Image encoded in DNA
Kunsthal Charlottenborg, 2015.

For AFGANG 2015 I showed a digital image encoded in DNA. 37 mg DNA and a projection of the image was shown in the exhibition.

The image stored in the DNA is a highly compressed grayscale JPEG with 39.578 pixels. It shows a landscape with horizontal lines turning oblique upwards. It could look like windy waves from the sea crashing against a rising cliff but it is hard to tell as the image is very unclear and almost dissolved in image compression and poor resolution. Like a photo from the early internet days being compressed and reduced time and time again until it is barely recognisable. Or perhaps like Leon Harmon's 1971 portrait of Lincoln.

Each pixel in the image comes from a photo from my private digital photo archive. Every photo in the archive has been reduced to a single grayscale pixel and the final image is composed from this mass of pixels. In the reduction close to all visible information were lost and left is only a distant indicator of the amount of light that entered the cameras. Still however, a large number of circumstances have determined the exact grey tone of each pixel, but none of this can be traced back to the original photo. Just like the traces in our DNA from far ancestors whose lives we can only imagine.

37 mg DNA

The idea of storing non-biological information in DNA dates back more than 50 years but was not realised before 1988 when artist Joe Davis encoded a 35 bit icon in 28 base pairs of DNA. Jumping to 2012 George Church and his team managed to encode and read back 5.27 megabit (659 kilobytes) including digital photos, text and a Javascript. Since then synthesising DNA has only become more accessible leading one to wonder if this sci-fi-like idea could one day be a common practice.