Eduardo Kac (Rio de Janeiro RJ 1962)
Visual artist and performer.
He graduated from the Faculdade de Comunicação Social of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro - PUC/RJ. In the 1980s, he staged politically charged performances in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. In 1983, he published the book Escracho and, in the following years, created works for the videotext network. A pioneer in holography and telepresence art, he became known for the project Ornitorrinco [Platypus], 1989. In 1995, he received the Shearwater Foundation award for his body of work in holography. In 1998, he won the Leonardo Award for Excellence for his work in electronic art, and in 1999 the jury prize at the InterCommunication Center Biennale in Tokyo for the work Uirapuru. He has developed research in transgenic art, using genetic engineering in the projects GFP Bunny, 2000, and The Eighth Day, 2001. Author of several articles on electronic art in Brazil, he published the books Luz e Letra: Ensaios de Arte, Literatura e Comunicação [Light and Letter: Essays on Art, Literature and Communication] in 2004 and Telepresence and Bio Art - Networking Humans, Rabbits and Robots in 2005. In 2006, he carried out doctoral research in the arts at the Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts, CAiiA, at the University of Wales, Newport, Wales, and taught art and technology at The Art Institute of Chicago, United States.
Critical Commentary
In the early 1980s, Eduardo Kac developed pioneering work in art and technology, such as works for the videotext network and holopoetry, a term coined by the artist for poems presented as holograms. With Ornitorrinco (1989), made with Ed Bennett in Chicago, United States, he began working with telepresence, based on the experience of a participant who controls, via a telephone connection, the movement of a robot in a distant physical space.
Several of Kac's works require audience participation to be realized, as in Teleporting an Unknown State (1996), in which he places seeds in a dark place monitored live over the Internet. To provide light for the seeds, Internet users must capture daylight with digital cameras and send the images to the gallery's website, which projects them onto the plant. In Genesis (1999), he creates a genetic code based on a sentence from the Old Testament,1 which is translated into Morse code and from there into a DNA code. This genetic sequence is introduced into bacteria. Through the action of participants, who also intervene in the work via the Internet, the bacteria are exposed to ultraviolet light, which causes changes in their genetic code and, consequently, in the original text. These works explore issues of ethical responsibility for life and are developed in other works by the artist, such as GFP Bunny, begun in 2000. The project starts with the creation in a laboratory of a female rabbit with a modified gene that makes her fluorescent; it includes the controversy surrounding the event as an integral part of the work; and it only ends with the adoption of the animal by the artist and his family.
As the scholar Arlindo Machado notes, since Time Capsule (1997), when he implanted an identification microchip in his own body, Kac has been linked to artistic tendencies dealing with biological processes associated with computer-based telecommunication systems, as well as to transgenic art, which explores genetic engineering techniques.
Notes
1 The biblical sentence is: "Let man have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth". Genesis 1:28.
Critiques
"Eduardo Kac, a pioneer in the artistic use of a wide range of new technologies, has more recently devoted himself to exploring the latest dimensions of creativity opened up by the new biological frontier. Like some other artists (Orlan, Stelarc, Antúnez Roca) who are trying to point art in new directions, he has focused his recent work on issues related to the new biology, the ecology of the biotechnosphere, and the synthesis and metamorphosis of life. In this sense, he proposed the term transgenic art to designate a form of artistic creation based on using genetic engineering techniques to transfer genes (natural or synthetic) to a living organism in order to create new life forms. In a manifesto originally published in the online version of the journal Leonardo, the artist explains that from now on the task of art will no longer be to create artifacts, inanimate material or conceptual pieces, but living creatures, themselves capable of reproducing and preserving the new form in future generations".
