Joe Davis is a research affiliate in the Department of Biology, the Alexander Rich Laboratory at MIT. As an artist he has done extensive research in molecular biology and bioinformatics for the production of genetic databases and new biological art forms. His teaching experience in the MIT graduate architecture program (Master of Science in Visual Studies) and in undergraduate painting and mixed media at the Rhode Island School of Design has informed his artistic practice. He has exhibited in the United States, Canada, and Europe at Ars Electronica. He is the first artist to use DNA as an artistic medium in 1986 with the beginnings of the Microvenus project. Other of his projects include: Audio Microscope; Riddle of Life project; experiments with Andrew Zaretsky how Escherichia coli respond to sound; in the project Milky Way DNA Davis wants to put an image of the Milky Way galaxy into the cells of a mouse; recorded the vaginal contractions of women, and translated them into text, music, phonetic speech and ultimately into radio signals, which were beamed from MIT's Millstone radar to Epsilon Eridani, Tau Ceti, and two other nearby star systems.