Climate Leviathan
Ideas
McLuhan’s “Understanding Media” is 50
In 1964 the Canadian scholar Marshall McLuhan published his seminal book "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man", that gave a new sap to the media studies introducing new perspectives. He suggested that “the medium is the message”, namely that the media affect the society in which they play a role.
In the Name of the Pattern
[...] Nevertheless we can find an explicit use of “pattern” as a technical word in a variety of disciplines ranging from science or art to craftsmanship, such as tailoring, software design, architecture, finance, trading, knitting, interface design, decoration, data mining, machine learning, medical diagnosis and many more.
Subtle Technologies 2014. Open Culture in Art and Science – A reportage
It is that time of the year: Subtle Technologies Festival is back for a week-long ride to explore Open Culture in Art and Science. The theme this year is particularly timely: DIY-bio labs, hacker spaces and hacklabs, maker spaces etc… are popping up everywhere, new forms of sharing ranging from tools, to skills, to networks of solidarity to eliminate debt, to avoid eviction, or just to share a meal together are no longer rare.
After the afterglow (Transmediale14). For an undisciplined research
[ITA] Quest’anno i riflettori di transmediale14 sono stati puntati sui dispositivi di sorveglianza: privacy, Big Data e ubiquitous computing. [ENG] This year the spotlights of transmediale14 were focused on monitoring devices: privacy, ubiquitos computing and big data.
Thesis on the Interface-Database Dichotomy
The present article proposes to think the interface-database dichotomy regarding new media cultural objects in terms of the relationship between story 1 and story 2. With this aim, two different but possibly complementary approaches to this relationship will be considered. Therefore, the proposed reading of the interface-database relationship could be synthesized as follows. [...] Story 1) Interface (narrative)-synchronic-syntagm in relation to Story 2) Database-diachronic-paradigm.
Tapzy: a post-(human)Iconkiller?
[ITA] Presentato al pubblico ad ottobre 2012 con una mostra evento, Tapzy è un progetto di arte ibrida, che vive ormai da un anno grazie all’interazione del suo protagonista – un uomo elefante dal look clownesco – in contesti diversi contemporaneamente, on line ed off line. [ENG] Unveiled to the public in October 2012 with an event exhibition, Tapzy is a project of hybrid art, who lives through the interaction of its protagonist – an elephant-man with a clownish look- in different contexts at t...
Art and Science as the Conjectured Possible
[...] In this manner, by demonstrating the logic in the creation of new technological forms and new identities, art articulates the primary task of the individual living in the age of new technologies: the construction of a living future (that is, a future that endows us with freedom), and not a dead, mechanized future that is being built without our participation.
Apple returns to the symbolic
One thing that is central to think is how technologies, and more specifically interfaces, shape our modes of perception and interaction, and thus our everyday reality, through their "narrative" and ways of representation. It is a vast topic, so this short article will focus on Apple' s GUI (Graphic User Interface) evolution to parallel it with the evolution of the representation of space in Western art, and, hopefully, draw some conclusions, and even more desirable, open some questions.
Homo nudus atque apertus: the maps of Doris Graf
[ITA] Homo nudus atque apertus è un progetto di Doris Graf che unisce l'interesse per il linguaggio dei pittogrammi e quello per la trasformazione dell’identità in rete, a causa dei social network e della potenziale limitazione della libertà personale.
[ENG] Homo nudus atque apertus is a project by Doris Graf that combines the language of the pictograms and the identity transformation in the web, because of the social networks and of the potential restriction of personal freedom.
Total recall: The (re-) evolution of memory?
[ITA] Ars Electronica Festival in questa edizione del 2013 si apre al passato, almeno, in un certo senso. Al centro dell’attenzione di artisti, pensatori, esperti, critici d’arte, infatti, il concetto di memoria, in tutte le sue declinazioni.
