Art: Art is Nature
One of the aspects of the article that most resonated was that it questions the role of Isaac Darwin in Art as it refers to the pre-Darwinian faith that "human beings are the center of creation". This led me to ponder on the following question: am I alone? Who am I in the universe? I came across a very interesting article in which it is said that "counting the stars in the universe is like trying to count the number of sand grains on a beach (impossible)." [1] The Milky Way Galaxy for example, which measures about 120,000 light years across (it would take light that many years to travel across the galaxy), and contains up to 400 billion stars. Scientists estimate that at least 10 billion perhaps habitable Earth-sized planets exist in the Milky Way alone. Considering these facts, human beings are virtually meaningless and irrelevant in relation to the size of the universe. Are we REALLY the center of creation?
Art is often referred to as only encompassing human figures, artifacts or
technology when, in reality and as previously stated, human beings are not as important as they like to think they are. This article argues that Art IS nature.
What most caught my attention in this article is the Art of Brandon Ballangée, who has been breeding amphibians since the 1990s, supporting the claim that nature is indeed Art. In one of his projects, he worked closely with biologists to attempted to recreate a species of frog thought to be extinct called the Dwarf African Clawed Frog, Hymenochirus curtipes.
Another artist named Eduardo Kac explores genetic engineering as he attempts to create new Art. Kac, alongside some French engineers, genetically engineered a rabbit that contains a jellyfish gene for green fluorescent protein (GFP). As a result of this genetic modification, the rabbit that appears to be a simple white rabbit in fact fluoresces bright green under blue light.
