 2001 Metal and Flesh: The Evolution of Man: Technology Takes Over, Ollivier Dyens, 2001 Uncanny Networks: Dialogues with the Virtual Intelligentsia, Geert Lovink, 2002 Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology, Stephen Wilson, 2002 Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion, Oliver Grau, 2003 Women, Art, and Technology, edited by Judy Malloy, 2003 Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization, Alexander R. Galloway, 2004 At a Distance: Precursors to Art and Activism on the Internet, edited by Annmarie Chandler and Norie Neumark, 2005 The Visual Mind II, edited by Michele Emmer, 2005 CODE: Collaborative Ownership and the Digital Economy edited by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, 2005 The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture, Eugene Thacker, 2005 Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture, Matthew Fuller, 2005 New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories, edited by Adalaide Morris and Thomas Swiss, 2006 Aesthetic Computing, edited by Paul A. Fishwick, 2006 Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation, Steve Dixon, 2006 MediaArtHistories, edited by Oliver Grau, 2006 From Technological to Virtual Art, Frank Popper, 2007 META/DATA: A Digital Poetics, Mark Amerika, 2007 Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond, Eduardo Kac, 2007 The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science, Cretien van Campen, 2007 Closer: Performance, Technologies, Phenomenology, Susan Kozel, 2007 Video: The Reflexive Medium, Yvonne Spielmann, 2007 Software Studies: A Lexicon, Matthew Fuller, 2008 Tactical Biopolitics: Theory, Practice, and the Life Sciences, edited by Beatriz da Costa and Kavita Philip, 2008 White Heat and Cold Logic: British Computer Art 1960–1980, edited by Paul Brown, Charlie Gere, Nicholas Lambert, and Catherine Mason, 2008 Curating New Media Art, Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook 2010 Green Light: Toward an Art of Evolution, George Gessert, 2010 See <http://mitpress.mit.edu> for a complete list of titles in this series. Green Light: Toward an Art of Evolution George Gessert The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2010 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or me- chanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) with- out permission in writing from the publisher. For information about special quantity discounts, please email [email protected] This book was set in Stone Serif and Stone Sans by the MIT Press. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gessert, George, 1944– Green light : toward an art of evolution / George Gessert. p. cm.—(Leonardo books) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-01414-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Art and biology. 2. Biotechnology in art. 3. Nature (Aesthetics). 4. Evolution (Biology)— Philosophy. I. Title. II. Title: Toward an art of evolution. N72.B5G47 2010 701'.08—dc22 2009037617 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 “We dwell on a largely unexplored planet.” —E. O. Wilson “See how they wake without a question Even though the whole world is burning.” —W. S. Merwin “Learn the flowers Go light” —Gary Snyder Contents Series Foreword ix Acknowledgments xi Publication History xv Introduction xix 1 Divine Plants and Magical Animals 1 2 Aesthetic Effects of Domestication 11 3 The Rainforests of Domestication 21 4 The Rise of Ornamental Plants 33 5 Darwin’s Sublime 41 6 Playing God 47 7 Standards of Excellence 53 8 Doubles 61 9 Kitsch Plants 81 10 Bastard Flowers, Genetic Goofies, and Freud’s Bow Wows 93 11 Biotechnology in the Garden 107 12 Recent Art Involving DNA 111 13 Naming Life 125 14 Anthropocentrism and Genetic Art 133 15 The Angel of Extinction 143 16 Seven Breeding Complexes 153 17 The Slowest Art 171 18 Breeding for Wildness 177 viii Contents Appendix 1: Organisms in Bio Art 185 Appendix 2: Bio Art Terminology 191 Appendix 3: The Four Main Types of Double Flowers 193 Appendix 4: Books and Catalogs on Biotech Art Published since 2000 195 Notes 197 Index 219 Series Foreword The arts, science, and technology are experiencing a period of profound change. Explo- sive challenges to the institutions and practices of engineering, art making, and sci- entific research raise urgent questions of ethics, craft, and care for the planet and its inhabitants. Unforeseen forms of beauty and understanding are possible, but so too are unexpected risks and threats. A newly global connectivity creates new arenas for interaction between science, art, and technology but also creates the preconditions for global crises. The Leonardo Book series, published by the MIT Press, aims to con- sider these opportunities, changes, and challenges in books that are both timely and of enduring value. Leonardo books provide a public forum for research