METAPET
– genetic code in the service of the brave new corporate world
An
interview with Natalie Bookchin by Mia Makela
Natalie,
when and why did you start the Metapet project ?
In the winter of 1999, Creative Time
approached me about doing a project. They were beginning a series of
commissions addressing the social implications of genetic research, and
proposed that I make an on-line game on the subject. I subsequently received a
Guggenheim and was given additional support from HAMACA, a net art platform
from Barcelona, so I was able to envision develop a fairly large scale project.
I
spent about two years wading through reams of material on the debates and
issues surrounding biotechnology and genetics. The two dominant positions
offered respectively utopian or dystopian narratives. The supporters offered an
abundance of hyperbolic wishful thinking.
Cancer, aging and world hunger were all going to be eliminated. There
ware some pretty impressive predictions being bandied about. The
detractors’ fears were often as fantastic: wealthy parents were going to
design their babies to look like Arian supermodels with Einstein’s
intelligence. Most of these futuristic scenarios are based on flawed beliefs like
genetic essentialism and quantifiable and genetically based intelligence.
Things are just a whole lot more complicated than that, as most scientists
would be the first to admit.
The
third position, much less spectacular, and therefore less likely to hit the
headlines, is that we are not in the midst of a “biotech”
revolution at all. So called “genetic engineering” can be seen as
same old thing in a shiny new package, an extension of the “scientific
engineering” made popular by Frederick Taylor around the turn of the last
century. With Taylorism*, the worker is one more gear in the production
machine. Taylorism creates a new managerial class to regulate and improve the
factory worker’s output. With genetics and biotechnology the focus shifts
from regulating the outside of the body, to its inside. The body is no longer
seen as an analogous machine but
rather, digital code, flawed and in need of debugging and optimization. In
order to subscribe to this, you need to accept the idea that organic life is
reducible to code. This model, optimizing organic life and making it more
efficient and more productive (whether its fish that gets big faster or workers
who don’t need to sleep), relies on the long standing project of
industrialization, to which turns everything into an object in the service of
production.
Metapet
depicts an era in which genetic interventions are no longer reserved for cows
and soy beans but are increasingly applied to human beings. The Metapet species
results from a scientific experiment in which a gene from a trained dog was
inserted into a human in an attempt to create a more obedient worker. As with
all transgenic experiments, there was a degree of unpredictability which, in this case, led to, among
other things, the growth of a dog-like tail on the Metapet. Players, in the
role of managers, have at their fingertips a whole set of disciplinary
technologies which can be used to encourage greater production out of their
Metapet.
One
of these disciplinary technologies the manager has in his use is the gene test.
Why did you choose these areas of testing: gayness and baldness for example ?
Except
for a few cases, genetic tests are unreliable. Most traits and diseases are a
complex mix of genes and environment. Even inside the body genes are not
discrete but are affected by internal environmental conditions. The tests you can run on your Metapet are
all based on gene sequences that have been the subject of extensive scientists
research, often with public funding. They run the range from superficial and
moneymaking search for the “balding gene,” to the highly
controversial “gay
gene”, based on the absurd assumption that “gayness” is
quantifiable and biologically detectable. In Metapet, genetic testing is
primarily a disciplinary tool. Testing positive or negative can affect how the
Metapet is perceived by the
manager
As some players in MetaPet’s
Manager Forum put it:
”
…DONT TEST THEIR GENETICS!!!!!!!! They hate that I have lost two drones
because I tested them early, didn’t realize I shouldn't do that. I have a
good pet now and all though he is new, he works hard and I am keeping him
healthy, ad not testing him. Lol.”
“
…I feel there is NO value in genetic testing- it takes away money and
your pet typically responds by rebelling. I have never fired a worker, I would
work her until she leaves.”
I
would assume that issues like genetic research and biotechnology are discussed
on a different level in America than in Europe? In Europe most of the people
are against genetically modified food.
Here
most people have no idea that 60% of the items sold in our supermarkets contain
genetically modified ingredients. Why should they, since none of it is labeled?
GM food has been on the market since 1994, rushed through Federal regulations
without an inkling as to what the long-term effects on the environment might
be. For me, the key issue is not whether GM food is good or bad to eat; there
has been no substantial proof that this food is any riskier than chemically
processed food or old-fashion pesticides, but rather that it is produced by
mega-corporations whose expensive proprietary technology squelch small farm
production.
What
kind of responses have you received from the Metapet players ?
Before
the beta was first released the business section of the NY Times did a piece on
the game, and I was quoted as saying "We think
of this as a training manual to help managers do their job better". I was
bombarded with enthusiastic emails from Human Resource directors. After the
game was released contact have been generally from people without company
signatures at the bottom of their email.
There are lots of people who are playing
quite steadily during work hours, which is something that I was hoping would
happen.
