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Imagine someone collecting a strand of your hair from the subway floor. What would that person do with it? Frame you for a crime? Weave it into a wig?

Heather Dewey-Hagborg, who describes herself as an “information artist,” creates lifelike masks of people based on DNA that she extracts from hair, chewing gum or cigarette butts left behind in public places. Using a computer program she created that can decode gender, eye color and various facial traits from her DNA samples, Dewey-Hagborg creates life-size heads using a 3-D printer. This sculpture started with a cigarette butt left on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn in January:

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One immediate question is, how accurate could these masks possibly be? Well, here is a pretty amazing portrait Dewey-Hagborg made of Kurt Andersen, who hosts the radio program “Studio 360,” after getting his DNA anonymously. She also offers a side-by-side comparison of her work on the tech entrepreneur Manu Sporny, who posted his genetic data online.

Another question: “Creepy or cool”? That’s how Collage of Arts and Sciences, a Smithsonian magazine blog, put it in an article about Dewey-Hagborg’s work. Though we live in a time in which we are starting to fear genetic surveillance, her portraits do not disturb me. They are no more invasive than a picture surreptitiously taken of you in the subway, and as works of art they raise thought-provoking questions about the traces of ourselves that we leave behind.

Dewey-Hagborg, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in electronic arts at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., is showing her work this Sunday from 6 to 8 p.m. at the school’s West Hall Art gallery.