A tribute to Noema 20th Anniversary
Essay
Ambiguous humanity. Some reflections between hope and future starting from Greta Thunberg
Lots of words have been said and written about Greta Thunberg. Her parable is an interesting case study in the communication and media realms, but it also provides an opportunity to reflect on human responsibilities, on the present and the future of our species. It deserves some further considerations.
L’umanità controversa. Riflessioni tra speranza e futuro a partire da Greta Thunberg
[ITA] Si è detto e scritto molto sul conto di Greta Thunberg, quello che ha fatto è stato esaltato, analizzato, criticato, fino a diventare oggetto di insulti e minacce. La sua parabola costituisce un oggetto di studio interessante dal punto di vista della comunicazione e dei media, ma fornisce anche l’occasione per soffermarsi sulle responsabilità umane, sul presente e sul futuro della nostra specie.
[ENG] It has been said and written a lot about Greta Thunberg, what she did was exalted, analyz...
Arte e comunicazione della scienza
[ITA] Esistono delle dinamiche o delle pratiche del mondo dell’arte che possono risultare interessanti per la comunicazione della scienza?
[ENG] Are there practices in art that can be interesting in science communication?
Oocyte Aesthetic, Human Design and Mission Creep
The admixture of global interspecies variety through genetic engineering and the cloning of spectacular hereditary cascades should only be approved through an aesthetic advisory commission made up of artists, art historians and off-the-locus aesthetics specialists. The future of style and the avoidance of our populous birthing any aesthetic hazards are dependent on collaboration between new reproductive biotechnology and the Arts.
Post-polyploidy subgenome evolution of glitch art
Can artistic innovation be inspired and guided on knowledge taken from the field of plant genome evolution? The author explored this question by subjecting a glitch artwork to processes analogous to those shaping the evolution of the maize genome; that are whole genome duplication (WGD), subgenome bias fractionation and genome dominance, respectively.
A Framework for the Integration of Art & Science
The ideas the author expresses here intend to codify the types of creative expression that may lead to the integration of art with science in the near future. The time has come for the emergence of a new science in which creative expressiveness is part of the research agenda and this essay aims at inoculating scientists with the spirit of art, and artists with the spirit of science.
The Bioart of Neurons and Memory
Demonstrating the preservation of cells after a living organism is pronounced dead and revived is not a traditional bioart topic. But it is an important one. It is a crucial step for advances in the use of lowered temperatures for sustaining the efficacy of organs and organisms during medical procedures, and especially of preserving neurons for the science cryonics. My recent bioart research is a breakthrough that will help to build momentum toward more advanced studies on information storage w...
Il corpo immerso
[ITA] Il testo seguente costituisce l’introduzione del volume di Anaïs Bernard, Bernard Andrieu, Manifesto Emersivo. Nascita delle Arti Immersive, Ravenna, Noema Media & Publishing, 2018, disponibile a questo link.
[ENG] The following text is the introduction of the volume of Anaïs Bernard, Bernard Andrieu, Manifesto Emersivo. Nascita delle Arti Immersive (Emersive Manifesto. Birth of the Immersive Arts), Ravenna, Noema Media & Publishing, 2018, available at this link.
Baudrillard and the Situationists
I will say something about the similarities and differences between the Situationist critical social theory of advanced or hyper-capitalism and consumerist media culture, and Jean Baudrillard’s theory of image, media and consumer culture. And about the implications for how resistance and change and transformation can come about starting from his theory of objects.
What3words e locative media: una possibile traccia artistica
[ITA] L’intuizione principale dietro what3words sta nell’aver tradotto le incomunicabili quindici cifre di latitudine e longitudine in un linguaggio perfettamente umano e memorizzabile.
[ENG] The what3words commercial geocoding system, founded in 2013, allows to locate geographical positions through the algorithmic assignation of a combination of three words, a textual tag that replaces the uncomfortably numerical lat-long coordinates.
Towards a Semi-Living Avatar. Investigating the Interface Body-Smart Machines in Stelarc’s Work
Crossing the boundaries from Cyberpunk Fiction to Reality, Stelarc’s work moves gradually towards the realization of a vision: To investigate the interface between the actual and the virtual world, with the body acting seamlessly in mixed realities, and with an intelligent avatar that performs in the real world, with optical density and tactile experience. This idea, seems to permeate his experimentations with engineering, robotic and digital technology, and with artificial intelligence and biot...
Evolutionary creativity. The inner life and meaning of art
Generative art is a key example of a general transformation carried on by many disciplines, which are going to populate our world with increasingly different subjects. [...] In mirroring nature and life, also the generative art forms and processes are leading to the advent of a “Third Life”, the life that little by little humanity is giving to its artefacts.
La scrittura, il cervello e l’era digitale / Writing, Brain and Digital Age
[ITA] Secondo Picchione, la penetrazione a livello neuronale da parte delle nuove tecnologie hanno colonizzato anche l’immaginario, modificando anche la psicologia umana e persino i desideri.
