Rachel Greene: Harvesting the Net: Memory Flesh is part of a series of
works on genetics, and the new technological realities of bio-humans.
Can you talk about how your earlier pieces informed what you wanted to
do with this latest one? Clearly, it makes sense for you to have taken
on the Genome proper… but what else?

Diane Ludin: About three years ago I started investigating what the
human genome was attempting to make. I found it almost impossible to
sift through the emerging public discussion around it; it was and still
continues to be a subject that stages a certain type of information
warfare. But it kept making the papers and getting a lot of media
attention with inflated projections of its potential.

After 6-9 months of pretty focused research I was able to recognize some
recurring themes. I had enough information to build proposals for online
projects that would get funding from Franklin Furnace and
Turbulence.org. These projects, at the intersection of performance, the
body, computer technology and the Internet, gave me a more concrete
understanding of the surrounding info-science. My projects became
containers for reflecting recurring themes I was beginning to recognize.
Some of the themes being: the economic inflation surrounding biotech
companies; the invention of online software tools to help track
information such as patenting on sequencing research for companies and
research initiatives; the inflated projections by pharmaceutical
companies and medical practitioners of biotech's potential.

Like any futuristic phenomenon it takes projections extremely well. It
was very hard to get to some of the practical mechanisms and real-time
processes behind the hype being manufactured.

So Genetic response system 1.0 was about imaginary visual projections
from movies that would draw together a broad approach to biotech in
general, and not specifically the human genome. It had a series of
quotations from various sources (none of them scientific), invented
terms, and links from friends' projects, all mixed with biotech
companies and scientific research initiatives. I had spent a few years
working in collaboration with artists such as Francesca da Rimini,
Ricardo Dominguez, and the Fakeshop gang whose work projected critical,
imaginary scenarios approaching technology and science in an art
context. Genetic response system 1.0 became a disembodied structure
framing my work with these practitioners in my (impulsive) reasoning at
the time.

In 1998 I began studying with Natalie Jeremijenko. I found many
commonalties in Natalie's critical view of science, technology and
culture, with that of Francesca, Ricardo Dominguez and the Fakeshoppers.
However, Natalie had a different practical relationship to the
discussions of the designing of that technology and it's journey into
culture and economy. Her ideas and work gave me a contrast for thinking
about different cultural projects that technology and emerging sciences
were bringing forward. I was able to modify my working practice and
build my own investigations. This and financial support from Franklin
Furnace and Turbulence.org allowed me to build some projects where I was
responsible for the conceptual structure.

Genetic response system 3.0, commissioned by Turbulence.org, was more of
solo meditation than Genetic response system 1.0. I decided to radically
reduce the materials I was pulling together. I was chasing after
computer companies advertising biotech and related sciences, and began
archiving images of economic behavior through online news services like
CNN. I mixed these still images with educational video on cellular
behavior. It was a place for me to start conceptually mixing the imagery
I was drawn to in a more focused manner.

When I finished working on Genetic response system 3.0, I was still
feeling the need to go deeper. I had been considering trying to build a
search engine, thinking that would be the ultimate way of tracking the
shifting and large amounts of information on the human genome without
spending much energy weeding through unnecessary information. I looked
into what it would take to build a search engine, how they were
programmed, and what their limitations were. I concluded that building a
search engine kept me too far away from the information content I wanted
to capture, and there would need to be some heavy duty filtering of that
data to get the returns I was looking for. This, and the thought that I
would be making temporary links based on information that other groups
maintained, made me realize what I really wanted to build was a
repository to record searches that I and other people I was working with
could make.

So I proposed a database project whose contents I would gather and
re-purpose for viewers over the course of a year. I then began working
with Andrea Mayr to design a database that we could use to archive
online materials I wanted to work with. We used MySQL with a php3
interface. MySQL is an open source database software, and php3 is a
scripting language with html embedded in it. So Harvesting the Net:
Memory Flesh is a more complete framing structure in that it contains
the original source material discovered through my time-based searches
online. As far as some of the differences in the type of collage this
project makes, it is a relatively more permanent one. Its contents are
more focused conceptually. The relationships between all the visual
elements are clearer and more generalized. Part of what I accomplished
with this project, which I was unable to reach with the others, was to
capture what the laboratories that make the human genome look like. What
are the tools of the scientists who are making history? What do the
laboratory workers look like, and what is the type of imagery these new
factories are manufacturing to tell their stories?

RG: How has Natalie has influenced you, and what have you learned from
her? Not only am I a fan of her work, but I think seeing these
exchanges/pedagogical relationships at work can be interesting.
Especially since as women we are often discouraged from this kind of
exchange, and or get caught up in, or held up by, the goal of
technomastery.

DL: Amen, been talking a lot about this phenomenon with Shu Lea Cheang,
Yvonne Volkart, Diane Nerwin, and Ricardo over the last couple of days.
They are part of the show I presented some work in here (in Lucerne,
Switzerland). We have been calling it technoformalism, but I like
"technomastery" better.

