DIY Genetics Kit Has Artistic Merit

There are many emotions that can be evoked through observation and interaction with works of art. It isn't often that the emotion is accompanied by an audible 'cool! that's awesome!' This was the case when I read about Eduardo Kac's work entitled Cypher. It is a very aesthetically pleasing transgenic kit complete with everything you need to create a transgenic cell line (including a step by step instruction manual). To top it all off, the engineered DNA provided with the kit spells out a poem Kac wrote using a nucleotide code he came up with himself.

I'll admit, the poem itself could be a little more dramatic. When fully interpreted the poem reads: ATAGGEDCATWILLATTACKGATTACA. He constructed this through what he believes to be the most simple method of creating an obvious code using the base pairs.

With Kac's cypher there is an entirely new level of audience engagement possible. I couldn't describe it any better than the description from Kac's website: "Cypher" is an artwork that presents itself as an invitation; it is a call to engage with a set of procedures that merge art and poetry, biological life and technology, reading/viewing and kinesthetic participation.