(Click here to read online)

Genpets apparently made it onto some venezuelan newscast so I've been overloaded with emails in regards to people wanting to purchase them or condemn me. nothing new, just a lot in another language.

Greetings from Canada.

While updating the genpets.com site I decided I wanted to add a forum, of course, not a real one as I don't have enough free time to police it. So I needed to create and code something that would look real, which means it would have to update all by itself.

The first trick to that was date control, if all the dates are set for this week, that's not going to do me much good a year from now is it?

I started out writing some longer if statments but then as I read more about the date commands in PHP I realized it could subtract the dates (or add) all on it's own, without having to be told HOW. (IE september 3rd minus 5 days, we'd have to tell the system to update the month to august)

Here's a little snippet of code I used, it works great, so feel free to cut and paste.

// this simple code controls how the dates work on the page. it subtracts days to make it appear the site is always being updated.
//it is also 'smart' so if it subtracts say 5 days from october 2, it will make it september... cool eh?

$date = date('m/d/Y', strtotime("-0 days"));
$date3 = date('m/d/Y', strtotime("-3 days"));

$date10 = date('m/d/Y', strtotime("-10 days"));

$date1 = date('m/d/Y', strtotime("-1 days"));

you don't have to subtract days either, you could subtract a month or year, or whatever suits your fancy, yes it will compensate for leap year etc...

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04. Adam Brandejs @ PPCA for Nuit Blanche - Sept 30 (NB)
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Adam Brandejs "Genpets"

Friday September 30, 2006

7pm - 7am

as part of Nuit Blanche

Paul Petro Contemporary Art is pleased to present "Genpets" by
Toronto-based artist Adam Brandejs. This installation will appear
in the front windows at 980 Queen St West for the weekend. The
reception for this work will be held at our Multiples + Small Works
location at 962 Queen St West.

"Genpets are the perfect bio-engineered buddy for the 21 century!
A series of pre-packaged bio-engineered pets perfectly suited to the
ever-increasingly busy lifestyle of the modern consumer."

You can learn more about these 'bio-engineered buddies' by visiting
Adam's web site: http://www.genpets.com

Adam Brandejs is a recent graduate of the Ontario College of Art and
Design. Using hybrid media he explores and questions current social
issues. Since it's creation during his tenure at OCAD "Genpets" has
been exhiibited on several occasions including this year's Art Basel.

--
Paul Petro Contemporary Art
980 Queen St. W.
Toronto, Ontario
M6J 1H1

tel: 416-979-7874
fax: 416-979-3390
info@paulpetro.com
gallery hours: wed-sat 11-5pm

http://www.paulpetro.com

I was floored by this article, so here it is posted online. Thank you so much Frank for your kind words.

Tech-savvy sculptor says pet project is satire
By Frank bentayou, Plain Dealer Reporter

Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Edition: Final, Section: Arts & Life, Page E1 Zone All

ART

Would you love to have a cuddly little creature around the house but aren't keen on 5 a.m. dog walks, cat-litter patrol or the cold stare of a tropical lizard?

Consider Genpets, the latest no-fuss, bioengineered domestic life forms.

You can learn about these trademarked, "prepackaged . . . living, breathing genetic animals," as promotional material calls them, by calling up www.genpets.com.

But, first, a confession: Genpets aren't what they seem and aren't really alive.

They're part of an art installation, a creation of Canadian sculptor and Web designer Adam Brandejs, and owe less to the burgeoning science of bioengineering than to an ancient tradition that art often must take a role in satirizing, criticizing, even mocking features of human behavior that defy survival, integrity and plain old good sense.

These faux life forms are actually molded plastic figures that Brandejs and his girlfriend, Crystal Pallister, packed with robotic devices that make the dolls' chests heave and monitors blink within their plastic packages.

A hope underlying satire is that it might awaken viewers to some new awareness. Brandejs' Genpets are weird, even creepy, but seem to carry a message about the limits of tampering with life for commercial purposes.

The 24-year-old artist, fresh out of Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, already is receiving worldwide attention through his thought-provoking art installations. And, in fact, Genpets is part of one of the most original sculptural, electronic and conceptual artworks you can find on the Internet - or anywhere else.

In part, it focuses on one of the most bizarre ideas of 2006: living pets "engineered" from the DNA of various life forms (apparently, including humans), alive and hibernating, stocked on retail shelves and programmed to bond with whoever buys and awakens them and to be trouble-free for their new owners.

