the artist as mad scientist

Natalie Jeremijenko sounds like an amazing personage.  I think the world needs more of her.

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Jeremijenko spliced into the [cloning] controversy in 1999 with her project "One Trees." When daily news about decoding the human genome had us all fearing we were programmed by DNA, she and a California nursery produced hundreds of clones of a walnut tree from its stem-cell-like tissue. She placed the tiny sprouts in individually sealed cups and displayed them at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The various shapes into which the plantlets sprouted in uniform environments underscored that genes alone don't sit in nature's director chair, but are one of many biological processes. Later, she planted 20 pairs of the trees in various places in the San Francisco Bay Area. Now she gave urban reality its turn in the spotlight by demonstrating how social conditions -- the trees were planted in poor and wealthy neighborhoods -- caused the genetically identical trees to blossom into a bounty of sizes, some rising into the open sun with vigor, others drooping under the industrial shade.

"'One Trees' is one of the landmarks so far in art and science," says Wilson. "A lot of artists just sit back and comment on the world. Natalie actually went out and employed the science. It was very powerful, more powerful than just sitting back and commenting."

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She is also creating a corporation with a board of trustees made up entirely of Hudson River fish, but you'll have to read that entire section of the article to understand why.