[ENG] Ars Electronica Festival in this 2013 edition is, in a certain sense, opened to the past. Artists, thinkers, experts, art critics, so as all the visitors were, indeed, invited to focus their attention on the concept of ‘memory’, in all its declinatio...
The Big Picture – New Concepts for a New World
[ITA] Alcuni dicono che la crisi che stiamo vivendo può essere vista come qualcosa di positivo, come un'opportunità per cambiare in meglio il mondo in cui viviamo, per produrre qualcosa di nuovo.
[ENG] Some say that the crisis we are going through can be seen as something positive, as an opportunity to change the world we are living in for the better, to produce something new.
Aesthetics of transition. New metric of the body
The arts, science and technology are experiencing a period of profound change. Explosive challenges to the institutions and practices of engineering, art making, and scientific research raise urgent questions of ethics, craft, and care for the planet and its inhabitants. Unforeseen forms of beauty and understanding are possible, but so are too unexpected risks and threats.
Political Philosophy of the Information Society
I want to thank the organizers of the International Conference on the Information Society (i-Society 2012) here in London for inviting me to be a keynote speaker. My favorite British writer is George Orwell, and one of the questions that I will ask in my lecture is: if he were alive today, what would George Orwell think of the Information Society?
Intervista a Gwenn-Aël Lynn / Interview to Gwenn-Aël Lynn
[ITA] Gwenn-Aël Lynn è un artista franco-americano la cui ricerca fa uso di linguaggi e strumenti non tradizionali e si sviluppa intorno a tematiche trans-culturali.
[ENG] Gwenn Aël-Lynn is a french-american artist whose research uses non-traditional languages and tools and also focuses on transcultural themes.
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.
Video-Interview with Vincenzo Fano
[ITA - English below] Breve bio.
Vincenzo Fano è nato nel 1960, figlio di un fisico teorico e nipote di un filosofo. Ha dedicato la sua vita allo studio e all'insegnamento della filosofia. Laureato in filosofia della fisica nel 1984, ha poi frequentato un dottorato in filosofia della psicologia scrivendo una tesi su Franz Brentano. Ha insegnato per 10 anni nelle scuole e da 10 anni è docente presso l'università di Urbino. È convinto che vivere studiando e riflettendo sia un modo ottimo ...
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.
ECCS’11 a Vienna
Notizie e riflessioni sulle linee emergenti dagli studi internazionali su complessità e reti.
Il resoconto di Valerio Eletti sulla European Conference on Complex Systems (ECCS’11) che si è tenuta dal 12 al 16 settembre 2011, che da quasi un decennio, ogni anno, riunisce studiosi dei sistemi complessi che vengono da università e centri di ricerca da tutto il mondo.
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...
Noema Archive 2000-2011
[ITA] Noema è online dal marzo 2000 e questa è la 4° release, ma il "vecchio" sito rimane online, diventando un enorme archivio di contenuti (2000-2011), grafica, idee, tecniche, visioni, modi di fare comunicazione online.
[ENG] Noema has been online since March 2000 and this is the 4th release, but the old website remains online as a huge archive of contents (2000-2011), graphics, ideas, techniques, visions, ways of making online communication.
Interview à propos de “sk-interfaces”
After having curated the seminal Art Biotech exhibition in France, in 2003, which has almost become the very manifesto of Biotech Art, five years later, the curator and media theorician Jens Hauser has proposed sk-interfaces, another impressive and cutting-edge exhibition "exploding borders in art, technology and society". First staged in Liverpool, this exhibition has been further enlarged to be shown in the City of Luxembourg (2009-2010).
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.
Arte e interattività
Nel campo della comunicazione umana l’eccezione non è l’interattività ma la non interattività: la comunicazione interattiva esiste fin da quando esiste la nostra specie, quella non interattiva è molto più recente, risale alla realizzazione delle prime immagini, forse 40 mila anni fa, quando abbiamo iniziato a porre al di fuori del corpo una parte della conoscenza.