I
wanted to set up the conditions to lure people away from their duties and make
it convenient for them to play at work. The Situationists and their
interventions into daily life as well as their slogans against work and for
play have not escaped my game design methods.
The
Metapet is more of an active agent that one may initially recognize.
Players’ positions in the game are also instable. Winning and
losing, the "goals of the game", and the satisfaction attached to
each scenario are not as linear or clear-cut as one might assume. Winning may
be a rather dull scenario, and it may be more rewarding to subvert the system.
In
the Metapet manager forum the players discuss their problems and progress in
the game quite seriously, are you surprised by this ?
I
have seen the nicest people turn into the most unscrupulous manager, suggesting
that the system itself constructs the subject position, and there is no such
thing as a “nice” manager. I wanted to show the pathology of the
system itself, so that the only way out was not to be a nice or a mean manager,
but to break with the system, and to be a lousy manager. Playing according to
the rules will lead to the most boring of outcomes. Players will earn money,
but who cares? Money makes you a “winner” but unlike in i.e. SIMMs,
you can’t do or buy anything with the money, and the game will soon
become pretty routine. On the other hand, playing poorly will lead to some of
the most interesting game elements. The multiplayer aspect of the game will be
revealed and artists’ mini games will show up. I invited artists to
design simple little games about biotechnology. When the pet is slacking off,
it starts to play these games, and the player has the option to play them as
well.
You
have used game as an artistic form also before like in “The
Intruder”. Why games ?
“The
Intruder”, of course, isn’t really a game, it just uses the game
form as an interface, to put the user to work in the task of actively
performing the text. Games seemed to me to be a perfect vehicle to relay an
allegory of mainstream computer culture. From its military origins, to its
central location in fields such as engineering, math, computer science, hacker
culture, the computer has been and remains an artifact and symptom of a male
dominated culture.
Games
appropriate what might be the quintessential form of this culture, the computer
game, that pinnacle of binary logic and technological futility and mastery,
where many of the ideologies surrounding the computer and its role are played
out in spectacular and theatrical ways, from war games to video games. Games
have such a precise logic and a very addictive quality, competition emerges,
beating the system, the player, winning all emerge, strategy.
Much
like in my project “The Intruder” I try to put people in complicated positions where they are
performing roles that are not that comfortable.
How
has your background as one of the pioneering net artists affected the process
of Metapet ? And how would you define it : net art, online game … ?
I
was attached to aspects of the net art scene in nineties that made links to DIY
culture, to conceptual art, to activism, social issues, public art and bottom
up production.
The
speed in which messages spread, the virus aspect of the net and well, the
network itself is unlike any means of communication we have had access to
before, and this is still something that is, and will continue to be extremely
difficult for authoritarian forces to regulate.
What
has always attracted me to the internet was the ability to reach a non
pre-selected public, who are not necessarily
self-selected art viewers
If
art has critical intentions, then remaining a conventional and expected form
and context is far too limited a reach for my taste. The net is the perfect
place for this kind of work to be shown because no matter how hard people try,
with online galleries, and museums, you can’t control the circulation of
your work and the population of users. Anyone can make a link and your work
then functions according to the page it is linked to and how people reach that
page.
I
don’t know how to define MetaPet in terms of genre. It really is a
cross-over piece, in that it actually seems to function pretty well as a game,
and people are taking it at face value. It can function in very different contexts. In some contexts,
MetaPet is an art project about biotechnology, in another words it is a kind of
weird and wacky game. Political undertones, sure you can find them, they are
there, but it is a project that invites players to play both sides.
How
do you see the state of net art at the moment in general ? With all the net art
museums online ?
Speaking
of net museums, I just read that MIT Media labs are working on a major art center. Eyebeam, an
independent high-tech arts center in New York City. Is planning to build a $90
million building in NY’s new blue chip art center, Chelsea. I see this as
a way of institutionalizing the already existing ghettozation of digital art practice. And throwing a little net art in
the mix just for fun on the web sites of the major museums. When net art tries
to remain net art I think it is the least likely for succeeding. It is just
impossible to isolate the art on the internet from everything else. When it
succeeds, it takes on more than one role, it succeeds as art, and transgresses that position as art. Rtmark has
done this, Web Stalker has done this, I am trying to do this with Metapet. I
think that for me this is the direction that art that uses the net has to take.
Or else it turns into moving screen savers, like Carnivore. And of course the
museums are places for work just like that.
Action
Tank is an independent mobile network that deploys high leverage technology as
ammunition against the current state of affairs. Action Tank was formed in 2000
by Natalie Bookchin and Jin Lee.
Links:
Biotaylorism,
a half hour Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, a project Jin and Natalie made
while they were with the group RTMark
The
intruder