Eduardo Kacs

 
 

The work of artist and writer Eduardo Kac as expressed through new technologies raises many issues, including one of ethics. The Art and Science Laboratory, Santa Fe Institute, and University of New Mexico Arts Technology Center will host a lecture by Kac on April 6, 6:00 p. m. at the Santa Fe Institute (1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe). The lecture is free and open to the public. Kac, a pioneer of new art forms, including transgenic art---the use of genetic engineering techniques to create unique living beings---early last year bred a rabbit with a fluorescent gene and plans to have a dog engineered along the same lines. He has also tagged himself with an animal-tracking microchip and nourished a seedling on light transmitted over the Internet. Kac challenges and expands communication media investigating their philosophical and political dimensions. He is concerned with both the aesthetic and social aspects of verbal and non-verbal interaction. He examines linguistic systems, dialogic exchanges, and interspecies communication. Kac's pieces, which often link virtual and physical  spaces, propose alternative ways of understanding the role of communication processes in shaping consensual realities. Internationally recognized, in the 1980s, Kac was a pioneer of holopoetry  and telepresence art. In the 90s, Kac created the new categories of biotelematics---art in which a biological process is intrinsically connected to digital networks---and transgenic art. Kac is a Ph.D. research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Inquiry in Interactive Arts (CAiiA) at the University of Wales, Newport, United Kingdom. He is an assistant professor of Art and Technology at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

ART AND SCIENCE LAB AND UNM’s ARTS TECHNOLOGY CENTER HOST LECTURE BY ARTIST EDUARDO KAC AT THE SANTA FE INSTITUTE

6 April 2002, Santa Fe institute