France Cadet is an Artist whose work raises questions about the various aspects and debates of science: the danger of possible accidents, observation of animal and human behaviour and the artificialisation of life and dangers of cloning. She teaches robotic in Fine-Arts School of Aix-en-Provence.This installation presents five robot dogs that have been hacked and transformed into transgenic and chimerical animals. They are autonomous and evolve in their artificial grass pad. We can observe the behaviour of these hybrid animals. All these animals are strange and imaginary and yet they are based on real cloning experiments…
It is an ironical way to point out the excesses and dangers of cloning. Each dog has his own personal detail card showing his name, his genetic origin and his characteristics.They have the general morphology of a dog but some have bovine coats provided with horns (mad cow disease?), pork skin (xenotransplantation? unless it’s a cross with the famous nude mouse?), or quavering bleats (ESB? Dolly’s clone?), meowing (research for the perfect pet combining cat and dog?), strange skin, either clear like a jellyfish or phosphorescent such as GFP Bunny, Eduardo Kac’s famous rabbit using Green Fluorescent Protein, well known for marking cells.
One of the most unsettling aspects of molecular biology is the ability to manipulate behaviour. Many experiments have shown that the behaviour of one animal may be placed into another. For instance, in 1999 neuroscientists altered a mouse by inserting a gene from a prairie vole, a different animal known for its fidelity and sociability. The normally solitary mice now showed the social behaviours of the gregarious prairie vole. While most of us have no idea how to even think about these issues, France Cadet has undertaken her own experiment in signification. Her Dog[LAB]01 project is a monstrous hybrid, merging children’s toys, hacked electronics, and social and political concerns into robotically enacted dramas. Cadet performed surgery on several robotic dogs, customized their forms, and reprogrammed them with unusual behaviours. Her new dogs are genetically manipulated animal combinations, plastic chimeras. For instance, one is the “ultimate” domestic pet, a mixture of equal parts cat and dog. This earnest Frankenpet alternately wags its tail playfully, grooms itself, does feline stretches and, eventually, falls asleep and dreams dog dreams. Another is a cowdog, and as a result is prone to robotic BSE, twitching and collapsing while whining like a sad puppy. Cadet’s work reminded some of the jurors that the more life-like robots become, the more prone they’ll be to neurosis and illness. We all admired the unusual way that Cadet addressed weighty issues of science and society while keeping her tongue well in cheek.