[ENG] According to Picchione the neuronal penetration by new technologies has also settled the imaginary and is affecting human psychology and even desires and the University.
Polyphibionics: from cyborganic amphibians to polyphibians
Returning to the origins of cyborg, conceived in order to automatize the homeostasis of human species of Earthlings, augmenting the human organism to conquer the knowledge of outer space, outside the safety zone of planet Earth, this paper re-examines the relation between the outward and inward directed explorations by considering how the journeys beyond the offerings of our atmosphere enable expansion of our noosphere.
Il corpo e la soglia. Considerazioni sul film Avatar
[ITA] Di Avatar m'interessa considerare gli aspetti relativi al corpo. Se una lezione abbiamo appreso dal parziale fallimento dell'impresa dell'Intelligenza Artificiale forte – che si propone di replicare l'intelligenza umana mediante programmi per calcolatore – è che la nostra intelligenza non può prescindere dalla presenza del corpo, nel quale è radicata: un corpo che è a sua volta immerso in, e in costante interazione con, l'ambiente.
[ENG] In the movie Avatar I'm interested in considering t...
Language and Computational Creativity
We contemplate how to abstract these processes such that in time a machinic system may define its own sense of creativity through enculturation, and later though its own sense of abstraction, expanded conversation, and human/machine socialization. In fact the autonomous machine may develop completely new aesthetic forms that humans have never considered.
L’Ambiente Dentro. Una riflessione epistemologica sul confine / Environment Inside. An Epistemological Reflection on the Border
[ITA] Le nuove suggestioni dalle scienze della complessità erodono un confine ideale e troppo ben definito tra noi e l'ambiente. L'ambiente non è più qualcosa di fisso, "là fuori", ma una produzione delle nostre rappresentazioni individuale e collettive. I nodi epistemologici, ecologici ed economici di questa concezione sono qui identificati.
[ENG] The new suggestions from the sciences of complexity erode an ideal and too well defined boundary between us and the environment. The environment is ...
Dialogismi e biopoetiche / Dialogisms and biopoetics
[ITA] Il libro raccoglie testi che Kac ha pubblicato nel corso di di dodici anni, la cronaca di un viaggio durante il quale ha sviluppato il suo lavoro e ricerche di telepresenza, biotelematica, biorobotica, arte transgenica.
[ENG] The book brings together texts that Kac published over twelve years, a chronicle of a journey as he says, during which he developed his work and researches with telepresence, biotelematics, biorobotics, transgenic art.
Emergence of Creative Machines
Recent years demonstrates a divide between the old humanistic vision that puts the human at the center of all things and the increasing machine autonomy. We witness an effective resistance to the unavoidable cultural change. However, the endeavor to make machines more intelligent, creative and even capable of some consciousness, is determined by need and is now unstoppable.
The Art of Emotional Intelligence
The challenges of the 21st century require new ways of thinking, making it crucial for educators and policy makers to understand the processes of creative thinking and achievement. [...] Emotions are central to all art forms, from painting and sculpture, to music, film, theatre and other arts.
Media fingerprints in the representation
In general sense, representation is a term which implies a distance between a subject and its reproduction. This reproduction must be considered in equal way, in any form of mediated experience. However, our aim is to focus on visual representation and to expose the seams that it wants to hide.
Regulation and Social Media: Speed Bumps or the Code 2.0
“Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather (…)” (Barlow 1996).
Beyond the map: an experiment in affective geographies
In this paper I use a recent research creation project and its mobile component (the TiP lab) to draw attention to the importance of regarding the city as an entanglement of sometimes evident, sometimes hidden naturecultural geographies and more-than-human encounters. I argue that while official narratives are not interested in narrating such vibrant multidimensionality, traditional cartographic practices don’t seem to be able to seize them.
Refounding Legitimacy Toward Aethogenesis
The fusion of human and technology takes us into an unheard world, populated by quasi-living species that would relegate us to the rank of alienated agents, emptied of their identity and consciousness. I argue instead that our world is woven by simple, though invisible, perspectives, which may renew our ability of judgment and our autonomy, I have called Anoptical Perspectives.
Staging Aliveness, Challenging Anthropocentrism: Subverting an Art Historical Paradigm
According to Edward O. Wilson, human beings have an “innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes.” And art writer Jack Burnham even maintained that “art is a form of biological signal”.
A Different Theory of Mediation for Technospaces
Diffractive Technospaces undertakes a redefinition of the relationship between space and representation, beginning from a revision of both according to a performative, non-representational perspective. Here, representation is not refused, but differently articulated in a relation of reciprocity with the same articulation of technospaces.
The Tesseract: between mediated consciousness and embodiment
The tesseract is a gravitational wormhole that represents the physical compression of space that circumvents time in order to move from one location in spacetime to another. The index, as part of the body, but also the mechanism for applying a collapsed signification, requires both utterance (mediation) and event (temporal-frame) in order to create cognitive meaning.