Brandejs's satiric invention, the Genpet, is an ugly, hairless, supposedly living homunculus resembling a plucked chicken with an oversize head. It comes in a see-through plastic container equipped with a heart monitor, a nutrient feeding tube, and a freshness gauge. A dozen or so packaged, somnolent Genpets hang on a wall in the gallery as if in a store display. The molded rubber creatures don't really look alive when you examine them closely, but the faux-commercial packaging is convincing. You might imagine a new Steven Spielberg sci-fi movie based on the concept. (For that matter, you can imagine Brandejs working for Spielberg as a prop maker .)
In her catalog essay, Bradbury notes that the new "Biotech art" movement "blurs the boundaries between art and science," and she writes further, "The genetic revolution has turned the artist's studio into a laboratory, the artist into a researcher, and living tissue technology into a medium."
Today's best known biotech artist, Steve Kurtz , is not in the show. Kurtz is the Buffalo-based conceptualist who was arrested in 2004 and investigated by the FBI as a possible bioterrorist because bacterial cultures and laboratory equipment were found in his home after his wife died of a heart attack. A member of a performance and protest art collective called Critical Art Ensemble, Kurtz was doing at-home scientific research into the genetic alteration of food products.
