This morning we went to the Ars Electronica Center, to see some of the exhibition, I’m here in the hall, blogging before going to the conference. Let’s start with the robots I intend to steal as soon as the staff members turn their back.

In the Dog Lab 01 installation by France CADET, 5 autonomous dogs have been hacked, reprogrammed and transformed into transgenic and chimerical animals so that their appearance and behaviour are now hybrids of several animals species.

The modification of these improbable creatures are not innocent or just humourous. They are based on real researches and experiments and put their possible conequences into a disturbing light, warning of the possible dangers and excesses of clonong, eugenics and other animal experiments.

This dog is an experiment gone wrong, two dogs with their own mind trapped in a single body, each one wants to have its way. They can’t agree on the direction to take.

Copycat, half dog, half cat, is my absolute favourite.
It is clean and independent like a cat, yet affectionate and playful like a dog: it’s the universal pet!

After “CC” the first kitten cloned in December 2001 at Texas A&M University, it’s now possible to clone your favourite dying or dead pet and to produce a pet “à la carte”

At first sight, I thought, “Oh, lovely, lovely, I want one”, but then I felt like they were real, it was terribly disturbing and I felt strangely ashamed to take pictures of these “poor” creatures.

Dolly, for example, had genes mixing dog, cow, sheep and ewe. It was born with the mad cow disease, first you could see it happily walking on the artificial grass pad, then it felt sick and you could watch it die.

Jelly dog has 5% of jellyfish in its genetic origins, so it walks normally, but then suddenly it start to “swim” because the fish in it just earns water.

France Cadet is a French artist whose work raises questions about the various aspects and debates of science: dangers of possible accidents, side effects of cloning, observation of animal and human behaviour, artificialisation of life.