Reconstruction of Adam

Collaboration between the arts and the sciences.

"To create man was a quaint and original idea,
but to add the sheep was tautology?"
Mark Twain

INTRODUCTION:

Long before the cloning of Dolly in the last years of the 20th century, we have witnessed an even greater scientific and cultural breakthrough, the birth of relativity. Today we observe how not only physics, but our very personalities and sexual identities are losing their incontestable, absolute qualities. Artificial conception, sex-change operations, hormone therapy and cloning are transforming existing cultural realities from unconditional to relative, and are becoming newly conceptualized before our very eyes.

We currently face the possibility of losing ourselves in the age of scientific advancement. Many questions have been raised regarding the discoveries of genetic science and technology. Biotechnology combined with information technology leads as to a new world of creation that can recombine human and animal DNA with artificial components. Scientists, though not successful in creating a Homunculus in the Middle Ages, have now figured out a way of replicating humans. Millions of ghosts of our clones already live in our imagination, and tomorrow they will live in our reality.

Such a mode of scientific research and analysis can be well punctuated by the study of gender, and the conceptualization of the new individual in terms of cultural and sexual analysis. An established theory in Biblical studies states that a vague allusion in the first few lines of the Old Testament suggests that the first human, Adam, was created as both man and woman, a two-sexed being. Only when Adam petitioned God to create Eve was his nature split into two parts determined as sexes. In facing new personal and social realities raised by genetic and biochemical manipulation that could eventually take lead us back to that state, we should allow this allegory futher consideration.

As an artist, I concern myself with the image. What did the original omni-sexed Adam look like? I propose to take this idea further, using the project as a basis of a deeper argument about the nature of current social realities. I propose to create the shape of original Adam.

I propose the Reconstruction Of The Original Adam, an art project aimed at discovering the shape, or providing a vessel for a omni-sexual human. It is an attempt to understand and illustrate the mechanism of the Original Man who lived in proverbial Paradise, and to conceptualize the ramifications of this concept in our current reality. Perhaps this will be one of the most difficult endeavors contemporary artists and scientists will have to face, perhaps the answer will lie in something painfully obvious. In either case, a resolution to this problem can only be found in-between previously divergent disciplines – art, science, religion, technology. In bridging the gap between the arts and the sciences, we can hope to attain a clearer vision of the future.

All people interested in participating please email to: astartcom/at/yahoo/dot/com

© Olga Ast, 2005