Christian Bök is Canadian, has a Ph. D. in English literature from New York University, is the only human being to write a widely successful five part book of univocal poetry based on the vowels (check: Eunoia), and is now planning his next bold undertaking: the encoding of a poetic piece into the genetic structure of a living organism (check: Xenotext Experiment). It may sound revolutionary, which it likely is, but Bök is by no means the originator of the idea. The project belongs to an experimental artistic movement called transgenic art that was pioneered, at least in the 90's, by Eduardo Kac, who integrated Genesis 1:26 into the genetic sequence of certain bacterium causing mutations that slightly altered the verse. But while Bök cannot be said to own all stock in the idea, his approach to the transgenic enterprise has by comparison more balls. This is because his task, nearly as epic as the possible long term results, is to develop not just a meaningful poem but one that is comprised of a stringently limited selection of words that have the potential of resulting in a meaningful combination of words pieced together from the genetic information of the protein that is synthesized in response to the assimilation of the implanted "poem" sequence. Breathe.
So in essence, Bök will be starting a poetic conversation with the language of life.
But, who will be Bök's microscopic correspondent? None other than nature's epitome of hard ass, Deinococcus radiodurans, the kind of hard knock germ you'd have to launch into the belly of the sun just to put a dent in its membrane. And surely, what better microbial breed to serve as host for your poem-parasite than one that seems to be as evolutionarily robust as an extraterrestrial super virus that grew up crawling between irradiated crags on a sizzling deep space comet?
Here's the mug:
So not only is it built like a ship, but it's so resistant to radiation that it would likely brush off a total nuclear apocalypse, whilst humans, etc. become dust lighting up an atomic sunset. And that explains the selection choice, since an essential part of this experiment is to flirt with the prospect of human culture surviving human civilization. It engages the perfectly familiar immortality impulse, of securing some part of our work on this planet in a genetic time capsule to carry through the next world cataclysm.
So, assuming all alternative ways of preserving a treasury of human achievements from disaster fails, and this meme-gene injection is humanity's only hope of leaving a more permanent mark in the cosmos, will just a poem be enough? This amounts to the paramount question for Bök's whole endeavor, that is whether the poems will "merit preservation in an organism for the next 6 billion years" (Believer interview).
All other considerations surrounding the Xenotext Experiment aside (i.e. the auspicious marriage of the arts and sciences, the symbolic vigor of putting the evolution of art to the test, or the statement it proclaims about how language infects), my biggest concern is philosophical. Let's assume the gene takes well to the architecture of our stalwart bacterium, which survives the human species by eons of our space/time. Will there be anything like a sense organ and a brain around to appreciate such a feat? This raises the next haunting question: if the success of the project relies on preserving a packet of cultural information (to some level of its original integrity), but no creature that has evolved in a similar enough way to recognize the properties of our language and aesthetics will be around after 6 billion years to brush their chins, to whom will it matter that human beings found a way to scratch their names into the walls of the evolving universe?
Unfortunately, I'm left with a wet blanket taste in my mouth.
But all minor qualms aside, the concept is thrilling and a project like this needs no further justification than what is provided in Bök's applaudable call to arms: "Poets need to be more ambitious."
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