The Meme Experiments

What is a MEME?
It is a term that is used in similar ways to the word "gene" but it refers to units of cultural information that humans are carriers of as opposed to biological units of information (genes). Genes, for the most part, govern our physical embodiment. Memes, tend to govern our actions and ideas. The term, meme, was coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins in his book, The Selfish Gene. Examples of memes include: songs, recipes, fashion, phrases, and diet which can be passed on culturally and evolve similarly to genes.

The Meme Experiments:
The meme experiments are examples of A. Research Team's attempts to capture the very elusive home of memes and give a tangible location to them just as the helix model is used to depict where genes are housed. It is our mission to determine exactly where memes reside and how they function in the human specimen. On the enclosed slides you will see the results of this research.

History of the Meme Mapping Project:
A. Research Team from the U. of K.M.F. is mapping the memes carried in the artist-specimen (Kathleen Farrall) to better understand the specimen's current existence and probable survival rates. This specimen was removed from its incubation location in early adulthood and is ripe for the mapping of pre-existing and newly introduced memes. This meme mapping, similar to the genome project, maps the cultural ideas that the specimen is a host to and how these memes mutate throughout the life of the specimen.

Our team has found that memes and genes overlap and it would be near impossible for humans to exist without both. A. Research Team concludes that we can better understand the current specimen's existence by looking at the memes carried in the same way that we can have a fuller understanding of the individual by looking at the genes carried.

A Technical Note:
All of these images have been created without the aid of digital manipulation. Often, used are glow-in-the dark objects (an excellent source for tracking memes) whose phosphorescent glow creates the exposure on the paper -- a technique I have coined, "glow-o-grams." Each print is a mono-print. A. Research Team uses an array of light sources to achieve these results, including electro-luminescent wire, glow sticks, night-lights, programmable Frisbees, fiber-optics and other sources that will help to better find the home and precise function of memes.