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		Silvers Alter - Gina Czarnecki
		This is a stage for artificial evolution where human ‘control models’ and their created offspring are the subjects for the audience to manipulate and mate. The ‘beings’ that the viewer creates have never existed before - the process of selection generates creatures and sounds with their own individual resonance. The audience exerts selective choice to shape the flow of random mutation and therefore directs the evolutionary course. The audience create the ‘artworks’ in a real-time experience. The installation takes the form of a large scale back-projection on which human forms ‘live’. These figures are changed by the audience’s presence and movement within the space. Interactivity is very physical. It encourages a social, physical and verbal interaction between people before the interaction with technology. The project is an experimental observation of the development of consciousness and science. It is not a fictive game with still unexamined possibilities of genetics and it does not aim to popularise scientific discoveries. It raises many questions: To what extent are we prepared to participate in all that we have made possible and that we aspire to make possible for ourselves? How do we make decisions about who to propagate and who to terminate? When does data become information become knowledge? It gives the audience the power to create, eliminate and stare, to immortalize their created offspring in data image banks and DNA profiles. Generations are displayed in the growing archive of screen-grab prints pinned around the space – a record of the changing population over time - and different populations will emerge from different locations, countries, nations. Decisions and their effect 10 generations, 100 generations later can be seen – like evolution in fast forward. Gina Czarnecki works in time-based and digital media making single screen, photographic and installation work. Her recent work has focussed on the ethical and cultural issues raised from the scientific and technological advances in the fields of genetic engineering as well as on their future commercial and non-commercial uses. Gina Czarnecki has exhibited internationally, including at ISEA, Ars Electronica Life Sciences 1999 and a permanent exhibition at the new Federation Square Development, ACMI, in Melbourne, Australia. She recently won a Creative Scotland Award for Silvers Alter GALLERY OLDHAM, Oldham, Greater Manchester, UK 5 October - 30 November 2002 NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, Cromwell Road, London SW7, UK 20 June - 3 August 2003 STILLS GALLERY, Edinburgh, Scotland 3 April - 6 June 2004 Gina Czarnecki Works in time-based and digital media, making single-screen, photographic and installation works. Through sampling, generating and re-processing image and sound, she creates contemplative spaces with strong visual aesthetics. Her work focuses on the human, the physical, biological and psychological. More recently this has been concerned with the ethical and cultural issues raised from scientific and technological advances in the fields of genetic engineering, as well as on their future commercial and non-commercial uses. Her work has been exhibited internationally including ISEA 1998 in Liverpool and Ars Electronica ‘life sciences’ in Linz, Austria in1999. She won a prestigious Creative Scotland Award in 2002 for work on her interactive installation Silvers Alter, which was exhibited at the Natural History Museum, London in summer 2003. Other recent exhibitions include: Infected (premiere of installation version) at Peterborough Art Gallery Apr-Jun 2003, and Versifier, Installation in Remembrance at ACMI Melbourne, Australia, Mar-Oct 2003. Return to Biotechnology home page