Just as RAW photo files contain all the information
you need to put together a photograph, DNA contains all the information needed
for a human being. Information artist and PhD student Heather Dewey-Hagborg has a fascinating
portrait project that explores this idea.
In the project’s artist statement, Dewey-Hagborg says that by “working with traces strangers unwittingly leave behind,” she’s calling “attention to the impulse toward genetic determinism and the potential for a culture of genetic surveillance.”
Dewey-Hagborg finds and photographs DNA samples out in public,
collecting everything from hair to chewed gum and cigarettes. She then
sequences the DNA, extracting information about certain traits related to
outward appearance (e.g. gender, eye-color, ancestry).
What she ends up with is
a comma separated text file that’s roughly 25 megabytes in size. This file is
essentially the distinguishing elements between that stranger’s DNA and common
DNA shared by humanity.
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| DNA Data could be purchased from cigarettes |
Dewey-Hagborg then feeds
this information into a computer program that uses the details to create a 3D
model of that person’s face. Finally, the 3D model is sent to a 3D printer at
New York University and turned into a physical sculpture.
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Heather Dewey-Hagborg posing with her self-portrait DNA sculpture. Photo by Dan Phiffer
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In the project’s artist statement, Dewey-Hagborg says that by “working with traces strangers unwittingly leave behind,” she’s calling “attention to the impulse toward genetic determinism and the potential for a culture of genetic surveillance.”
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| This portrait was created using a cigarette found under an overpass in Brooklyn, New York |
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