RG: Cool! So what did you take from Natalie's work and teaching?

DL: Many things… the most recurring phrase that comes back to me as I
am working on this project and technowork in general (be it devices or
the internet), is a phrase that I got from an essay of hers you
published on RHIZOME.org called "Database Politics." She wrote:
"…technologies are tangible social relations. That said, technologies
can therefore be used to make social relations tangible."

I often ask myself whether or not I am making tangible the social
relations I am interested in–apparent or not. It has become one of the
standards I use to evaluate my output. I was curious as to what that
meant when I read it. I was only able to imagine it partially. It seemed
that a technological relationship had its own category, and very little
social interaction within it, by the fact that it has only begun to move
into public awareness in the last couple of years, (therefore having low
contrast and only extremely minimal social experience could be
accessed). It became an idea I understood more as I activated it, and
layered it into my thinking.

RG: You said "… Natalie had a different practical relationship to the
discussions of the designing of that technology and it's journey into
culture and economy." Let's talk about that.

DL: Ricardo and Fakeshop did not work through the institution the way
that Natalie does. Francesca began with a more organizing interface in
Australia (and a background in corporate technological purposing), so
there are specific differences that we in New York, outside
institutions, had yet to access. Ricardo and Fakeshop were trying to
mobilize their cultural activity through art, writing and activism and
are more bound by these filters than Natalie. Natalie worked at Xerox
PARC, and was doing her doctorate at Stanford in Silicon Valley, which I
consider a social and developmental root of the computer industry.
Stanford was where a lot of the industry stars were educated. It seems
that it offered her interior access to the industry development that we
as East Coast artists and activists were struggling to grasp. She was
able to practice her work and social activity with access to the
machinery that was, and still is, defining technomastery.

RG: I really like that for a number of your projects you use links,
images, text, or often some basic, frames technology. In your statement
you use terms like "search strings" "conceptual parsing engine"–you're
using somewhat inflated tech terms to talk about your own subjective
hunting, gathering, and filtering. Can you talk about that as a
strategy?

DL: I think emerging or progressive technological distribution language
contains inflated projections. It is a creative process that is accessed
by various types of PR media machinery building it. The distribution
language we are fed needs to be regenerated. It is often very sci-fi,
and applies inflated technological language to simple software and
Internet manipulations. This is a way in which I can locate the tangible
social relation in whatever technology I am working with and behave it.
It is in the concept and creative manipulation of that language that I
can move the fastest. Visualization technology and visualization culture
move at a different speed in relation to text, and writing within
computer technology. The part of my practice that is regenerating
technological terms is often the most fun for me. Word-processing
interfaces and text manipulation are closer to innate computer language.
The database that we designed for Memory Flesh is a simple relational
database.

RG: Tell me a little bit about what it's been like as an artist
circulating through some of the institutional hallways of interactive
art? New media art has been so trendy and privileged lately; it worries
me! I worry that the elements I cherish most about it–hacktivism,
tactical media, and its capacity for institutional critique and social
engagement will be lost in favor of presentation or dumb technomastery.

DL: Part of the work I have been developing is possible because of the
privilege that institutions are now affording to net-specific work. A
major reason for my building on the net has to do with what I am
financially supported to do. I have other work, both artwork and labor
for living, but I am not paid enough to develop it, not to the level I
am to work on the net. In some ways it makes my work as an artist
easier, that I don't have to work as hard to promote myself, propose
projects or convince institutions of its significance. The institutions
are doing this for me. It is also helping me activate a practice that is
more culturally motivated, as opposed to artwork that has a set
relationship to culture, and a history of cultural expectations that
categorize it.

There is currently a scramble to find work that utilizes the net in the
way that I have been using it in the last few years. I don't know how
long this will last, but I have been fortunate recently to propose ideas
that institutions are willing to promote, and to fund. And last but not
least, it is easy to translate my artistic practice into experience as a
designer and technical consultant for companies wanting to use the net.

The institutionalization or trendiness of any emerging artistic or
cultural movement of attention goes hand in hand with the weaving of
standards that are driven by previous historical traditions of mastery.
As far as socially engaged/politicized work being replaced by
technomastery work, I think technomastery work is already given more
attention. There is the entertainment industry driving novel visual
affects, not to mention the speed with which technology companies are
infecting the economy and popular culture with hardware and software.
Such technology is framed as a "must-have:" cellphones, cellphones with
email, palmtop's, wireless palmtops, beeper's, digital cameras, portable
mp3 players, etc. These cultural mechanisms shape our expectations of
computer technology's purpose. As a result so much attention and time
are given to keeping up with the latest trends in devices and software
that there is little left to consider the impact of them. So we are left
with a technology for technology's sake attitude in our culture. This is
an agenda that drives a lot of institutional funding of art. Artists are
great for manifesting what doesn't yet exist in culture at large. For
me, when considering my recent projects, I think of what I want to do
with people's attention. I assume that the user of my sites will pay
attention to all the choices I've made in assembling the elements of the
project. This allows me to play with associations within the given set
of text and images, and begin to interact with the expectations we are
given when considering work on the net.