and debate; they contribute to the archive of art-science-technology interactions; they contribute to understandings of emergent historical processes; and they point toward future practices in creativity, research, scholarship, and enterprise. To find more information about Leonardo/ISAST and to order our publications, go to Leonardo Online at <http://lbs.mit.edu/> or e-mail <[email protected]. edu>. Sean Cubitt Editor-in-Chief, Leonardo Book series Leonardo Book Series Advisory Committee: Sean Cubitt, Chair; Michael Punt; Eugene Thacker; Anna Munster; Laura Marks; Sundar Sarrukai; Annick Bureaud Doug Sery, Acquiring Editor Joel Slayton, Editorial Consultant Leonardo/International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology (ISAST) Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology, and the affiliated French organization Association Leonardo have two very simple goals: x Series Foreword 1. to document and make known the work of artists, researchers, and scholars inter- ested in the ways that the contemporary arts interact with science and technology and 2. to create a forum and meeting places where artists, scientists, and engineers can meet, exchange ideas, and, where appropriate, collaborate. When the journal Leonardo was started some forty years ago, these creative disciplines existed in segregated institutional and social networks, a situation dramatized at that time by the “two cultures” debates initiated by C. P. Snow. Today we live in a differ- ent time of cross-disciplinary ferment, collaboration, and intellectual confrontation enabled by new hybrid organizations, new funding sponsors, and the shared tools of computers and the Internet. Above all, new generations of artist-researchers and researcher-artists are now at work individually and in collaborative teams bridging the art, science, and technology disciplines. Perhaps in our lifetime we will see the emer- gence of “new Leonardos,” creative individuals or teams that will not only develop a meaningful art for our times but also drive new agendas in science and stimulate tech- nological innovation that addresses today’s human needs. For more information on the activities of the Leonardo organizations and networks, please visit our Web sites at <http://www.leonardo.info/> and <http://www.olats.org >. Roger F. Malina Chair, Leonardo/ISAST ISAST Governing Board of Directors: Roger Malina, Jeffrey Babcock, Greg Harper, Mer- edith Tromble, Michael Joaquin Grey, John Hearst, Sonya Rapoport, Beverly Reiser, Christian Simm, Joel Slayton, Tami Spector, Darlene Tong, Stephen Wilson Acknowledgments From Green Light’s inception, Kate, my wife and friend, has contributed. She adapted her schedules to my writing and research and gave up evenings and weekends for something that often seemed to be going nowhere. Kate helped me develop ideas and always believed in the project. When the time came for editing, she went over the entire manuscript, some parts more than once, helping especially with muddy patches I had read too many times to see for the messes they were. Without her this book either would not have been written or would have suffered from a lack of clarity dishearten- ing to imagine. Beginnings are difficult, and writing is no exception. My way into Green Light was aided by one of Eduardo Kac’s discoveries, the story of Lolo the donkey, which gave me the first paragraph of chapter one. I cannot always identify Eduardo’s other contribu- tions, because we have exchanged ideas for so many years that he has affected the way I see biotech art and living things in general. He has lit the way with an array of green lights, among them GFP K-9, Genesis, Alba the fluorescent rabbit, and The Eighth Day. Above all, Eduardo has helped me through his example of being a brave pioneer. In 1996, long before the term “biotech art” existed and before any periodical ran more than the odd article on art composed of live materials, Roger Malina invited me to serve as editorial adviser on art and biology for Leonardo. Much of what I know about contemporary biotech art has come to me through my connection with Leonardo. I am deeply grateful to Roger for having created this forum for biotech art and allowing me to participate. Pat Bentson and Pamela Grant-Ryan have helped make it all work by being welcoming, knowledgeable, and always reliable. I began this book in 1992 and submitted a proposal to the MIT Press later that year, but was turned down. I no longer remember exactly how I felt when I received that rejection, but today I am grateful to whoever made the decision. If I had published Green Light then, or for that matter any time in the decade and a half that followed, the book would have been considerably more fragmentary and too heavily reliant on intuition—a half-baked production. Over the years I submitted the manuscript to more than a dozen other publishers.