Jerome grant
recipients '99:

Kevin & Jennifer McCoy
Auriea Harvey
Vivian Selbo
Alexei Shulgin &
Natalie Bookchin

Harvesting the Net: Memory Flesh

Harvesting the Net: Memory_Flesh will be a para-formative tracing of the first year of the claimed completion of the map of the Human Genome and the rise of genetic economies. The tracing process initiated by this harvesting will document, archive, and refold the routes of this new economy. The project will begin gathering net-based articles from April 06, 2000 when Celera Genomics announced its completion of the human Genome, (a marketing date, not a scientific date). Research and documentation gathering will continue throughout the year and end on April 06, 2001. This para-formative harvest will be a process of performing the system behavior of the networks and software of Genetic Economies. The para-formative gesture will manifest itself online in 5 steps. Harvesting the Net's end product will be a series of visualizations as mirrors of our memory flesh where eventually, all cells will be for sale.

Artist as Reflective Performance System:

The act of behaving in a purposefully reduced and analytically methodical manner is the result of immersion and successful upload of subjectivity when facing the behemoth master that is computer technology (the spine of the Internet). The act of performance allows a position to reconsider a chosen set of self-conscious, conceptual gestures in relation to this growing behemoth. Through this process I can translate a format of investigation and perform the system as it currently exists upsetting the master slave relationship that is generated through technological distribution as we know it.

Step 1: Artist performs the system behavior of online searching. In so doing determines the core elements for a conceptual investigation.

To review some initial net-based sketches that perform this activity go to Genetic Response System version 1.0.

The first element of the Genetic Response System will be to design an artificial life form--a Viroid whose manifestation will be circumscribed by the parameters of search strings that will seek out the latest information on genetic developments--be they real or imaginary. The Viroid as life form will define itself via the outcome of the knowledge it gains in its seeking out specific information about genetics on-line such as Speed Economies (the flow of biotechnology stocks) DNA Harvesting (like the Human Genome Project) and VR Timeline (a mapping of the history and development within Capital from this century).

Genetic Response System version 3.0

Each day new data emerges tracing the shifting boundaries between the 'organic' and 'non-organic'. Genetic Response System 3.0 reflects these shifts. In this version search strings or Viroids seek data online specific to these eroding boundaries. In assembling the results of Viroid searches, version 3.0 brings into question the tactical foundations in the representation of biotechnology's emergence as a new economy.

Step 2: Artist generates reductive, micro-search strings and system behaviors based on results from step one.

This stage of system behavioral automation will be added to a database silo. Harvesting will also include data on worker and management relations, as well as labor conditions, inside the laboratories invested in the race to complete stable human genomes.

Step 3: Artist imposes a conceptual parsing engine that mirrors the intersections, (crossover nodes) between network architecture and genomic economies.

Specifically, tracing out the open source DNA models that President Clinton initiated this year in relation to the Proprietary Corporate model that Celera and other laboratories function under.

Step 4: Artist reroutes developing archive of material collected and begins to formulate a database generator of genetic simulation.

This generator will mix promotional/advertising material that introduces intersections of off-line activity in info-tech advertising and infotainment arena with genetic researchers race to build a stable genetic market for its products and sales goals.

Step 5: Collaging and regenerating material mixed from the artist's performative searches, artist's generated auto-bot searches, and parsing engine outlines to create and re-purpose a series of visualizations that will parallel the visualizing process of building the human map of ourselves as Genome.

LINKS