#stranger visions

[philamuseum]

For "Stranger Visions," Heather Dewey-Hagborg collected discarded chewing gum and other bits of saliva-covered debris in New York City. Working with a lab to extract DNA, she gathered genetic information corresponding to physical traits and used it to render portraits. The resulting faces have, in the artist’s words, a “family resemblance” to their source, but can never be exact replicas of the individuals. Learn more about genetic surveillance and the ethics of accessing another person’s genetic information without their knowledge in "Designs for Different Futures."

 "Stranger Visions," 2012–13, by Heather Dewey-Hagborg (Courtesy of the artist and Fridman Gallery, New York)

[verdantvamp]

Fun fact about me: as a child (like 10-12) I was terrified of throwing away things like gum, drinks, and lollipop sticks in public because I was convinced that it would be used to replicate me

[anon-articles]

Heather Dewey-Hagborg Artist

Artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg creates “Stranger Visions” from stuff we discard publicly without a second thought. Gleaning genetic information from things like chewing gum and cigarette butts, Heather creates detailed masks of what the person might look like, raising questions about privacy and the implications of genetic tampering.

See more about this on her website.

[mymodernmet]

Artist Creates Lifelike Human Masks Based on DNA Found in Discarded Gum and Cigarettes

[americanlivewire-blog]

New Post has been published on American Live Wire

New Post has been published on http://americanlivewire.com/stranger-visions-is-your-dna-used-as-art/

Stranger Visions, Is Your DNA Used As Art?

A closer look at Stranger Visions…

Stranger Visions image from Flickr.

Artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg is creating quite a stir with her Stranger Visions project. Stranger Visions is a collection of three dimensional renditions of human faces. At a glance, these depictions appear to be a mere collection of realistic masks. A more in-depth examination may prove otherwise.

It all began with a single hair.

The idea behind Stranger Visions took root in an unremarkable office with a solitary, drab picture on the wall, Heather admitted in a TED Talks interview. The picture’s glass had cracked, and behind the glass was a single hair. “When I left, I couldn’t stop thinking about the hair,” recalls Heather. After pondering the origins of that solitary hair, Heather reveals that she “kept seeing hairs everywhere.” Heather began harvesting DNA fragments of strangers from public locations. This alarmingly abundant substance is literally found everywhere, from hairs to saliva found in the bottom of cups, from cigarette butts to used chewing gum.

Are you a part of Stranger Visions?

Heather began analyzing the genetic codes of her discoveries and reconstructing human likenesses that resembled the person whose DNA was found. Her project Stranger Visions is intended to bring more awareness to the disturbing reality of DNA investigation and the absolute abundance of which we leave behind every day. In addition to these realities, another aspect of eeriness surrounds the topic; the ease of which DNA can be collected, by anyone. Heather admits that these artistic renditions are by no means a perfect representation of the person themselves. Instead, the end result will be more of a, “general likeness of a person,” says Heather. As technology and science advance exponentially, how long will it be before a mirror image can be produced?

With the current controversy surrounding privacy rights, Heather’s Stranger Visions brings the debate a little closer to home. What rights do we have, if any, to the seemingly infinite pieces of our own DNA that linger on in every place that we visit throughout the course of our days, our weeks, our entire lives.

Heather Dewey-Hagborg on her project Stranger Visions