In this week's Science, Miami-based artist Xavier Cortada describes his recent participartory art installation, Sequentia, in which he "invited 400 museum visitors to help synthesize a DNA molecule" based on postcards they selected at random "depicting one of the four nucleotide paintings and attached them along the exhibit's wall." Kalai Mathee's group at Florida International University then synthesized the resulting DNA strand, "propagated it within bacteria in a petri dish, and analyzed it against other existing sequences," Cortada says. As it turns out, the sequence "resembled the portion of human chromosome 3 that encodes proteins directing the navigation of axons in our neurons during development," he adds.
This month, Seattle-based artist Jaq Chartier debuts 'Slow Color,' her solo exhibit "inspired in part by images of DNA analysis," at the Morgan Leman Gallery in New York, reports AM New York. To create her paintings, which resemble agarose gels, Chartier "places paint and stains on the canvas and allows them to migrate and interact, creating something that's part science project, part work of art," AMNY adds.