Research
The Living Archive research, written three ways.
Living Archive is a bioart research project that encodes cultural archive materials — beginning with documents from the Al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, NYU Abu Dhabi — into the genome of living zebrafish (Danio rerio). Digital data is translated to DNA sequences, screened for biological safety, protected with a surface-code error-correction scheme adapted from quantum computing, and delivered into the germline via Tol2 transposition. The resulting archive is not stored but kept alive: it swims, reproduces, inherits, mutates — and eventually dies. The project treats this mortality not as failure but as an archival condition: a living archive degrades meaningfully, in time, unlike a hard drive that fails suddenly and without warning.
The work was developed during an artist residency at the Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, NYU Abu Dhabi (2024–25), in collaboration with the Sadler Lab. Wet-lab documentation is collected on the Lab Documentation page.
Keywords: DNA data storage · bioart · zebrafish · Tol2 transposon · quantum error correction · living archive · cultural memory · FPIC
Cite as: Tan, H. & Koessler, C. (2026). Living Archive: Encoding Cultural Memory into the Zebrafish Germline. Artist-in-Residence program, Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, NYU Abu Dhabi. living-archive-web.vercel.app
The same research written in three voices — technical, interdisciplinary, and bioart. Draft manuscripts, shared in full.
Focus: Method & results: encoding pipeline, error correction, germline transfer
Length: ~5,000 words · Audience: Synthetic biologists, bioengineers
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