“Thanks, Rob,” the kid said.

“Anytime,” Rob Bellarmino said.

“wet art” on display

Transgenic Organisms in Galleries

Living Creatures for Sale in London, South African artist Laura Cinti displayed a transgenic cactus that contained human genetic material, and grew human hairs. Cinti said, “The cactus with all its hairs coming out is showing all the desires, all the signs of sexuality. It doesn’t want to be trapped. It wants to be released.”

When asked about the public reaction to the cactus, Cinti said, “Bald men are particularly interested.”

Artist Marta de Menezes created modified butterflies where one wing was different from the other. She said, “People were very shocked at first. They didn’t think it was a good idea.” She said that, next, she would make the stripes of zebra fish vertical instead of horizontal so the fish would look more like zebras. These changes would be inherited.

Finnish artist Oron Catts grew pig wings in culture from pig bone marrow stem cells. He said the artist’s team played music to the pig cells to make them grow. “We downloaded lots of pig songs…and played them to the cells.” He said the cells seemed to do better with music.

Chicago-based artist Eduardo Kac created a transgenic rabbit called Alba that glowed green. The fertilized egg of an albino rabbit was injected with GPF, the gene for green fluorescent protein from a Pacific Northwest jellyfish. The animal that grew from the egg now glows. A furor resulted. Kac observed that “[the rabbit] does make some people uncomfortable,” but noted that GPF is a common research tool and has been injected into yeast, molds, plants, fruit flies, mice, and cow embryos. Kac said he was looking forward to making a fluorescent dog.

Alba died prematurely of unknown causes. So did the transgenic cactuses.

In 2003 the first transgenic pet was offered for sale to the public. A red-fluorescing zebra fish, it was created by Dr. Zhiyuan Gong in Singapore, and licensed to a company in Austin, Texas. It was marketed under the name GloFish, after two years of review by federal and state agencies, which concluded the fish were safe, so long as they were not eaten.