The Xenotext Experiment

Abstract

The degree to which the biochemistry of living things has become a potential substrate for inscription is increasingly debated. Not simply a code that governs both the development of an organism and the maintenance of its function, the genome can now become a vector for modes of artistic innovation and cultural expression. In the future, genetics might lend a possible, literary dimension to biology, granting every geneticist the power to become a poet in the medium of life. In this spirit, the Xenotext Experiment is a literary exercise that explores the aesthetic potential of genetics in the modern milieu, doing so in order to make literal the renowned aphorism that “the word is now a virus”