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Ecomedia
How the Natural World is Transforming the Nature of Media.
This weblog is not the usual blog of daily events. It contains a series of notes/thoughts designed to make connections between science and media art.
Sometimes these ideas are tied in with current events, but most of the time this blog is not in any particular order. It serves as a central area for a detailed examination of ideas first published in a 1999 Leonardo Journal article entitled 'Active Vision' that I hope to develop into a book that will discuss some of the current developments in science, ecology, media and society and how they inform and are informed by new technologies. The book will be written for artists working with digital media and anyone who is interested in future directions of the medium.
http://www.andreapolli.com
last modified Sep 7, 2006 at 13:00
Imagine standing in the produce section of the grocery store, taking an inexpensive wireless device the size of a cell phone out of your pocket and scanning a head of lettuce for a genetic barcode telling you not only the species but the details of any genetic modification.
Imagine taking a walk through the Brooklyn botanic garden, the Bronx Zoo or your neighborhood with the same device, and once receiving a species name, being able to surf the web for detailed information about the background of the particular plant or creature.
Biologists Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs are working to make this imaginary device a reality in the next 10-20 years. The process will require not only building the device hardware, but finding a small sequence of identifying genetic code that the device will focus on. They have already identified this gene in a groups of butterfly species, called cytochrome c oxidase 1 or CO1.
Janzen and Hallwachs believe that widespread public access to dna barcoding will promote biological literacy and promote conservation. They believe that when people know the name, in this case a species name, of a plant or animal, a connection is formed that fosters appreciation and preservation.
For this reason, a third element must be developed for dna barcoding to be effective, a vast database of identifying genes and species information that can be accessible with the system. The scientists imagine a small piece of media, a species 'chip' that might be put in the device when identifying various species, one might have an 'ant chip' for example, or the botanical garden might provide its own special seasonal chips.
This kind of democratic information database could be built by users, similar to wikipedia or the way the work of non-professional observers have contributed to astronomical understanding. Like amateur observers watch for and report comets, amateur biological observers could report species sightings to the dna barcode database and this informnation could then be verified and distributed.
The dna barcode could also become essential for tracking and responding to epidemics, with medical personnel able to quickly identify and isolate dengerous viruses.
From Holloway, Marguerite. "Democratizing Taxonomy" Conservation Magazine April-June 2006 Vol. 7 No. 2
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