Neon Bunny/Blue Cat: You Decide

‘Alba’ is a transgenic albino rabbit: She contains a jellyfish gene that makes her glow green when illuminated with the correct light. Alba was created by French scientists who injected green fluorescent protein (GFP) of a Pacific Northwest jellyfish into the fertilized egg of an albino rabbit.

What is art? is perhaps a question that has been asked enough times to seem pretty trite. I think a better question for our day and age is what is the line between art and science? As science gets wackier and more impressive, various robotic things and genetic twists and outer space images are more stunning, innovative, and thought-provoking than a lot of "art."
The ability to manipulate technology has rapidly become more important to visual artists, musicians, photographers, filmmakers than a lot of the classic tools involved with these trades. Artists on the cutting edge are pairing up with scientists and making other's scientific know-how and work into their own art.
This brings me to the rabbit above. The living rabbit, named Alba, was a piece by Eduardo Kac called Transgenic bunny. Wikipedia has this to say on it:

Kac considers himself a "transgenic artist," using biotechnology and genetics to create provocative works that concommitantly revel in scientific techniques and critique them. In what is probably his most famous work, GFP Bunny, Kac collaborated with a French laboratory to procure a green-fluorescent rabbit; a rabbit implanted with a GFP (Green Flourescent Protein) gene from a type of jellyfish. Under certain blue light, the rabbit fluoresces green. Kac's wife and daughter helped name the rabbit, Alba. After a brief stint as an installation work, wherein Kac and Alba would live in a pseudo-domicile in a gallery, Alba was to return home to Evanston to live with Kac's family. At the last minute, before the scheduled release of Alba to Kac, the lab retracted their agreement.

Alba ostensibly died prematurely in the lab, of unknown causes. The death raised some interesting questions, including that of Alba's age (in relation to the premature nature of the death), causing some to question whether Kac was actively involved in the creation of the GFP Bunny, or whether he merely "purchased" a specimen already planned and/or living at the lab. GFP plants, fish, and mammals have, in fact, been long-term residents of science laboratories. The GFP gene is typically used as a type of marker, that, when attached to a separate genetic modification or gene, illustrates where that symbiotic gene manifests in the organism. Notably, since Alba's conception, GFP zebrafish have hit the commercial market under the trademarked name, GloFish(tm).

Kac, in response to the lab's retraction of Alba's liberty, flies a flag outside of his home, sporting a silhouette of a green rabbit. Apparently, this is the transgenic artist's version of keeping the porch light burning, so to speak.

My junior year of high school my friend Jaime and I were bored one day after school and we dyed a blue streak- like a skunk's- down the back of my aged cat, Mousey. She did not like it too much, but we thought it was pretty funny... lucky for Mousey, though, she did not have to live out her days in a lab after this experiment. If she had though, you can bet I would still be flying her flag high!