The Long and Short Views of Pessimism and Optimism
Does pessimisim outweigh optimism for artists who assume that the Earth is becoming so degraded that it will become uninhabitable?
Or does optimism outweigh pessimism when these artists pursue ways to expand the range of life to distant planets?
This intriguing conundrum applies to both Tavares Strachan and Andy Gracie.
Strachan uses himself as the guinea pig to develop orthostatic tolerance” by training his physical organism so that his blood cells and heart muscles might adapt to the inhospitable environments humans may need to occupy in outer space due to the havoc wreaked by global warming and human misdeeds.
Strachan hopes to exceed known limits of the human body by training on a spinning G-force test bed and experiencing zero g-force. His goal is to survive deep under ocean waters and far out in non-atmospheric space, two alien gravitational conditions. One increases g-force. The other reduces it. Both are lethal environments that exceed the human body’s genetic limits.
Optimism is apparent in the work’s subtitle: “It Might Not Be Such a Bad Idea if I Never Went Home.” If ‘home’ is the surface of the Earth, Strachan seems content to complete his life in settings where humans have never lived. His time frame is immediate.
Gracie’s time frame is absurdly different. His artwork is geared to “three to four billion years” when the Sun will expand so much that Earth will become uninhabitable. Despite this expanse of eons, Gracie is preparing now. The project, entitled “The Quest for Drosphilia Titanus” consists of a breeding program for fruit flies. Through selection and modification Gracie is genetically altering this breed of flies so that they could survive on Titan, the moon of Saturn that most resembles Earth.
The first stage of his work consists of a homemade Titan simulation chamber and video of the flies being exposed to different conditions in the chamber.
Gracie’s decision to work with the fruit fly (Drosophila) has both scientific and artistic significance. This species had its genome sequenced and is so commonly used in biological experiments that an enormous body of literature already exists explaining these organisms. More significantly, humans share a huge percentage of our genome with the fruit fly. As a result, experiments on them provide insights into how humans might respond to life on Titan where air pressure is fifty percent higher than on Earth and minus 190 degrees!
The absurdity of Andy Gracie’s project, which is being carried out under the guidance of trained biologists in rigorous laboratory conditions, includes its metaphoric implications. The artwork suggests that the fruit fly is equivalent to an astronaut: an ideal physical and political specimen. Gracie comments, “I wanted to play on the idea of a fly having the “right stuff”.”