[ISEA2013] Artist Statement: Andre Brodyk – Proto-animate 20TP (2013)

Artist Statement

Semi-ready-made school furniture, Perspex, Petri dishes, chalk, Black-board paint, electric lights/cables, transgenic bacteria.

In Proto-animate 20TP a novel code sequence is comprised of 158 DNA bases derived from an ostensibly non-coding region of a gene. This gene known as the APOE4 gene (Apolipoprotein E4) is associated with Alzheimer’s disease in humans. This sequence was inserted into E.coli bacteria and used as temporal paint-media to depict small living portraits. Through this process a previously inanimate, non-coding section of DNA is poetically expressed in interplay of memories and learning within a simulated 1970s childhood classroom.

  • Dr. Andre Brodyk is an internationally recognised biotech (genetic) artist. Dr Brodyk’s research engages with recombinant processes and molecular materials as models of material creativity and as the agencies of art-based expression. His ongoing practice-led research adopts and adapts recent scientific argument overturning prevailing conventions regarding the veracity of non-coding molecular materials within recombinant matrices. (Source: symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/residents/brodyk 22.06.2015)