The unfolding pandemic triggered an existential reckoning over our conceptions of place and human encounter. Twenty years after UC Santa Cruz posted the assembled human genome to the internet, we found ourselves redefining and expanding genomics while masked and socially distanced. Simultaneously, the uprisings for Black lives and all silenced and underrepresented identities have brought visibility, urgency and profound pause.

What Makes Us Human: An Art + Genomics Convergence takes the doors off the traditional gallery, imagining a space which transcends those walls. Visitors can view connections between diverse academic disciplines from unique and collaborative lenses of the arts, sciences, and humanities.

Some of the inquiry conducted by these collaborators examines what it means to be something other than human, simultaneously helping reveal what makes us human. How do we talk about our humanness? Which of our taxonomies intersect? And how can (virtual) space facilitate more of these intersections? How are humans furthering creative, scientific, and scholarly research while responding to the pandemic in our institutions, in our bodies, in our environments and in our communities? How can researchers be alone together and work collectively -- questioning, testing, and collaborating during COVID to educate communities at the intersection of art, culture, science, and politics?

This project launch showcased the multifaceted approach of artists, humanists, and scientists working across disciplines to investigate art and genetics at UC Santa Cruz and beyond. Spearhead by Professor Jennifer Parker, founding Director of UCSC OpenLab Collaborative Research Center in collaboration with the Mary Porter Sesnon Gallery in the Arts Division, UC Santa Cruz. This project was designed, curated, and directed by Parker to establish a platform for researchers to collaborate and exchange ideas. This is the first step of a multi-year initiative with the Genomics Institute to develop and explore What Makes Us Human, through a variety of lenses and forms of knowledge reflective of our connections with other-than-human life forms, with non-living matter as part of biochemical processes or other entities that shape life on this planet.

Special thanks to our Creative Engineer on the project Colleen Jennings, Technical Coordinator for Digital Art and New Media at UC Santa Cruz and Saul Villegas, undergraduate art major, photo editor on the project.

Sponsors:

What Makes Us Human was sponsored by a multi-campus research initiative grant in support of UC Placemaking, the UC Santa Cruz Arts Division, OpenLab Collaborative Research Center, UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute, and Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST).

Jennifer Parker is an artist and professor of Art and Digital Art & New Media at the University of California Santa Cruz where she is the founding Director of the OpenLab Collaborative Research Center.

Visitors to the virtual exhibition were welcome to explore the exhibition day or night, using a phone, tablet, or desktop, The virtual galleries were free and open to the public.  

In Winter 2021, Professor Parker taught a small special topics undergraduate course Art 189 What Makes Us Human for the Art Department to grow the exhibition - all disciplines were welcome to enroll. The culmination of their efforts can be viewed here.

Working as a team amid wildfires, a global pandemic, and one of the more bizarre presidential elections in American History, we welcomed the opportunity to build community and focus our collective energy on what made us human.