Keeping To A Sort Of DNA Theme,

imagine this,

it’s a mild May day and you’re walking down a street in say Brooklyn gnawing on a piece of gum that just passed the point of flavorful into the realm of tastelessness, or perhaps have finished smoking a cigarette, in a hurry you spit it on the ground or throw the butt away without a second thought and continue about your day,


hours later a mysterious woman arrives and surreptitiously collects the sticky gum or butt from the sidewalk and drops it into a clear plastic bag which she carefully labels, flash forward a month later: you’re walking through an art gallery, and there, mounted on the wall, is a familiar face staring back at you, astonishingly (or terrifyingly) it’s a 3D print of your face generated from the DNA you left behind on that random piece of gum or cigarette end,

that now appears in a petri dish just below the portrait, a few years ago this would seem like science fiction, the stuff of films like Gattaca, but to information artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg it’s how she makes her artwork here in 2013, to read more about her work have a look at Stranger Visions, but just thinking about meeting yourself as described above, how would you feel looking at yourself?