Quest&Counting

With Quest&Counting I look as an artist into the world of research in DNA, the Human Genome and genetics for better understanding. To me this research signifies not only the universal human quest for the origins and meaning of ‘Life’, an attempt to create order in the seemingly chaotic randomness of life and the human desire for understanding, improving and controlling ‘Nature’, but also another frontier to be conquered by human beings with means available at this moment in time. As Claude Levi-Strauss stated in his book “The Savage Mind”, people have been carefully observing nature and endlessly testing hypotheses for at least 10,000 years, just increasingly more sophisticated over time.

Not surprisingly Genomic research generates a lot of universal and popular attention, not in the least because of its’ medical, historical and socio-anthropological implications. Reason enough to visually explore, and as an artist interpret, the foundations of this subject matter by photographing the laboratories of various scientists and collecting their visualizations, whereby I searched for different systems.

While working on this it I had to remind myself over and over again that this was about us humans, dazzled as I was by all the technology.

Consequently I hope to expand this project by focusing more on the relationship of environment and DNA as it pertains to real people. For this I am especially interested in a recently started international scientific project, called 10000 Genomes, which sets out to sequence DNA from 27 populations all over the world.