The potential we are losing in the transfer of art that is
technologically based/interactive to being evaluated for it's
technomastery is the possibility to reach audiences that may not have
been looking for socially engaged or politicized work, or even the
opportunity to encounter it. It seems to me that the committed,
politically motivated and socially active types will always find each
other as will their work. And yet the Internet offers a new layer of
communication continuum that can help motivate or mobilize groups of
people quickly.

Then there is the sensational nature of issues connected to the
Internet, which has been promoted as being more than it is, offering
more than it delivers. Perhaps this is the result of wildly successful
distribution and advertising campaigns by star computer industry
companies like Microsoft and Cisco. Not to mention the inflated,
economic impact venture capital injects into the system via companies
and jobs. I have faith that there will always be artists who redirect
our attention to social issues, and discussions around social issues, to
see the limitations of authoritative representation we are fed. And
there will always be a parallel group of artists who are uninterested or
uninspired by what is behind what infotainment tells us is happening in
the world. For them technology for technology's sake will allow an easy
transition to new discussions of aesthetics made possible by new media.

RG: Your work takes on quite a weird industry sector. Have there been
any conflicts or issues you want to mention? Have any biotech
companies/webmasters/publications objected to how you have been using
their material?

DL: I think they are way too busy trying to develop, expand and
distribute their industry and its potential economically to be aware of
the way in which someone other than themselves would be using their
imagery. Last year at this time I wasn't able to find the imagery I now
have. Most of the imagery in the database was loaded in the last six
months. This suggests to me that the speed with which they are currently
operating doesn't allow for careful examination of a sophisticated
advertising/company representation campaign. Plus they, as biotech
companies, aren't expected to put forth an advertising campaign that
compares with older more traditional companies.

RG: One of the central phenomena your project points to is the
homogenization of rhetoric and language around the Genome Project and
biotech more generally. And I think you effectively undermine some of
the bureaucratic, marketing-speak of the current discourse with your
projects. But did you ever worry that the barrage, remix of images and
text (what you explained as your own process to "drive conceptually and
mix imagery you were drawn to"), would create more confusion for the
user?

DL: I don't think it could be more confusing than the way in which the
human genome and biotech in general is represented. This media mess
allowed me to take a simple approach, combining the language around
economic distribution and promotion with images of the tools and the
environment the tools exist and operate in. The interjection of phrases
like "genetic landlords" and "point and click genes" are little bits of
spin that nonscientific types can interpret and more easily understand
when considering the battle over the human genome.

RG: I wasn't sure if you were just showing how the genome discourse
reproduce its masters' images–or if it was your experimental aesthetic
in effect. What do you think?

DL: It starts in my experimental aesthetic. But when placed on the
content of the human genome, its press, generative environment, and
tools–these elements lead to the larger issue of how "the genome
discourse is using technology to reproduce its masters' images."

RG: what do you think is powerful about the tools of new media? Compared
to the tools and mechanisms of euro-corporatism?

DL: It is a space that is open to interpretation in a way that older
media has been defined. There is more room to work, more work to do to
translate the drives that various groups find in it. It was originally
designed as a communication and research source for computer geeks and
research scientists to share their findings. This communications nature
and the audience it was originally designed by and for still remains at
its core. The distribution and buzz from computer companies to wire the
world and create stable ecommerce markets still has yet to be fully
realized. The business models used to try and make it profitable are not
working. We are seeing the limits of artificially generated economic
value that venture capital creates with recent NASDAQ crashes, and
ecommerce companies dropping out of business. In order for the net to be
successful as a commerce circuit, it would have to be as prevalent in
our individual homes as television currently is. It is not and I can't
imagine how long it would take for this to be a reality. The mainstream
media attention it is given creates an opportunity for attention
redirection on a global scale, potentially.

RG: You spoke about deflating some of the projections and claims of
technology and the rhetoric of "distribution" and "network," but let's
end in a place where you encourage folks to use tools…. ;)

DL: It is important to me, always to translate what I am given into my
own terms. In this way I examine the limits of what is distributed via
mainstream media representation. In this process I find various
strategies that wrestle with the same questions and varying strategies
for how to deflate the rhetoric of distribution. It is a beginning, a
reintroduction to allow a more realistic view of what is happening
behind the hype. I can't imagine coming up with a sound strategy to
build work on without this more realistic view of practical mechanisms
within a given industry, be it new media or biotech. Since the culture
at large are rushing to also go through this process of translation, new
media has a cultural currency that other forms of media do not. As a
result, reflections on translating net-specific topics like the Human
Genome are a beginning that I look forward to seeing expand. And I am
optimistic that the route that this expansion takes will be unexpected,
and not defined by companies distributing for monetary profit.