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Started in mai 2010
A C G T The genetic code, the secret of all life
Does science need the arts to show its significance to the public in a different way? Do the arts need science for new ideas? What does the question of what life is mean to contemporary art and to science, both areas on the margins of society? 22 artists try to answer this particular and many other questions in this multicultural project. Old radiographs of DNA sequence analyses that have now become redundant in science serve as raw material.
What is a radiograph? What is behind the method?
Imagine the DNA to be a long chain of the letters ACGT, which are arranged in varying orders. This chain is radioactively labelled, Then this chain is treated in 4 different enzyme cocktails to ensure that in each the chain breaks only at each A or C or G or T, respectively. We obtain four samples with fragments of different size, which are then separated over a molecular sieve in an electic field. The radioactivity makes these fragments visible on an x-ray film. The sequence can now be read like a book by comparing the four samples with each other, from bottom to top
Today, the analysis is similar. The individual "letters" are labelled with different fluorescent dyes ( see right column of the figure) and direktly detected by lase- and computer technologie .
The course of the analysis image edited by Victor Nono
Some of the artists involved in this project:
The names of all participating artists, linked to their own homepage where available