Patricia Piccinini
Siren Song - video installation/ single channel
SO1 (Synthetic Organism 1) is the worlds first fully synthetic organism. It is bacteria-like life from of which the DNA was constructed strand by strand from basic chemical elements. With So2 Piccinini gives her vision on the next stage in this extraordinary creative process. The scientific name for this new species is Excallocephala Parthenopa. Excallocephala means extremely strange head and Parthenopa refers to a siren from Greek mythology who was found dead on the shore at Naples. Nobody could say where Parthenope had come from. This is very much the case for the Siren Moles, as the SO2 creatures are commonly called. They derive from the vacuum of a sterile laboratory. But once they’ve come to live, where can they go? Perhaps out into the wilderness to sing their strange songs and begin to construct their own community.