For Immediate Release

 http://billfisher.dreamhost.com/nohate.html

 http://billfisher.dreamhost.com/seritypes.html

We hope you'll consider participating in the following project, along with students, colleagues, friends etc. April 3 is the important deadline mentioned. A printable survey, consent form and project information are on the websites above.

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Please post/forward this freely. We will use this data from remote participants in our organizational methods and "parceling" of screens/images in Madison. Also feel free to administer this survey, and get it in a licked (by the subject)-n-sealed envelope!

*Call to All*
Seritypes: A Genetic Screening Project
Send an email, an attached image, a little DNA:

We deny race, gender, borders and the construct of "other," a key mechanism in the dehumanization of the Oppressed and the Oppressor. We affirm the fundamental parity of all individuals.

 http://www.art.wisc.edu/sgc2006/Pages/demos-seritypes.html explains (and please see below) the 24-hour "procedure" that our team will be conducting in Madison WI, April 8-9 (tentative), 2006, and we'd like you to act as a remote hub (or participant in Madison if you're in the area). If you visit the No Hate Page ( http://billfisher.dreamhost.com/nohate.html) and scroll to the bottom, "Re-Present" is a past project that uses a similar strategy and methodology.

Along with sending imagery and text via email during the project (10 minutes of your time or as much as 24 hours of participation), we may ask for a cheek swab, cigarette butt, chewed gum, or a licked and sealed envelope, a fingerprint or face image, and for you to collect a similar sample from friends, colleagues, family, and strangers, or encourage their direct participation. Your genetic material will be rendered and mixed with printing inks and we'll go from there in the 24-hour coded and sequenced production of silkscreen prints. Other imagery may be up- and downloaded from a central site by all members of the network throughout the duration of the project. The team in Madison will be doing the same, downloading and manipulating your imagery and outputting screenprints, uploading digital versions of the work for your continued manipulations.

Please contact us at  wwfisher@charter.net by March 22, 2006 if this is something you'd like to work on. It would be great to have your participation in this affirmation of shared, borderless identity. You will then be contacted with further details of the project.

2006 Southern Graphics Council Conference Proposal
April 5-9, 2006

Project Title
Seritypes: A Genetic Screening Project

Project Authors
Jeff Drye, Bill Fisher, Richard Lou, Danielle Wyckoff, the Arts faculty of Georgia College & State University and International Participants

Project Proposal
"A chromosome's structure may change on rare occasions. A segment may be deleted, inverted, moved to a new location, or duplicated. . .Crossing over and changes in chromosome number or in a chromosome's structure may influence the course of evolution. The changes in genotype (genetic make-up) lead to variations in phenotype (observable traits) among members of a population, so that evolution is possible."
Cecie Starr and Ralph Taggart, 1995.

"Look in the mirror, and don't be tempted to equate transient domination with either intrinsic superiority or prospects for extended survival."
Stephen Jay Gould

A team of printmakers will transform the serigraphy studio at the University of Wisconsin into a genetic research laboratory/operating theatre, complete with lab coats, face masks, rubber gloves, research stations, etc. Conference attendees as well as national and international participants will be solicited to submit DNA samples (through cell scrapings e.g.) which will then be combined with acrylic screen inks for creating works on paper during a 24-hour "procedure." A database of imagery will also be uploaded/downloaded during this period by all participants.

In Madison, this imagery and the subsequent screens will be coded (as chemical proteins), treated as raw genetic material and parceled out in discrete, Mendelian units. Combining and printing these different genotypes will lead to variations in phenotypes (the final observable expression of independent inheritance), and through deleting, inverting, moving, and duplicating, change will be affected in this "genetic" expression, allowing for the evolution of the printed image to occur. Others in the participant network will be accessing the shared online genetic (imagery) database to create work at their own hub-location.

The work which evolves over this 24-hour period will be a population without borders, authorless and of shared ownership. We hope to illustrate a process in which we define our own identity through the expression of our physically shared, inextricable commonality rather than through acceptance of dominant constructed (and divisive) geopolitical, social, religious, racial, and gender-based ideologies.

Our Madison research team will also raffle off Genographic Project kits
( https://www5.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/participate.html), another worldwide project with potentially beneficial implications.

To act as a remote participant (with or without DNA), please contact  wwfisher@charter.net by March 22, 2006 to express interest. Details will follow.

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Dear Friends,

You are being contacted because you have expressed interest in Seritypes: A Genetic Screening Project:

 http://billfisher.dreamhost.com/seritypes.html

 http://www.art.wisc.edu/sgc2006/Pages/demos-seritypes.html

We ask that you send the following personal, anonymous information in a sealed envelope via snail-mail immediately, if possible (print out this email and complete using your natural handwriting). You are free to pass this on to anyone and everyone; all are welcome:

EYE COLOR:

SKIN COLOR:

HAIR COLOR:

SEX:

NATIONALITY:

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION:

AGE:

Please answer the following with TRUE or FALSE:

I have a "bent pinky," the distal segment of the fifth finger bending distinctly
inward toward the fourth (ring) finger. TRUE / FALSE

I have "middigital hair," hair in the middle segments of the fingers. TRUE / FALSE

I can roll my tongue into a tube-like shape. TRUE / FALSE

I have a "widow's peak," a V-shaped front hairline. TRUE / FALSE

In a relaxed interlocking of the fingers, I place my left thumb over my right. TRUE / FALSE

My earlobes hang free and pendulous. TRUE / FALSE

I have "hitchhiker's thumb," being able to bend the distal joint of my thumb back to a nearly-90 degree angle. TRUE / FALSE.

I was born with an extra finger/toe. TRUE / FALSE

I was born with webbed fingers/toes. TRUE / FALSE

I have an extra nipple or nipples. TRUE / FALSE

PLEASE DESCRIBE ANY PARTICULAR PHYSICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, EMOTIONAL, PARAPSYCHOLOGICAL AND/OR SPIRITUAL TRAITS YOU WISH TO MENTION.

Please place this information and the consent form found at  http://billfisher.dreamhost.com/seritypes.html in an envelope alone or with a single hair from your body, seal by licking the adhesive and mail ASAP (envelopes must arrive by April 3, 2006) to:

Bill Fisher
Art Dept.
CBX 094
GC&SU
Milledgeville, GA 31061 USA

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