Note: If you see this text you use a browser which does not support usual Web-standards. Therefore the design of Media Art Net will not display correctly. Contents are nevertheless provided. For greatest possible comfort and full functionality you should use one of the recommended browsers.

Themesicon: navigation pathCyborg Bodiesicon: navigation pathMythical Bodies I
 
Redeeming the Gene, Molding the Golem, Folding the Protein (Rapoport, Sonya), 2001Genesis (Kac, Eduardo), 1998GFP Bunny (Kac, Eduardo), 2000
 
 
 

icon: previous page

The artist Sonya Rapoport begins at this interface with her web-based work «Redeeming the Gene, Molding the Golem, Folding the Protein» (2001). With the legend of the «golem» she uses a traditional ‹story of creation› as her point of departure, retelling it under the sign of genetic technology. If one follows this narration along the artificial DNA string, whose protein bases develop into a navigation system adapted from the Tree of Sephiroth in the Cabala, amongst other things one comes across the «artist gene,» the force behind which is Eduardo Kac and his works such as «Genesis» (1999ff.) and «Alba,» as well as the «GFP Bunny» (2000ff.) [41] Rapoport's protagonists Lilith and Eve—primordial female images of male fantasies of creation—set a cabalistic «golem gene» against the hybrid of Kac's self-assertion as an ‹artist-scientist,› who in his works cites the paradigms of genetic technology in a positivist way. With the aid of the «golem gene,» not only is the «artist gene» purified, but Lilith and Eve are the delivered from the curse of demonization, which according to biblical legend weighs heavily on them, and are recreated.

 

Making monsters

If instead of the charismaticized ‹genetic› or ‹digital engineer› one contemplates ‹the other side› of creation, i.e. the creatures made by the creators, what starting points does the ‹interface gender› provide in particular?

What is characteristic for the artificial creatures of modernity at the intersection of art and science is that they—especially when they satisfy the ‹imperative of anthropomorphism›—sooner or later reveal their monstrosity, which not only demonstrates the failure of the act of creation, but also its inhumaneness.

On the other side there is the throng of female «doll-bodyautomatons, » [42] which—if one goes by their contours—appear to come into the inheritance of Pygmalion's beautiful portrait. But this impression is deceiving: Like Galathea, they may have been endowed with life as objects of desire, their character, however, is more like that of the «future Eve»: As soon as they begin to lead their ‹own life› they develop demonic streaks, so that they immediately have to be put an end to. [43] It is no without reason that the artificial woman in «Metropolis» bears the epithet «the

icon: next page