In large part, humanity’s evolutionary success story can be attributed to its ability to effectively manage a balance between the sensibly cautious and the boldly experimental. With the advent of modern communications, public opinion has never been more important in shaping the course of our trajectory. With this influence comes the responsibility for the public to be informed; the debate over Genetic Modification is being hijacked by fear-mongering, misinformation, and scientific ignorance on one end, leading to powerful corporate interests and short-term profits as the only drivers of its proliferation on the other.
Shirzad Khusrokhan’s work directs the viewer to consider both the beautiful and grotesque as results of Genetic Modification without vilifying the technology itself, which should be viewed morally agnostic. Fluid, organic forms invite you to imagine the astounding possibilities of science’s new toolbox in the context of humanity’s long co-evolution with this planet’s other life forms.
The Dawning Age of Reason
An explosion of light comes crackling through the branches as a trumpet Lilly heralds the dawning of a new age. Below, crumbling idols are the vestiges of the old, and above, the trees’ vibrant greens are the fountains of the new. The flower carries within it a potent symbol of the new age, its stamens poised to pollinate the world with the new science of medicine that has doubled lifespans within merely a handful of generations.
A History of Fruit
Our modern diets consist almost exclusively of plants and animals that have been selectively bred to be larger, sweeter, docile and uniform. This process has contributed to a loss of genetic diversity and nutritional value as the richer wild genomes have been discarded or ignored. Genetics finally allows us to understand the underlying building blocks of life that we have manipulated blindly. Armed with our new knowledge, genetic modification gives us a possible route to bypass millennia of blind selective breeding and go directly from the wild ancestors to nutritionally superior alternatives to our genetically weary fruit basket.
Every living thing on earth uses the same language in its encoded blueprint. DNA and it’s predecessor, RNA, are a universal syntax that have been carried down in an unbroken chain of heredity since since the first self-replicating molecule came to be. Understanding this syntax is arguably our most important intellectual achievement, while the inevitable manipulation of that syntax will inevitably be our most consequential.
