報告者：趙立
報告PPT：
文獻題目：Resurrecting the Sublime
文獻作者：
Christina Agapakis / Ginkgo Bioworks/ Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg / Sissel Tolaas
with support from IFF Inc.
文獻來源：website
摘要：
Using DNA from flower specimens at Harvard University’s Herbaria, the Ginkgo team used synthetic biology to predict gene sequences that encode for fragrance-producing enzymes. Tolaas then reconstructed the flowers’ smells, using identical or comparative smell molecules. We know which molecules the flowers may have produced, but the amounts are also lost. In Ginsberg’s installation designs, the fragments of each flower’s smell mix: there is no “exact” smell. The lost landscape is reduced to its geology and the flower’s smell. Entering the installation, the human connects the two and, contrary to a natural history museum, becomes the specimen on view.
Resurrecting the smell of extinct flowers so that humans may again experience something we destroyed is awesome and terrifying—it evokes the “sublime.” But this is not de-extinction. Instead, smell and reconstructed landscapes reveal the complex interplay of species and places that no longer exist. *Resurrecting the Sublime* asks us to contemplate our actions, and potentially change them for the future.
