ode to SARS-CoV-2

2021, Oil on canvas, Music Boxes, Speakers, RNA sequence information, Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art

This work collectively titled , ode to SARS-CoV-2, is composed of three individual pieces that address aspects of the interaction between the Covid virus and the body. Three paintings are paired with music boxes. RNA sequences from the various structural components of the SARS-CoV-2 virus were used to create musical scores in which each nucleotide of the RNA sequence gets a corresponding note. These musical scores were used to program music boxes that could be cranked to play the score. The left music box plays the RNA sequence of the spike protein, the middle plays both the sequences used to produce the mRNA vaccine and the Amino Acid sequence of the ACE2 lung receptor and the right plays the sequence of the spike protein after random changes have been introduced to evolution via mutation.