(VIDEO) geNsto

geNsto es el resultado de nuestro interés acerca de cómo los discursos científicos referentes a la genética, al hacerse públicos, son interiorizados de manera diferenciada dependiendo de factores como: el contexto, la fuente o el origen, el emisor, la traducción y la interpretación personal de la información. Mediante un ejercicio de escucha, buscamos generar en los participantes una reacción. Once oraciones y una pregunta fueron el agente provocador. Las oraciones y la pregunta, todas girando en torno a la genética, emergierion de la interiorización de la información científica que nos fué dada por “los expertos”. Nos cuesta trabajo entender y visualizar las explicaciones sobre una disciplina diferente a la nuestra. Al final, encontramos el reflejo de nuestras propias reacciones tratando de evidenciar el hecho de que la conciencia relacionada a estos temas puede tener un parangón con una expresión física: el gesto.

 geNsto emerged out of our interest in exploring the way in which public scientific discourses regarding genetics are transformed when internalized due to the context, the source, the emissor, the translation and the interpretation of the information. For this we generated a listening exercise that consisted of eleven sentences and one question all focusing on the issue of genetics. The purpose of this exercise was to generate a reaction from the participants. The sentences and the question resulted from our own proces of internalizing the information given to us by “the experts”. GeNsto revels that it is difficult to understand and visualize the explanations offered by disciplines other than our own. At the end, we encountered our own ideas in the listeners’ gestures.

Here is the transcript in English. We will be subtitling it later.

Hello You will now listen to a series of sentences. Pay attention and then answer the last question.

1. Your blood type directly interferes with your physical constitution.
2. Combining two different species of animals in order to create a new one is ethically correct.
3. Genetically modifying what we eat produces genetic changes in our bodies
4. You can chose genetic modifications for your children
5. Genetic sciences cure all diseases
6. You can incorporate animal characteristic into your genetic makeup
 7. Your genetic makeup determines your vocation
8. Your genetic makeup determines who you chose as your couple
9. None of these sentences is necessarily true or false.
Thank you for listening.

Now answer the last question: Do you know what genetic manipulation is?

1. ¿Should I just answer? I think I do
2. What one eats is what will result in a good or bad body
3. No
 4. Yes
5. Through the lab, the person´s genetic makeup is modified. Although I don’t think everything is intrinsically genetic, it is genes plus environment plus heredity plus other many other factors what makes up an individual and his or her surroundings.
 6. More or less
7. No. I definitely do not know what genetic modification is.
8. Well yes I do know. It is altering the information we have in our genes
9. It is wrong, otherwise we would all want to modify ourselves to be as perfect as possible, right? And we would all end up being somewhat the same.