Brandejs said people have responded in droves, with anywhere from 5,000 to more than a million discreet hits per day on the Web site. Visitors send often-scathing e-mails.

Some have seen the elaborate display as an ethically outrageous effort that renegade scientists cooked up to commercialize bioengineering. Others have groused that the phenomenon is nothing more than a sleazy hoax designed to sell ugly rubber dolls.

"It's neither," Brandejs said. He's not selling his models via Genpets.com, and they certainly are not alive.

He conceived of and created Genpets as his art-school thesis, but he enjoyed the concept so much, he kept working on it. "It went a little overboard," he said.

Overboard? The Web site links to convincing published articles, scientific details and graphics as well as to "product" features (each package includes a heart monitor to show that the pet is "alive"), a bogus online store selling accessories and "nutrient packs," and even a 20-page catalog aimed at recruiting wholesalers and investors.

Brandejs has shown his installation - including packaged Genpets hanging from a retail display rack, Web site, multimedia presentations and artifacts - at galleries around Canada.

The work most recently hit Basel, Switzerland. All the attention drew interest to
his earlier student work. Exhibits are scheduled in Hamburg, Germany; Toronto,
and New York this fall.

The modest artist acknowledges a strain of edgy, deadpan satire. (An online portfolio at www.brandejs.ca shows more of his work.) Packaged pets, for example, are available in pre-programmed one- or three-year life-span models, depending on buyer preference.

That seems a grimly witty commentary on how people may want pets, but not the long-term responsibilities they often demand.

"I have a definite interest in materialism and consumer culture," Brandejs said. And he prefers "dealing with issues that we like to sweep under the carpet."

Genpets' issues include the dark implications of bioengineering at the service of modern convenience, "but also how animals are already treated in pet stores and factory farms. They've become a consumable good," Brandejs said.

He received no grants or other support for his student works. Instead, he financed materials and months of toil with jobs as a Web developer/designer.

The source of his inspiration? "It would be impossible to ignore issues such as technology and convenience, as art must reflect the times," Brandejs said.

Caption:
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ADAM BRANDEJS Artist Adam Brandejs'
attention to commercial details focuses the sharp satire of his Genpets
installation on ethical questions regarding both bio- engineering and the
treatment of animals.


PHOTOGRAPHS BY ADAM BRANDEJS Toronto artist
Adam Brandejs created 19 robotic Genpets for his art installation by that name,
each packaged with a blinking heart monitor and pulsing apparatus to make it
appear as if it's breathing. "The Web site is part of the installation," he
says. "But actually to see the installation in a gallery, with all these little
guys breathing, is kind of creepy."

I felt like posting this email I received (with the authors permission), as I think it's close to the sort of response I wanted to get, feel free to give it a read.

"Hello there. I was rather intrigued by your Genpets concept and I felt
like sharing.

When I first heard about Genpets it was from a friend on DeviantArt.
I don't know how she had found the website, but she seemed to think
they were the real deal. I was one of the people who read through the
website horrified. I thought it couldn't possibly be true, that this
couldn't possibly fly in our modern, seemingly ethics-obsessed day
and age. Even more I was disgusted at the reactions of the others my
friend had shared this with, people who thought this was a great idea
and wanted to embrace it by owning one of these things.

I am a self-loathing human so I am predisposed to hate a lot of
things my species does. It didn't take me long to accept that Genpets
could very well be possible given the gross abuse of technology and
lesser-creatures already in practice. It was just an example of us
going too far... again.

As I prepared to type my concerned response to this, in my mind,
obscenity, I thought about my current job at a store called Waldo
Pets. I realized that maybe my concern over this was entirely
hypocritical being that I worked at place where we offer a
two-for-one deal on certain colors of gerbils, living breathing
animals. I had to stop and rationalize my own opinion for myself
saying that the albino gerbils were not only fairly natural creatures
but also free to roam their cages until picked up and taken to a home.
I typed and posted my comment still disgusted but now confused.

How much difference is there really between a glass aquarium and a
plastic package? The gerbils are still bred and born for the specific
purpose of being a "pet," a form of entertainment or occasionally
companionship for a human caretaker or "owner." Still I attempt to
rationalize, being an "owner" myself, that the gerbils are still
entirely different than the concept of Genpet-like creatures. But
even as I type this now I'm in debate with myself once again.

