DNA(i)
IDENTITY. TOWARDS A DEFINITION
Can we say that identity is a set of elements that allow us to define ourselves as beings or a group of individual beings?
If it is that way, that set of elements would be made up of a hereditary share beyond our control and another share that we meticulously build through our preferences or rejections.
Thus, we would perceive the issue from the standpoint of the object we are analyzing, a "private" identity by which we would be recognized as an entity, be it group or individual, but there is also another "formal" identity imposed upon us with the ultimate goal of control, either individually as citizens or as people within all nations. As we well know, the control enforced in connection with this identity punishes any forging of it.
Identity in virtual space:
Virtual space demands only a small exercise connected with identity: we must remember a keyword or password validating the intended rights, because this password would only be known by the owner.
That password allows us to cherish all we wish supported within that virtual world. In some way it protects or encrypts the intimacy of our data or our bank account. Even if the Net has large public spaces where we can all stock information waiting to be consulted without restrictions we can obtain a fraction given to us in order to cherish our identity. That’s the place where we can store our private information.
What happens when we forget our password and we are denied access to the data we have been storing so patiently?
Suddenly we discover that our identity was subject to a weak memory exercise. We become intruders of our own information, of something that until a moment ago we considered our own.
In the world of information systems, a hacker is a person with programming knowledge that wanders around the systems evading identification and producing changes at will. Is it maybe an equivalent to what the anarchists were for societies at the beginning of the 20th century?
Will the system intruder be some kind of artist in the near future? Or will artists have to turn into hackers in order to transgress the widely established patterns of virtual space?
Art has called for a share of transgression in times of change. The hacker’s transgression lies basically in breaking the laws of virtual space: we must all identify ourselves in order to obtain (authenticate) the rights of the virtual environment we are using and no one can identify himself under a false name.
Objective identity:
The link between memory and identity not only happens in cyberspace; we can also draw a parallel with our identity as peoples in the real space: how could we define ourselves as Argentineans except through a memory exercise less precarious than the one we regularly carry out?
Identity only through memory is precarious for the same reason it is subjective: it intentionally hides some aspects, it allows us to forge our identity, to hide our dark zones from the past.
Many sci-fi books address the identification in the future stemming from an individual’s DNA (1) information.
If we wanted to define the absolute identity of an individual, we should probably resort to the genetic code. There we have registered a kind of password that may establish us as an unique and unrepeatable being. If we have no clones of us, we could postulate ourselves as an individual organism (cloning is more transgressive because of the denial of an absolute identity than because of the denial of sexual reproduction).
Drawing a parallel between individuals and society: will it be possible to deduce a collective genetic code of the Argentineans which would allow us to define/identify ourselves absolutely without falling prey to the traps of fragility/bending/forging of our collective memory?
(1) DNA: acronym for deoxyribonucleic acid, a substance containing the genetic code within the cellular structure.
© 1999
SVHS - PALB
Approximate length: 4 min 12 sec
Direction: Ricardo Pons
Production Assistant: Gabriela Larrañaga
Sound and Image Editing: Ricardo Pons
Music composition: Gabriel Lucena