Transgenic Art

We have become accustomed to technology having a say in the make-up of our aesthetic values, as plastic surgery and the medium of television demonstrate, but genetic engineering opens the way for the new concept of transgenic art, located under the skin and providing for unimagined possibilities. However, apart from the creations that biological art will produce for us via the implantation of artificial genes in the genome of a given species, what will really count will be the relationship between the artist, their work and the end receiver of the new being. GFP K-9 is a good example of transgenic art: a completely normal dog, except that his hair is fluorescent green, thanks to a protein borrowed from a jellyfish. However innovative transgenic art may seem, it should not be forgotten that Man has had a hand in the appearance of new species of dogs, and in all probability in the creation of the dog as a domestic animal, since time immemorial. Another example of the creation of new species are hybrid organisms, whether plants or animals, for practical or merely decorative purposes. There are also the pipe dreams that have formed part of the collective imagination for thousands of years and are now here with us, thanks to biotechnology. In addition, genetic engineering allows the genome to be designed artificially, without any need to start from the genetic material of a particular species. An ethical, responsible perspective should always be behind such creations, a perspective far removed from all-powerful financial criteria, given the profound social repercussions that they can lead to. In any case, transgenesis will be an integral part of our lives-with applications in food processing, aesthetics and medicine-and will even call into question our concepts of species and what is human.