Human Trials
2020
Genetic engineering, the set of techniques used to manipulate and modify organisms through heredity, reproduction and DNA recombination, has grown exponentially in academic research and in commercial and medical applications over the last 50 years. The latest generation of this technology, developed in 2012, called CRISPR, is a precision genome-editing technology that allows scientists and doctors to fully customise a living organism’s genetic sequence by “cutting and pasting” to make very specific changes to its DNA. It originated from how viruses override the functions and reproduction of cells. There are many existing and emerging applications of CRISPR, from improving agriculture to medical health benefits. In 2018, a group of scientists stunned the world with their announcement that twin girls came into existence as IVF embryos after their DNA was edited using CRISPR to give the children resistance to HIV infection. These births followed experiments on embryos for seven couples during fertility treatments. A more expansive potential application of this technology is called “gene drives”, a reproductive process using edited DNA that could potentially modify a trait for an entire population of animals in the wild (or humans). In this project, I visualise possible outcomes analogous to the scientific discovery process of gene editing trials on humans. To include a large element of chance, the images are created using artificial intelligence that is trained on two sets of my images. One set is of portraits of friends and family, the other is of complex, layered images of people, produced in the studio using light painting. Like a scientist doing hundreds of trials of gene edits to see which version works, the AI is trying to develop a portrait through experimental trials that combine different aspects of the images. The AI algorithm used was a modified and retrained version of one developed by NVIDIA and run on Google Cloud’s AI Platform.
Rashed Haq’s art explores the co-evolution of humans with science and technology, and the impact these have on our society, culture, environment and psychology. We are inextricably immersed in human-built objects, and our interactions with machines, technology and information networks shape who we are and how we live.
