Skinny Dipping: Gene Pool
Concept Statement
Skinny Dipping: Gene Pool is a poetic space, and serves as a meditation on all that remains unknown despite having “the sequence” for the Human Genome. It is also a meditation on our origins, on unity and diversity, and the inherent tensions in the knowledge we’ve gained that while we are “99.9%” the same, how we approach and make use of that 0.1% difference is critical. It also serves to evoke a sense of play, of being at play in life, and it holds the notion of time-- our personal experience in relation to evolutionary time, as the traces you leave behind persist only so long before they move out towards the perimter and become a part of the whole.
By entering the circular projection, composed of streaming sequences form the human genome sequence data set, individuals acquire the ability to generate their own gene traces which interact with each other, yet inevitably become one with the sequence that makes up the pool. Movement triggers the sound of splashing water responsively to each person's presence and activity in the pool. The space is designed to be empty except for projection from ceiling to floor and the walls.
The inspiration for this work arose from my contemplating the impact of genomic biology. In my research I am aksing questions about the nature of knowledge, how that affects us individually and collectively, and how this specific knowledge (the genome sequence) would/could transform an individual, or society. I imagined a poetic space that could evoke reflection on our human condition, on the use of the knowledge we’ve gained, on the ephemeral nature of our individual existance, and the collective effect on our evolutionary history. Implied in this new knowledge are opportunities for its application, which include possible genetic modifications/enhancements to our genome, with the resulting evolutionary effects. I was hoping to evoke a sense of the issues raised by individual choices and their collective implications/impact in a time when we are at the initial stages of the application of this new knowledge.