Reverse Biology
Essay
What is the Meaning of Life?
There were about 150 people in the audience. I spoke for almost two hours, mostly extemporaneously. Afterwards, there was a long question-and-answer session. There were some truly brilliant questions. I was especially impressed by one young man, who wondered if my critique of “binary oppositions” did not run the risk of itself instituting a binary opposition between my critique and the dualisms that I criticize. I said that he was right.
Sticky: Perturbazioni volontarie
E’ universalmente riconosciuto il forte legame tra la Matematica, mezzo per la scoperta e la descrizione della realtà e l'Arte che questa stessa realtà vuole raffigurare. L'Arte classica obbedisce a regole su misure e proporzioni, gli artisti (in senso lato: pittori, scultori, architetti) utilizzano il rettangolo aureo, fanno ricorso alla sezione aurea, alla teoria delle proporzioni che era alla base della Geometria e della Scienza Greca.
The Internet of Things from the user’s perspective
We were asked to consider the Internet of Things (IoT) from the user’s viewpoint. Well, my viewpoint is exactly this, since I’m neither a company director nor a software coder or a hardware creator. From an user’s viewpoint I think we are undergoing a big transformation.
Cosmo e Caos
L'oggetto delle matematiche - ordine immanente nella Natura - si discopre alla mente attraverso un processo d'astrazione; appunto per ciò le matematiche non sono soltanto scienza, rappresentazione di quell'oggetto, sì anche arte, cioè espressione del soggetto che le costruisce, secondo le sue intime leggi.
Simulation beyond perspective
Holography suggests a new visual universe within a culture where the visual simulation is the most effective communication system; and it let us reflect about the need for a more comprehensive definition of “image”. We can believe that future images will also be holographic and that we shall communicate more and more through them, in a delicate balance between presence and absence, immediacy and remoteness, present and past, materiality and immateriality, matter and energy.
The Impossible Clone
More than a pure form of simulation the will to clone is a perfect union of technology and discrimination – the desire to end otherness and to multiply the same. Cloning is the science of advanced prejudice which digitalized genetics makes possible. The age old biological roles of Father and Mother are here reduced to coding. When the clone does not turn out as we had hoped, and surely none will, we can blame the matrix. Some fancy that the clone is a twin but it is really merely a genetic doubl...
Il Design e la Matematica al Tempo dell’Informazione
La matematica, intesa come attività cognitiva umana e non luogo ideale di perfezioni logiche astratte calate da qualche iperuranio platonico, permette di muoversi tra il certo e l’incerto alla ricerca del possibile e del plausibile. Nella sua natura più profonda, essa rispecchia l’attitudine umana alla ricerca di configurazioni,di pattern ricorrenti, di analogie in sistemi anche assai diversi tra loro, tutte cose da cui dipende il nostro retaggio evolutivo.
Stories of competition and collaboration
Collaboration is difficult. Usman Haque used the Prisoners Dilemma to show that voting selfishly always gives you more gain. It is only when you can start to consider making points or making meaning for the group as a whole that you can actually see to your small sacrifice in collaborating creates benefit for the group as a whole and consequently for you. But this takes trust in the people in your immediate neighbourhood.
The sensible reality between obviousness and uncertainty
This paper was originally presented at the International Conference “Consciousness Reframed XI – Making Reality Really Real”, Trondheim, November 4 – 6, 2010. It was published in the volume R. Ascott, E. Gangvik, M. Jahrmann (eds.), Making Reality Really Real - Consciousness Reframed XI, Trondheim, TEKS Publishing, 2010
Jean Baudrillard on Simulation and Illusion
In his article for Noema (Volume 57, 2010) Pier Luigi Capucci draws attention to many of the complexities of simulation. He points to the very intimate nature of simulation for humans because even our oral and written languages are simulations with which we attempt to give the world meaning.
Towards a Unified Existential Science of Humans and Androids
Presented with the reality, which is at the same time still half-fictional, of bringing robots or androids into our social world, I believe that we are being offered the precious gift of an opportunity for humanity to grow and develop, to untangle the complex knots binding us to our current stagnation, to take real control of our destiny and improve our lives.
When information and biology converge in the visualization of viruses
Technically speaking, computer and biological viruses are affiliated to two unbridgeable and well-separated spheres, one prevalently pertaining to the domain of information and the other to the one of carbon-based life. Their material formation contributes to such divergence: while computer viruses are normally fabricated by and partially depending on human agency, biological viruses are mostly understood as naturally occurring.
The Epistemological Turn: Technology, Bricolage and Design
The rapid development of technology – especially of information and communication technology – and the recognition of the essential complexity of most systems and phenomena are producing a series of crucial consequences, both theoretical and practical, among which the renunciation of the dream of perfect rationality and perfect control.
