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Evanition, 2001
LCD glass, sensors, stainless steel, DNA.

The piece uses synthetic DNA, liquid crystal glass panels, proximity sensors and the existing architecture of the gallery.

The DNA sequence was created by translating the light patterns of tower 1 into the 4 bases – guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine– that make up DNA.

By looking at patterns and randomness from the building, one system of translation is used to code for another system.

In a strictly poetical sense the synthetic gene created becomes a biological transcription.

The vial of DNA is embedded in an incision cut into the two-sided wall of the gallery.

On either side of the wall a large panel of LCD glass stands as both a barrier and a window onto the vial of DNA.

By approaching the wall, proximity sensors alternate the state of the glass between transparent and opaque. The viewer on each side has some control, but not all.
The installation evokes both ephemerality and mass, absence and presence.

Image at left from World Views show at The New Museum of Contemporary Art