• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.6 no.2 s.12
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• pp.131-183
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• 2006

The Korean genetics and genomics reveal a firm willingness to participate in and contribute to the production of creative scientific knowledge at a world level at present, though they have short past histories of introduction from the Western counterparts and those of education for the next generations. But the Korean genetics and genomics have been developed in a fragmented and biased manner. By reconfiguring the various research projects of genomics into the Genome Project of Korea, which reflect a worldly trend in life science, but have been established in a scattered fashion in Korea, and incorporating some neglected areas of genetics, such as human genetics and theoretical and population genetics which can be reconstructed in a new way, a genetics-genomics research system can be formulated on the multi-tiered perspective of concept, knowledge, and institution, while the system being a subsystem of the national research system of life science in Korea. Innovation can be pursued in the systematic practice through a culturalist strategy. The culturalist strategy with the practice based on the research system consists of 1) intensification of fundamentalness of genetics and genomics, 2) advancement of communitarianism in geneticist-genomicist community, 3) research on the cultural bio-species along with the promotion of scientific arts and culture, and 4)formation of the Korean science studies of genetics-genomics and the diffusion of the knowledge produced. The first two strategy components are the ones that intends to bring out changes in the structural aspect of the scientist community in Korea. The third is the one that attempts to magnify the interface between the scientist community and the Korean society at large and increase its connectivity between both, while the fourth is the one that has an intentionality toward the Korean society outside of the scientist community. This culturalist strategy is intended to increase the cultural constructivity of the genetics-genomics research system in Korea.

• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.2
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• pp.27-48
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• 2004

Robert Rauschenberg's artistic career has often been regarded as having reached its culmination when the artist won the first prize at the 1964 Venice Biennale. With this victory, Rauschenberg triumphantly entered the pantheon of all-American artists and firmly secured his position in the history of American art. On the other hand, despite the artist's ongoing new experiments in his art, the seemingly precocious ripeness in his career has led the critical discourses on Rauschenberg's art to the artist's early works, most of which were done in the mid-1950s and the 1960s. The crux of Rauschenberg criticism lies not only in focusing on the artist's 50's and 60's works, but also in its large dismissal of the significance of the imagery that the artist employed in his works. As art historians Roger Cranshaw and Adrian Lewis point out, the critical discourse of Rauschenberg either focuses on the formalist concerns on the picture plane, or relies on the "culturalist" interpretation of Rauschenberg's imagery which emphasizes the artist's "Americanness." Recently, a group of art historians centered around October has applied Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotics as art historical methodology and illuminated the indexical aspects of Rauschenberg's work. The semantic inquiry into Rauschenberg's imagery has also been launched by some art historians who seek the clues in the artist's personal context. The first half of this essay will examine the previous criticism on Rauschenberg's art and the other half will discuss the artist's 1955 work Rebus, which I think intersects various critical concerns of Rauschenberg's work, and yet defies the closure of discourses in one direction. The categories of signs in the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce and the discourse of Jean-Francois Lyotard will be used in discussing the meanings of Rebus, not to search for the semantic readings of the work, hut to make an analogy in terms of the paradoxical structures of both the work and the theory. The definitions of rebus is as follows: Rebus 1. a representation or words or syllables by pictures of object or by symbols whose names resemble the intended words or syllables in sound; also: a riddle made up wholly or in part of such pictures or symbols. 2. a badge that suggests the name of the person to whom it belongs. Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged. Since its creation in 1955, Robert Rauschenberg's Rebus has been one of the most intriguing works in the artist's oeuvre. This monumental 'combine' painting($6feet{\times}10feet$ 10.5 inches) consists of three panels covered with fabric, paper, newspaper, and printed reproductions. On top of these, oil paints, pencil and crayon drawings connect each section into a whole. The layout of the images is overall horizontal. Starting from a torn election poster, which is partially read as "THAT REPRE," on the far left side of the painting. Rebus leads us to proceed from the left to the right, the typical direction of reading in a Western context. Along with its seemingly proper title. Rebus, the painting has triggered many art historians to seek some semantic readings of it. These art historians painstakingly reconstruct the iconography based on the artist's interviews, (auto)biography, and artistic context of his works. The interpretation of Rebus varies from a 'image-by-image' collation with a word to a more general commentary on Rauschenberg's work overall, such as a work that "bridges between art and life." Despite the title's allusion to the legitimate purpose of the painting as a decoding of the imagery into sound, Rebus, I argue, actually hinders a reading of it. By reading through Peirce to Rauschenberg, I will delve into the subtle anxiety between words and images in their works. And on this basis, I suggest Rauschenberg's strategy in playing Rebus is to hide the meaning of the imagery rather than to disclose it.