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About this book
Written by an artist and a social scientist, this thought provoking title firstly details the growing range of contemporary painting and sculpture inspired by the gene and then considers the moral and bioethical questions these works address. The authors discuss how this art reflects and forms public opinion towards the ethical and human consequences of recent genetic developments.
Contents
Deciphering DNA - the art and science of a supermolecule; reductionism: reducing the body to a "code script" of information; mutation, manipulations, and monsters - the new grotesque in art; blurring boundaries - chimeras and transgenics; breeding better babies - a new eugenics?; commodification -genes for sale; science as culture: through the artist's lens.
Customer Reviews
By: D Nelkin and S Anker
216 pages
In The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age, authors Suzanne Anker and Dorothy Nelkin examine the intersections between art and science in the developing arena of genetic research and engineering. The book is clearly written, well documented, and lavishly illustrated. It will appeal to a wide audience, including artists, scientists, and the general public with an interest in the host of ethical and social questions raised by molecular science. Genome News Network The Molecular Gaze, published just months after the sad death of Dorothy Nelkin, is a work of art. Literally, in the sense of being about art (and more specifically, about art in the age of genetics), and figuratively, in the sense of being a visually elegant and aesthetically satisfying production. It is also timely: as Anker (an artist and art historian) and Nelkin (a sociologist of science) document, in the space of little more than a decade, the incorporation of molecular genetics into the visual arts-as icon, as motif, as subject, and even as technique-has emerged as a not so minor industry. BioEssays