Stories From the Genome: An Animated History of Reproduction
Rachel Mayeri
Artist BioPart cloning experiment, part documentary, Stories From the Genome follows an unnamed CEO-geneticist whose company sequenced the Human Genome in 2003—a genome that secretly was his own. Not satisfied with this feat, the scientist self-replicates, producing a colony of clone-scientists to save himself from Alzheimer’s. The animated video switches between misadventures in cloning, and a history of equally improbable theories of human development.
Rachel Mayeri
Los Angeles, CA
Rachel Mayeri is a media artist working at the intersection of science and art. Her projects explore topics ranging from the history of special effects to the human animal. The multi-year project, Primate Cinema, explores linkages between media and the primate order. Primate Cinema: Apes as Family is a primate drama created for chimpanzees at the Edinburgh Zoo. Commissioned by the Arts Catalyst and supported by a major arts award from Wellcome Trust, the two channel video installation premiered to human primates in 2011 in Linz, Liverpool and London. Previous projects include Primate Cinema: Baboons as Friends, Stories from the Genome, Soft Science and The Anatomical Theater of Peter the Great. Mayeri lives in Los Angeles, where she is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Harvey Mudd College.