Just stumbled across the GenPets.com website, and boy was I wierded out for a few.  A bit too extreme to be real, it was a very well-done and elaborate hoax it seemed, with several pages including a 20 page PDF Catalog.

With a little investigation, I found it’s the work of Canada based Adam Brandejs.  It was an art project consisting of several small robotic animals in “blister-pack” plastic packages.  They contained small LED’s to blink like heart monitors, and the robotics let their checks rise and fall as if they were all asleep in their packaging.  Placed in a toy-store display window, the reaction was impressive.

Imagine walking into a department store or any big box store, and while browsing an aisle you find a display where packages hang; which, at first glance, seem to contain large action figures. Upon closer inspection, you realize they are actually bizarre, altered, bipedal mammals sealed in a plastic bubble where they uneasily rest in some kind of induced hibernation.
A series of glowing and beeping heart monitors on the packages gives a hint that they are alive. The rising and falling of their chests as well as their occasional twitching, shaking and clawing, albeit limited by the tie-wraps, which keep them in place, confirms the life of these creatures. They are there, ready to take home and add to your life as the next entertainment gadget; bioengineered creatures, mass-produced, and pre-packaged for your convenience.
(snip)
Genpets seems to create a reaction wherever they go. While in the store window of Iodine Toronto, the shop owner began sleeping in the store as many nights, people would bang at the windows furiously. Some in protest of the small Bio-genetically engineered creatures trapped in plastic, some wanting to wake them up or buy them. Hordes of teens wanting a bioengineered pet met confused, baffled, or even shocked looks from parents.

Now that’s impressive.  I can only imagine the kind of response that would raise down here in the Deep South.
[tag:genetics][tag:hoax][tag:art][tag:genpets]

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