Professor Adam Zaretsky Turned to His Unique Hobby During Quarantine

Adam Zaretsky is a BioArtist who spent his time in lockdown in an unusual fashion, but nonetheless characteristic of the professor. The media arts professor is known for assigning wacky projects for students to complete — including “enriching” animals and extracting hybrid DNA from a variety of blended-together foods.

An exmaple of Zaresky's BioArt, created for a conference this past summer. Source: Adam Zaretsky

Over quarantine, Zaretsky completed works of BioArt, which is an art form of creating work with living organisms, for the 2020 Ars Electronica Festival. He engaged in expert panels for the International Society for Electronic Arts and wrote conference papers, including one titled, “Developmental Biology and Transgenic Avian Embryology: Body Alterity Bioart Wet Lab.” 

He discusses the “relationship between an embryo and an amateur transgenic designer.” More simply, a transgene is the transference of a gene into an organism. His paper is meant to display this process with a combination of aesthetic art visuals.

The realm of “BioArt” contains a vast array of definitions, from work with microorganisms and bacteria, to using biotechnology to enhance live tissues and conducting experiments with living creatures. Zaretsky’s interests lie mostly in the realm of transgenics, specifically transgenic humans — or changing the genetics of an organism by transplanting foreign DNA sequences into its genes.

In addition to completing his residency in understanding anatomy and publishing with Developmental Biology, Zaretsky also got married and spent his honeymoon in Portugal. He spent two months abroad in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. A friend offered Zaretsky their house to use, and of course he took the opportunity. 

From this experience, Zaretsky said he learned more about himself and his ability to persevere through quarantine. He witnessed the strength and resilience in his marriage as a result of the global shutdown. 

Source: Adam Zaretsky

“It is a test of your patience and ability to be in solitude with your family because there is a lot of reliance on one another, but a lot of positive things have come out of it for me,” Zaretsky said. “I found out that I am not easy to drive insane and there is a certain toughness that I developed, which led to reckonings of what's important to me.”.

As classes have resumed at Marist, Zaretsky has found that his Honors Program seminar course has been keeping him busier than ever. Through his class BioMedia, which of course focuses on BioArt, he is introducing students to powerful software and encouraging them to express themselves by creating BioArt on their own. 

Although Professor Zaretsky has been very active in both his quarantine and on-campus life, he has been very cautious as cases of COVID-19 surge. He still has doubts about whether Marist will remain on-campus for the entire semester but hopes that campus life safely continues. 

However, Zaretsky’s biggest dream for the future is far greater than a college semester alone. Inspired by his passion for BioArt, Zaretsky’s dream is to have the world’s first transgenic twins from China, LULU and NANA, over to his house for dinner. 

“They are like the real X-Men,” he said. 

Zaretsky and his now-wife at their wedding ceremony this summer.

Source: Adam Zaretsky