Heather Dewey-Hagborg

• An artist is collecting stray DNA from the streets of New York City, and using it to conjure up 3D-printed versions of its original “donor”.
• It is likely that you are not in the habit of picking up stray pieces of gum and hair from the pavement or on benches, but apparently Heather Dewey-Hagborg doesn’t mind the ickiness. Her show, In Stranger Visions, “calls attention to the impulse toward genetic determinism and the potential for a culture of genetic surveillance” through a combination of technology and art.
• Extracting DNA from these samples in a lab — she uses Genspace, a DIY biology lab in Brooklyn — Dewey-Hagborg looks for specific genetic indicators known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). These are gene expressions which we know lead to certain physical characteristics, from male pattern baldness (Rs6152) to an increased risk of coronary heart disease (Rs1333049).
• The SNPs that Dewey-Hagborg focused on were more benign, and purely related to physical appearance — “for example, gender, ancestry, eye color, hair colour, freckles, lighter or darker skin, and certain facial features like nose width and distance between eyes” — and, with a computer program that she wrote (based on the University of Basel’s Morph Face), translates those into 3D virtual models of what those people possibly look like.
• The process doesn’t create a perfect clone of the DNA’s original owner. Dewey-Hagborg said: “They will have similar traits and ancestry, but might look more like a possible cousin than a spitting image of the person themselves. The reason for this is multifold, but the primary reason is the research on facial morphology, the way human faces differ, is still in very early stages.
• As well as computer models, Dewey-Hagborg also 3D-prints lifesize faces with a Zcorp printer to display in the In Stranger Visions exhibition. Alas, though, nobody has yet recognised themselves in one of the portraits.
• Her work isn’t just a demonstration of a concept, however — it’s meant to be a meditation on the future of what she calls “genetic surveillance”.

Wiki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Dewey-Hagborg

Heather Dewey-Hagborg is an information artist and bio-hacker.

She is most noted for her project Stranger Visions: a series of portraits created from DNA she recovered from discarded items, such as hair, cigarettes and chewing gum while living in Brooklyn, New York

While critical of technology and surveillance, some critics have found her work disturbing

Dewey-Hagborg is an information artist whose works explore the intersection between art and science.

Dewey-Hagborg continued refining her work as an artist and computer programmer, studying artificial intelligence.

As a final project at NYU, Dewey-Hagborg explored the question “Can computers be creative?” in an exhibit she called Spurious Memories. She developed an autonomous face categorizing and generating software program which recognized facial components, made comparisons and adjustments, and produced unique representations of the human face through mass exposure to facial images.

As an educator her areas of interest include art and technology, multimedia, digital photography, research-based art and programming, and computer science

Stranger Visions:

Sample 2

Sample 3

Stranger Visions (2012–2014) is a science-based, artistic exploration using DNA as a starting point for Dewey-Hagborg’s lifelike, computer generated 3-D portraits.

She hoped, by producing realistic sculptures of anonymous people using clues from their DNA, to spark a debate about the use or the potential misuse of DNA profiling, privacy, and genetic surveillance.

As part of her research for Stranger Visions, Dewey-Hagborg took a three-week crash-course in biotechnology at Genspace, a non-profit, community-based biotechnology laboratory in New York. She was astonished to learn how much an amateur biologist could learn about someone.

She began the process of extracting DNA from the samples she collected. The extraction involves treating a hair sample, for example, with a gel that dissolves the hair, and a primer specifically developed to help locate characteristics like eye color or gender along the genome.Dewey-Hagborg might repeat this process up to 40 times, looking for genetic variants influencing traits like eye color, hair color, and racial ancestry, in order to complete a portrait

Once the DNA strands are extracted from the samples, Dewey-Hagborg then amplifies, or copies, specific regions of the genome, using a technique called Polymerase Chain Reaction, or PCR, a process advanced by Kary Mullis, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1993).

These amplified regions of the genome make it possible to identifying single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs (pronounced “snips”), which contain variables in the base pairs that give clues to a person’s individual genetic make up (e.g., whether or not a person’s eyes might be blue, brown or green). These results are then sent for analysis to a company for sequencing. Dewey-Hagborg used 23andMe, a DNA analysis service, for Stranger Visions.

The program interprets the code and provides her with a list of traits, including propensity for obesity, eye color, hair color, hair curl, skin tone, freckles, and gender.

She then takes these traits, as many as 50, and enters them into a face-generating program to configure the 3-D portraits.

Her previous experience with facial recognition algorithms gave her the ability to repurpose an existing facial recognition program, from Basel, Switzerland. She reworked the program to generate faces instead of just recognizing facial features.

The resulting model changes facial dimensions (e.g., width of the nose and mouth) and characteristics with the genetic information it receives. Before making the final 3-D print, Dewey-Hagborg generates several different versions of the face, finally choosing the one she finds most aesthetically pleasing.

Critics of Dewey-Hagborg’s Stranger Visions question whether or not the work crosses ethical and legal boundaries. They make a distinction between an artist’s right to express societal concerns through artwork and the act of collecting personal, genetic information without informed consent. The fact that DNA samples are regularly “left behind” or abandoned does not mean those people have relinquished their interest in how that information is used.

Supporters like Genspace’s Ellen Jorgensen claim projects like Stranger Visions engage the public and make the new technology more accessible. Detractors fear unintended or unexpected consequences from unregulated experiments conducted by D.I.Y. amateur biologists developed in non-traditional laboratory settings.

Claims:

Reporting’s that the technological capability to construct an accurate likeness of a human face based on DNA evidence is not currently available.

Although it is possible to identify certain genetic markers linked to facial structures, scientists have yet to isolate all the genes and their variations needed to produce an accurate likeness with a computer simulation.

 

The environment, the probabilistic nature of interpreting the DNA data collected, and limitations of computer technology all influence the outcome.

She likens her work to that of a sketch artist.

At most, her portraits bear only a vague, family resemblance to the people whose genetic information was used as a foundation for the portraits.

Delaware

In 2013, Dewey-Hagborg was contacted by an assistant medical examiner in Delaware, as a result of her work with Stranger Visions. The project involved developing a portrait of an unidentified woman whose case has remained unsolved for 20 years. She agreed to be an adviser to assist with the case. Though the resulting portrait based on the unidentified woman’s DNA could only be as accurate as existing technology allowed, leaving room for speculation, Dewey-Hagborg viewed working on the case as the only potential use for this type of face-generating technology.

“If you can add anything at all to her description, if you can increase the possibility her loved ones may find her even one little bit I think it’s worth it.”

Critics of Dewey-Hagborg’s involvement in the Delaware case express concern for what they call “D.I.Y. forensic science” and question the role of civilians in state investigations.

Invisible (2014)

Dewey-Hagborg’s work with Stranger Visions and interest in issues surrounding genetic surveillance lead to the development of two products whose purpose is to eliminate DNA traces. The first, Erase, is a bleaching spray that cleans surfaces of DNA evidence.

The second, Replace, is a spray consisting of a blend of genes designed to introduce foreign DNA evidence to the surface, therefore masking any of the original DNA remaining in that area.

Dewey-Hagborg views these as a “citizens’ defense against the looming DNA surveillance state.”