Overview

How humans' aesthetic perceptions have shaped other life forms, from racehorses to ornamental plants. Humans have bred plants and animals with an eye to aesthetics for centuries: flowers are selected for colorful blossoms or luxuriant foliage; racehorses are prized for the elegance of their frames. Hybridized plants were first exhibited as fine art in 1936, when the Museum of Modern Art in New York showed Edward Steichen's hybrid delphiniums. Since then, bio art has become a genre; artists work with a variety of living things, including plants, animals, bacteria, slime molds, and fungi. Many commentators have addressed the social and political concerns raised by making art out of living material. In Green Light, however, George Gessert examines the role that aesthetic perception has played in bio art and other interventions in evolution. Gessert looks at a variety of life forms that humans have helped shape, focusing on plants—the most widely domesticated form of life and the one that has been crucial to his own work as an artist. We learn about pleasure gardens of the Aztecs, cultivated for intoxicating fragrance; the aesthetic standards promoted by national plant societies; a daffodil that looks like a rose; and praise for weeds and wildflowers.

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9780262014144

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[A] more than fascinating collection of notes about genetics and evolution in the context of art, and vice versa, and the aesthetic interventions of Homo sapiens. -- Craig Hilton, Leonardo Reviews

[A] more than fascinating collection of notes about genetics and evolution in the context of art, and vice versa, and the aesthetic interventions of Homo sapiens. -- Craig Hilton, Leonardo Reviews Manipulating the sexual organs of plants is where we've intervened in evolution, where we see the most durable marks of our cultures. Gessert's stunningly clear and delicately poetic series of notes presents the durable preoccupations that have informed the manipulation of life, including a comprehensive survey of contemporary biotech art and the patient multigenerational folk art of plant and animal breeders. Green Light illuminates that we can continue to re-imagine our relationship with other living things and, through bio art, 'imagine ourselves into the future.' -- Natalie Jeremijenko, xClinic, New York University

Green Light is a richly articulated argument that aesthetics is an evolutionary force at work in bio art, biotechnology, and ethics. This splendid book is replete with the sensual details of plants and other critters who are entangled with artists, breeders, scientists, and the rest of us in the ongoing evolution of terran life. Gessert's comprehensive art-historical knowledge and his own innovative aesthetics and art practices invite non-anthropocentric response to the myriad living beings becoming with each other on this vulnerable earth. --Donna Haraway, University of California Santa Cruz, author of When Species Meet Manipulating the sexual organs of plants is where we've intervened in evolution, where we see the most durable marks of our cultures. Gessert's stunningly clear and delicately poetic series of notes presents the durable preoccupations that have informed the manipulation of life, including a comprehensive survey of contemporary biotech art and the patient multigenerational folk art of plant and animal breeders. Green Light illuminates that we can continue to re-imagine our relationship with other living things--and, through bio art, 'imagine ourselves into the future.' --Natalie Jeremijenko, xClinic, New York University Green Light is a richly articulated argument that aesthetics is an evolutionary force at work in bio art, biotechnology, and ethics. This splendid book is replete with the sensual details of plants and other critters who are entangled with artists, breeders, scientists, and the rest of us in the ongoing evolution of terran life. Gessert's comprehensive art-historical knowledge and his own innovative aesthetics and art practices invite non-anthropocentric response to the myriad living beings becoming with each other on this vulnerable earth. --Donna Haraway, University of California Santa Cruz, author of When Species Meet

Author Information

George Gessert is an artist whose work focuses on the overlap between art and genetics. His exhibits often involve plants he has hybridized or documentation of breeding projects. His writings have appeared in Leonardo, Art Papers, Design Issues, Massachusetts Review, Hortus, Best American Essays 2007, Pushcart Prize XXX, and other publications.

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