Rethinking Art as Intimate Science: Climate Art as a Hard Humanity
Re-reading the “Origin of the Species” by Darwin, on its 150th anniversary, one is struck by the lucidity and humility of the argumentation as well as the transformative power of its conclusions. Yet the scientific theory of evolution is still not widely understood or accepted by most people. The climate on our planet has never been stable, and climate variations have been one of the drivers of the evolution of the species on our planet.
Bio Art
Bio art is a new direction in contemporary art that manipulates the processes of life. Invariably, bio art employs one or more of the following approaches: 1) The coaching of biomaterials into specific inert shapes or behaviors; 2) the unusual or subversive use of biotech tools and processes; 3) the invention or transformation of living organisms with or without social or environmental integration.
Political Ecology And Our Rendezvous With Death
Consider the story of the soldier who meets Death at a crossing of the marketplace, and he believes he saw him make a menacing gesture in his direction. He rushes to the king’s palace and asks the king for his best horse in order that he might flee during the night far from Death, as far as Samarkand. Upon which the king summons Death to the palace and reproaches him for having frightened one of his best servants. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten him. It was just that I was surprised to see this soldi...
The car of the future
The "Car of the Future" is a Transformer (movie toys and action figures; device that transfers electrical energy between circuits) that changes its shape. This could be done with mechanical, electronic, and electromechanical technologies. Smaller modular units of the car, perhaps pods belonging to individuals, will combine together to form social vehicles.
From life to life. The multiplicity of the living
Symbolic intelligence was originated from the organic dimension, its roots are organic. Its advent generated the outburst of tools, prostheses, artifacts, and deeply changed our human interaction with the environment, generating the anthropic world we know.
From The Technological Herbarium (3)
The role of Sommerer and Mignonneau, beyond the indispensable originating phase, is concentrated on the setting up of the system, which means defining and planning the organization and the basic processes of the particular habitat: a communicative and interactive space that, once thriving, lives autonomously from its creators, self-managing the relationships with the outside and those continuous exchanges which determine the production and reproduction of the creatures living in them.
The Double Division of the Living
The relationship between art and organic matter is an ancient one. The whole of the history of art has been influenced by the living, by “that which lives”. That which lives – animals, plants, other human beings... – for millennia has represented the inspiration and model for artists, the signifying universe in which they existed, which they sought to exorcise, communicate, depict, cali into question.
La doppia articolazione del vivente
Il rapporto tra arte e materia organica è un rapporto antico. Tutta la storia dell’arte è stata influenzata dal vivente, da “ciò che vive”. Ciò che vive – animali, piante, altri esseri umani… – per millenni ha rappresentato l’ispirazione e il modello degli artisti, l’universo significante nel quale esistevano, che cercavano di esorcizzare, di comunicare, di rappresentare, di problematizzare. Tutta la storia dell’arte si è misurata con la natura, ma un cambiamento importante è avvenuto con le te...
From The Technological Herbarium (2)
Integrating three-dimensional images realized in computer graphics with localized stereophonic sounds, Davies constructs twelve worlds in which it is possible to immerse oneself and move around wearing a Head-Mounted Display that allows a stereoscopic vision, and bands that encircle the chest.
From The Technological Herbarium (1)
On the indispensable interaction between user and garden is founded the second of the objectives pursued by the Telegarden team: that of making users realize that they are not alone in taking care of the living installation. In Telegarden, as the authors make clear, the people become aware of the electronic presence of the others while engaging in the shared goal of taking care of the plants, interrupting their 'skipping' around from one site to the next, stopping to 'smell the roses'.
Biopoetry
Since the 1980s poetry has effectively moved away from the printed page. From the early days of the minitel to the personal computer as a writing and reading environment, we have witnessed the development of new poetic languages. Video, holography, programming and the web have further expanded the possibilities and the reach of this new poetry. Now, in a world of clones, chimeras, and transgenic creatures, it is time to consider new directions for poetry in vivo. Below I propose the use of biote...
Gianna Maria Gatti’s The Technological Herbarium
Gianna Maria Gatti's book The Technological Herbarium (subtitled: "Vegetable Nature and New Technologies in Art Between the Second and Third Millennia") is a study of 'interdisciplinary' works of art that exemplify the increasing importance of science and technology in artistic creation. Her analysis, however, goes beyond that of a journalistic or curatorial survey of artworks.
Terza Vita
E' ipotizzabile una terza vita, oltre a quella definita seconda, che trascenda i mondi virtuali? Più processi in corso che, nella loro complessità, implicano modifiche graduali del vivente - e di quanto a esso si ispira - non rendono l'ipotesi del tutto irrealistica. Passerà per l'infinitamente piccolo questa evoluzione verso una ulteriore vita, verosimilmente più sofisticata delle precedenti?
NeMe: Hot to Bot
The idea that non-living matter could be used to invoke, influence, and emulate living beings is probably as old as human life itself. Over thousands of years this concept has become deeply ingrained in the human imagination as a locus of desires and fears about the future; and about the role of art and technology in forming it.