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Eduardo Kac (born July 3, 1962) is a Brazilian and American contemporary artist whose portfolio encompasses various forms of art including performance art, poetry, holography, interactive art, digital and online art, and BioArt. Recognized for his space art and transgenic works, Kac works with biotechnology to create organisms with new genetic attributes. His interdisciplinary approach has seen the use of diverse mediums, from fax and photocopying to fractals, RFID implants, virtual reality, networks, robotics, satellites, telerobotics, virtual reality and DNA synthesis. (2025). 9788448247409, Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM), Valencia, Spain. . ISBN 9788448247409
Throughout the 1980s Kac created telecommunications artworks, using media such as fax, television, and slow scan TV. In 1986 Kac created his first work of telepresence art, in which he used robots to bridge two or more physical locations. During the 1990s he continued to produce these works, expanding his practice with works of interspecies communications.
Kac coined the term "bio art". Kac also created various terms to describe his transdisciplinary art practice, including biorobotics (functional merger of robotics and biotechnology), "plantimal" (plant with animal genetic material or animal with plant genetic material), and transgenic art (the expression of genes from one species in another in an artwork).
Early notable works include "Genesis" (1999), where Kac translated a Genesis line into morse code and subsequently into DNA base pair and "GFP Bunny" (2000), where an albino rabbit was genetically altered with a jellyfish gene, causing it to emit a green glow under specific light conditions. This piece ignited extensive debates on the ethical implications of altering life forms for artistic purposes.
Kac's focus on space art encompasses decades-long effort to complete "Ágora" (1986–2023), a project designed for deep space. Over the years, he has collaborated with both NASA and SpaceX. His collaboration with French astronaut Thomas Pesquet in "Inner Telescope" (2017) led to the creation of a sculpture in space. Another of his artworks, "Adsum", made its journey to the International Space Station in 2022, in preparation for its final flight to the Moon. Kac has been an active participant in events promoting the convergence of art and space exploration, such as those organized by the CNES, an office of France's National Center for Space Studies.
Beginning in 1982, Kac started to create digital works. In 1983 Kac invented holographic poetry (which he also called Holopoetry), the first of which was HOLO/OLHO, named after the Portuguese word for "eye". 23 holographic poems followed this first work, including Quando? (When?) (1987), a cylindrical work that could be read in two directions.
Around the same time, and drawing on his interest in experimental poetry forms, Kac began making animated poetry works with the French Minitel system that was then in use in Brazil. In 1985 he contributed one such work, Reabracadabra, to the Arte On Line exhibition, organized by the Livraria Nobel bookstore in São Paulo. Other Minitel animated poems by Kac include Recaos (1986), Tesão (1985/86) and D/eu/s (1986). In 1986, with Flavio Ferraz, Kac organized the Brasil High-Tech exhibition at the Galeria de Arte Centro Empresarial Rio in Rio de Janeiro.
From 1985 to as late as 1994, Kac did a number of telecommunications artworks that used Slow-scan television (SSTV), FAX, and live television, to create interactive exchanges between separate locations.
In 1986 Kac created his first telepresence artwork, using a robot to connect distant audiences. In 1988 he began work on his Ornitorrinco project, a telepresence artwork completed in Chicago, in 1989, in collaboration with Ed Bennett. The work brought together robotics, telecommunications technologies and interactivity to create a robot that was controlled remotely. The piece allowed viewers in one location to control the robot's camera and motion, creating a telepresent work and effecting the experience of viewers in the other location.
In 1989 Kac moved from Rio de Janeiro to Chicago, where he would complete his MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago the following year.
In 1996, Kac's space artwork Monogram was included in the DVD that flew to Saturn mounted to the side of the Cassini spacecraft.
In Teleporting An Unknown State (1994), Kac built a system that allowed a plant to survive in a gallery, illuminated not by direct sunlight but by the action of local or remote viewers of the work. In practice, local or remote viewers of the work selected from a set of webcams facing the sky of distant cities. A video projector above the plant relayed the webcam images to the plant, thus enabling it to do photosynthesis with light transmitted remotely. As a result, the system transmitted light values (frequency and amplitude) from distant skies to a local plant.
Kac coined the term "bio art" with his 1997 performance work Time Capsule.Natasha Lushetich (2016). 9781137335036, Macmillan International Higher Education. . ISBN 9781137335036 In Time Capsule, Kac implanted himself with an RFID chip originally designed for use in pets. A participant in Chicago then triggered the RFID scanned in the Brazilian gallery where Kac was performing, causing the scanner to display a unique code for the implant. Kac then registered himself on the pet database associated with the implant, becoming the first human to do so. Time Capsule was simultaneously live on television and the Internet.
By the late 90s Kac defined himself either as a "transgenic artist" or a "bio artist", and was using biotechnology and genetics to create works that used scientific techniques and simultaneously critiqued them.
Kac's next transgenic artwork, created in 1998/99 and titled Genesis, involved him taking a quote from the Bible ( – "Let man have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth"), transferring it into Morse code, and finally, translating that Morse code (by a conversion principle specially developed by the artist for this work) into the base pairs of genetics. The new DNA sequence was introduced into bacteria.Annick Bureaud (2025). 9789616304023, Association for Culture and Education, KIBLA Multimedia Center. . ISBN 9789616304023 Participants were then able to shine ultraviolet lights onto the bacteria containing the new DNA, thus altering it. So when Kac translated it back to English, it said something completely different. Through this work, Kac encourages audiences to consider the new interconnectedness between biology, technology, and meaning.
Kac's claimed that his original aim was for Alba to live with his family, but that prior to the scheduled release of Alba to Kac, the lab retracted their agreement and decided that Alba should remain in the lab. Kac responded by creating a series of works that called for her freedom. Other works would follow, focused on celebrating her life. In reality, Kac had only met Alba on his visit to the French lab. And while he had the consent of Houdebine to go in debate, the institution never agreed to public appearance of their GFP rabbits. When Kac's plea to get Alba was denied he went on to publish the artificially green photos, and declared it was his commission, and accused the institute of censorship.
GFP Bunny appeared in Big Bang Theory, Sherlock, and Simpsons, and in novels such as Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood, and Next, by Michael Crichton.
His work Natural History of the Enigma (2003–2008) continued in the theme of bio art by merging his DNA with that of a petunia, creating a hybrid organism that Kac called a "plantimal". The plant, also given the name Edunia (from Eduardo and Petunia), mimicked the flow of blood through human veins by mixing Kac's DNA only with the plant's genetic components that made the veins in its leaves red.
Kac's later project, "Inner Telescope", created inside the International Space Station (ISS), stirred debate of a different kind. The artwork, crafted from paper and designed to spell "Moi" (French for "me"), was a conceptual play on individual and collective self. The philosophical depth and utility of such an endeavor was questioned, particularly in the context of contemporary societal challenges. The project was also critiqued for potentially being an escape from the urgent issues on Earth, rather than addressing them head-on.
In 2002 he received the Creative Capital Award in the discipline of Emerging Fields.
In 2008 he received the Golden Nica award at Ars Electronica for his project Natural History of the Enigma.
Catalogues and monographs of Eduardo Kac's exhibitions
Books about the art of Eduardo Kac
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