Now knowing that Genpets are fictitious, I am so relieved but I
wonder how much relief that should really warrant. It's only time
before something like this becomes an issue. Bioengineering already
is. The discovery of the truth behind Genpets hasn't stopped my
questioning. This is still a very real issue for me considering how
much it has made me question myself. Sure, it's a waste and misuse of
technology that can be put to so many more-beneficial things. But from
an ethical standpoint, is it really so bad? Or does it just show us
how bad we already are? What is bad anyway? It's confusing. My
opinions and ethics are in question at my own hands.

The statement you've made with your art is, well, intense for lack of
better words. Speaking as a 16 year-old novice of an artist, I know
how difficult making any sort of statement is. For that, I admire
you. But mostly I thank you. I thank you for making me question not
only mankind and its potential, but myself as part of it. Clearly,
things are not so clear.

Sincerely, Caranne"

I ever so often skim over a forum or two, and many times the word 'hoax' comes up when referring to Genpets. Which I admit, I find amusing. Hoax, it would be if it sold something. But it does not, the word you’re looking for, if not art, is ‘spoof’ or 'satire', even 'parody' (if the intent was humour).

The spirit of art is to create an illusion. To call Genpets a hoax, would be like looking at paintings from a few hundred years ago and calling them a hoax, as they depicted people, that weren't actually there. Oh wait... people did say that. Calling something a hoax, as virgil wong pointed out to me in a recent email "also makes it sound purely malicious -- as opposed to an honest, humorous, or creative investigation of sometimes absurd possibilities".

Those paintings I speak of, that look pretty now, were also many times highly charged with political discourse, depending on who was standing in the painting, and where.

Hence we have politically charged art, whether it simply looks pretty to you now from the standpoint of a modern viewer.

So I find it amusing that the same thing still comes up now, art is here to push boundaries, but when it does, people get a little edgy. History does repeat itself. But that tells me I'm on the right track.

I also have to question why TV, film, and books can be regarded as forms of entertainment but art cannot. Perhaps it just hasn’t been done enough and it’s time to break that misconception?

(ps, thanks SJW on I-am bored. I noticed that). and Thanks to Snopes for doing such a nice writeup. (link)

Feel free to tell me I’m wrong, that’s what the comment system is there for.

A lot paper work to get Genpets off to Switzerland. The fact they’re electronic added extra paperwork and tricky wording for customs, but so far I managed.

First time I wrote up the commercial invoice I worded it a little rough:

Art sculpture. Foam latex rubber encased in plastic.
Rca type wires, tubing
200watt power supply.

Sounded like a bomb rather than art, but they give you so little space, but I managed to word it better in the end.

Airway bill, commercial invoices, transport order for Swiss customs, etc, now I know how, it wasn’t the volume or length or paperwork, it was the tricky wording they use. “unit of measure” had me on the phone to learn I had to write “each” versus pair…. I was thinking inches but then I was all logical, and we all know there’s no place for logic in the year 2006.

Point is though, now I know how to do it, and everything from this point on will be a lot easier. Though I can see why for many producing the artwork becomes a minor part of their career as an artist. Also did up a fancy little instruction manual for how to setup Genpets as I won’t be there to do it myself. If you wanna give it a gander go to Genpets.com and download the new catalogue.

Yup, so I got the graduating Medal for my department at OCAD this year (Integrated media)

Stuff, shin dig, people…

Denise from the faculty of art office was absolutely wicked, she was there to be like, it’s fine don’t worry, everythings good. I don’t like shin digs, I’m not a small talk person, and so I especially got nervous for the Bravo TV interview thing but she made everything good. Thanks Denise!

Oh and also David Macintosh invited me to participate in a discussion on the mobile digital commons network in Montreal for 4 days. Free trp is good, having people value what goes on inside my head, even better.

Genepts at grad show
Amazing how people always assume the plastic and display etc are all manufactured or something, the idea that I actually created everything from scratch causes disbelief. Though I guess it's a compliment to the quality of the work.
I don’t like to stand and talk, I answered the occasional question but mostly just hung over the railing above to watch and listen from time to time like a ghost.

No, this is not science fiction. I was so engrossed last year with Genpets I missed this completely.

Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created.

And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.