1. On the hypothesis that classical perfectionist social Utopias played a role in paving the way for today’s scientific and technological revolution, see Arnold Künzli, Menschen-Markt. Die Humangenetik zwischen Utopie, Kommerz und Wissenschaft (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2000), 139ff.
2. Cf. Söke Dinkla, “Transformationen des Biologischen in der zeitgenössischen Kunst,” in Transformationen des Biologischen in der zeitgenossischen Kunst, exhibition catalog (Ostfildern-Ruit: Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum Duisburg, 2001), 23.
3. See Ronald J. Gedrim, “Edward Steichen’s 1936 Exhibition of Delphinium Blooms.” History of Photography 17.4 (1993): 352–363. At about the same time as Steichen’s works Sacheverell Sitwell published his book Old Fashioned Flowers (London: Country Life, 1939), which confirmed that cultivated organisms of great aesthetic beauty were fine arts. The breeding of plants, which were cultivated purely for their aesthetic qualities, goes back further than classical antiquity. That the laws of inheritance, evolution, and the role of humans in this process were not understood meant that it was not until the nineteenth century that ornamental plants were recognized as art.
4. Cf. Ronald J. Gedrim, “Edward Steichen’s 1936 Exhibition of Delphinium Blooms. An Art of Flower Breeding,” in Signs of Life. Bio Art and Beyond, ed. Eduardo Kac (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2007), 354; on Steichen’s early plant breeding experiments in France before the World War I. see Penelope Niven, Steichen (New York: Clarkson Potter, 1997).
5. Ars Electronica;G. Gessert,1999