“93% Human”

Title:

93% Human

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Performers:



• Helen Pynor
• Jimmy Breen

Symposium:

• ISEA2024: 29th International Symposium on Electronic Art

Venue(s):

• SAE Creative Media University College , Brisbane , Australia

Artist Statement:

‘93% Human’ is a media artwork exploring the multispecies nature of being ‘human’, the ‘promiscuity’ of DNA, and DNA data as a generative tool, through an investigation of DNA we exhale in our breath and inhale from others. The work highlights the intimacy of our unnoticed exchanges with human and non-human others, and ‘contamination’ as a necessary condition of being.

A performance video depicts artist Helen Pynor and bioinformatician Jimmy Breen breathing into a scientific glassware condenser device, to collect a shared breath sample. DNA extracted from this shared sample was found to comprise 93% human DNA, with the remaining 7% belonging to around 6700 identified microbial species. Composer Amanda Cole has created a microtonal, polyphonic choral score for classically-trained singers, who use their own respiratory tracts to sing and whisper the taxonomic names of hundreds of the species present in Pynor and Breen’s shared breath sample. This multispecies community is brought into the gallery as an 8-channel sound work. Videos depict DNA nucleotide data generated from Pynor and Breen’s shared breath sample, in ongoing flux and movement, while scientific glassware objects offer metaphoric breathing ‘organs’, referencing Pynor and Breen’s original breath collection performance.

Category:

• Performance Art
• Video Art