The flask shapes show the wounded ankles of Oedipus, the result of his parents' attempt to murder him by piercing and binding together his feet and leaving him on a mountaintop to die after the oracle predicted that he would murder his father.
This work links cross-generational drama and mythic fatality to the biotechnological power we have attained for genetically manipulating our own species and others. These ideas refer back to the 1992 work horror autotoxicus, although here the scientific imagery is cold and was at the time somewhat futuristic.