Arlindo Machado
INVESTIGAÇÕES: O Trabalho do Artista [Investigations: The Artist's Work] - Exhibition held at Itaú Cultural in 1999/2000
Solo Exhibitions
1985 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at MIS/SP
1988 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at Funarte
1996 - Atlanta (United States) - Shows the electronic, telepresence and interactive artwork Rara Avis on the Internet and at Nexus Contemporary Art Center
1996 - New Orleans (United States) - Shows the work Teleporting An Unknown State, on the Internet and at the Contemporary Art Center
Group Exhibitions
1983 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 6th National Visual Arts Salon, at MAM/RJ
1984 - Fortaleza CE - 7th National Visual Arts Salon
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Como Vai Você, Geração 80? [How Are You, 80s Generation?], at EAV/Parque Lage
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Geração 80: núcleo jovem MP2 arte [80s Generation: MP2 Arte Young Core], at MP2 Arte
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Interventions in Urban Space, at Funarte. Galeria Sérgio Milliet
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 7th National Visual Arts Salon, at MAM/RJ
1984 - São Paulo SP - Art in the Street 2
1984 - São Paulo SP - Xerox Art Brazil, at Pinacoteca do Estado
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 8th National Visual Arts Salon, at MAM/RJ - acquisition prize
1985 - São Paulo SP - Art and Technology, at MAC/USP
1985 - São Paulo SP - Art New Media/Multimedia: Brazil 70/80, at MAB
1986 - Belo Horizonte MG - 9th National Visual Arts Salon: Southeast, at Fundação Clóvis Salgado. Palácio das Artes
1986 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brasil High Tech, at Galeria de Arte do Centro Empresarial Rio
1986 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Occupied Territory, at EAV/Parque Lage
1987 - São Paulo SP - 5th São Paulo Contemporary Art Salon, at Pinacoteca do Estado
1992 - Chicago (United States) - Ornitorrinco in Copacabana, at Siggraph Art Show
1993 - Graz (Austria) - Ornitorrinco on the Moon
1993 - Chicago (United States) - Ornitorrinco on the Moon
1994 - Chicago (United States) - First telerobotic work on the Internet, Ornitorrinco in Eden, shown online and simultaneously in galleries in the three cities
1994 - Lexington (United States) - First telerobotic work on the Internet, Ornitorrinco in Eden, shown online and simultaneously in galleries in the three cities
1994 - Seattle (United States) - First telerobotic work on the Internet, Ornitorrinco in Eden, shown online and simultaneously in galleries in the three cities
1996 - Espoo (Finland) - Ornitorrinco, the Webot, Travels Around the World in Eighty Nanoseconds Going from Turkey to Peru and Back is shown on the Internet and at Otso Gallery
1996 - Saint Petersburg (Russia) - Ornitorrinco in the Sahara is shown at the Saint Petersburg Biennial, linking Chicago and Saint Petersburg
1996 - Chicago (United States) - Ornitorrinco in the Sahara is shown at the Saint Petersburg Biennial, linking Chicago and Saint Petersburg
1997 - Chicago (United States) - Shows the work A-positive, created with Ed Bennett, at Gallery 2
1997 - Porto Alegre RS - 1st Mercosul Visual Arts Biennial
1997 - Porto Alegre RS - Art and Technology, at Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana
1997 - São Paulo SP - Art and Technology, at Itaú Cultural
1997 - São Paulo SP - Art Support Computer, at Casa das Rosas
1999 - Linz (Austria) - Inaugurating transgenic art, presents the work Genesis at the Ars Electronica festival
1999 - Tokyo (Japan) - InterCommunication Center Biennale - international jury prize for the telepresence work Uirapuru
2000 - São Paulo SP - Investigations. The Artist's Work, at Itaú Cultural
2001 - Madrid (Spain) - El Final del Eclipse: el arte de América Latina en la transición al siglo XXI, at Fundación Telefónica
2001 - São Paulo SP - Trajectory of Light in Brazilian Art, at Itaú Cultural
2001 - São Paulo SP - 2nd Sergio Motta Prize
2002 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Entre a Palavra e a Imagem: módulo 1 [Between Word and Image: Module 1], at Sala MAM-Città América
2003 - Chicago (United States) - Paper Works, at Julia Friedman Gallery
2003 - São Paulo SP - 2080, at Masp
2003 - São Paulo SP - The Subversion of Media, at Itaú Cultural
2004 - São Paulo SP - 26th São Paulo International Biennial, at Fundação Bienal
2004 - São Paulo SP - Emoção Art.ficial 2.0: divergências tecnológicas [Artificial Emotion 2.0: Technological Divergences], at Itaú Cultural
Source: Itaú Cultural
