Transmute

The starting point of the work is the idea of the alchemical homunculus, as discussed by the author of On The Nature of Things, 1537, which has been controversially attributed to Paracelsus. The idea of a humanoid was preceded in legend by the making of an artificial man by Albertus Magnus in the twelfth century, an automaton who could answer questions, and by Roger Bacon's talking brass head in the thirteenth century. Alchemical manuscripts from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries show humans within glass vessels as symbolic of alchemical processes. The Paracelsian homunculus was generated from the sperm of the alchemist. In Transmute, the humanoid appearing in a glass vessel is female. The 'Other' of the world of the medieval and early modern alchemist is transmuted into the 'Other' of the twenty-first century cloned human who can be of either sex, but whose production remains connected with the generation of material wealth. As for many people in the contemporary world, such creations were regarded in the Middle Ages as transgressive and as a testament to the hubris of their creators.