Message from the Director
Genome as Artistic Evocateur
Huntington F. Willard, PhD
My sister saw a notice of the upcoming multimedia performances of "Ferocious Beauty: Genome" and thought it was somebody's idea of a joke. She's heard me carry on for decades about genetics and genomics and their impact, but even she wasn't prepared to believe this one. .
"Indeed, the Genome Revolution is no longer just about science and data; it'sincreasingly about life, today"But is it really so far-fetched to think that the Genome Revolution would begin to attract the attention of artists? After all, Paul Mullin's recent play about the race for the genome sequence (The Sequence) has garnered praise and awards. And geneticist Susumo Ohno set the genome sequence to music. As genomic data began to accumulate, he recognized that certain sequence motifs recurred again and again both within and across species. He thought it might be an interesting exercise to assign musical notes to specific bases and patterns of bases and see what these passages sounded like. It wasn't Mozart or even Schoenberg, but, hey, it was genome music.
As I look around campus and peruse the articles in this issue of GenomeLIFE, such examples of science crossing over into the world of creative expression are becoming easier to find. By the time you read this, the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange will be settled into Duke for two weeks of filming, editing and rehearsing "Ferocious Beauty: Genome," together with numerous forums, workshops and lectures with Duke students and faculty. The company's stay will culminate with performances of "Ferocious Beauty: Genome" at the Reynolds Theater on September 14 and 15. As our lead story makes clear, Liz's vision of the genome is neither of the Pollyanna nor the dystopian variety. Rather, as I expect the audience will appreciate, it is nuanced and complex — much like the genome itself, much like art itself.
Elsewhere, as freshmen arrived on campus, many were discussing the Duke Summer Reading Book, Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper, and the questions it raises about what parents can demand of a child if that child's genome can benefit another child. And while these thorny issues are right at the nexus of genome sciences and policy, Picoult's book really brings them to life by refracting them through the prism of a novel: suddenly, conflicts over organ donation are no longer abstract.
Such is the power of artistic expression, whether performed on a stage, written on a page or captured on film. Is the genome sequence — much less its implications for individuals or for society as a whole — any less expressive? What is art, if not an individual's expression of what is important or meaningful to him, or of what it means to be her? And what is the genome, if not an individual's (or a species') ultimate expression of what is uniquely him or uniquely her? Art in any form is meant to evoke a response from the viewer or listener. Is it really such a stretch to imagine the genome, your genome or my genome or even my sister's genome, each with its unique pattern of sequence changes and variants, as being similarly evocative?
My favorite example of the genome as artistic evocateur is the "portrait" of Sir John Sulston, a leader among the team of international genome scientists who sequenced the genome, that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London. Rather than an expressive photograph or even an interpretive painting of a scientist at work, Sir John chose a plate of bacterial cells, each carrying a small snippet of his genome. This and other examples of bioart, as discussed on page 6, take the concrete nuts and bolts of genomics and make them abstract. Had the English Department's Rob Mitchell not had the courage to step outside of his discipline's traditional concerns and delve into every aspect of bioart, from intellectual property issues to what it means from an aesthetic point of view, most of the Duke community would probably not be aware of the remarkable and novel ways in which the genome sciences are being interpreted by artists working in multiple media.
There are two take-home messages from the words and images in this issue. The first is: the genome is everywhere. I am often asked when the Genome Revolution will begin in earnest. One response is to point the inquirer toward one of the labs in the IGSP developing novel genomic tests for cancer or other human diseases. But I could just as easily send that person to the theater, the art museum or the fiction section of the bookstore. Indeed, the Genome Revolution is no longer just about science and data; it'sincreasingly about life, today.
The second message is that while art and science are often portrayed as adversarial or incompatible, the "data" presented here and elsewhere remind us how much they have in common. At their best, both ask difficult, provocative questions and seek insights—albeit using very different methods— that are rarely obvious. Both evolve based on what's come before. And on occasion, both can reveal true beauty.
Huntington F. Willard
Director