Internet of Bodies

Workshop by Carina Namih, Simone Niquille

During 2008’s New York Fashion Week online DNA testing service 23andMe hosted a celebrity clad Spit Party collecting client’s DNA samples in order to answer their genomic questions. Hailed as the blueprint of life, the human genome is presented as bodies metadata containing our truth and future. Questions posed to the DNA oracle range as far and wide as ‘Will my child have freckles?, Who are my parent’s?, Will she commit a criminal act?, Why do I like bananas?’. Unlike it is the case with 23andMe, the questions are not always asked by the person submitting their DNA. Applied in forensic research your DNA might appear in places your body is not, building narratives contrary to personal statements. In the 2008 investigation now known as the Phantom of Heilbronn, the German police erroneously searched for a female suspect connected to 30 different crimes by DNA residue. Ultimately it was revealed that the suspects DNA in fact belonged to a woman working at the cotton swab factory manufacturing the equipment used to collect DNA at crime scenes. She was never in those places, but her DNA was. The all-knowing power bestowed in DNA data and flesh turned into numbers has to be treated with caution, especially when yielded above corporeal bodies. Data (mis)use cases point as precursors to how other bodily data might be used to extrude knowledge and prediction of our bodies and our behaviour remotely.

During this 3 day workshop participants will meet their own data body and explore protocols for communal DNA data hosting to scramble individual identity.