Helen Pynor Exhibition

93% Human is an exhibition exploring the multispecies nature of being ‘human’ and the ‘promiscuous’ exchanges of DNA with others. Through an investigation of DNA exhaling in our breath and inhale from others, the work highlights the intimacy of unnoticed exchanges with human and non-human others, and ‘contamination’ as a necessary condition of being.

A performance video depicts artist Helen Pynor and bioinformatician Jimmy Breen collecting a shared breath sample. DNA extracted from this breath was found to comprise 93% human DNA, with the remaining 7% belonging to around 6,700 microbial species. Based on a sound score by composer Amanda Cole, classically trained singers sing and whisper the Latin names of hundreds of these species, brought into the gallery as an 8-channel sound work.