Ambiguous humanity. Some reflections between hope and future starting from Greta Thunberg
Ideas
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.
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.
Conversation about Gianna Maria Gatti’s The Technological Herbarium
Conversation between Alan N. Shapiro and Franco Torriani about Gianna Maria Gatti’s The Technological Herbarium
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.
Un gesto per Gesti Vocali
C’è una specie di strano e affascinante paradosso che attraversa le forme espressive del contemporaneo. Laddove la dimensione tecnologica e mediale caratterizza in maniera potente immaginari, estetiche ed esperienze di fruizione lo spettacolo dal vivo sembra recuperare in qualche caso una parte importante del terreno perduto nel confronto con le produzioni dei media mainstream.
Around Simulation
So, what is simulation? How does it work? Does it only stick to human representations or visualizations or does it refer to a more general realm? What are the layers (technological, social, imaginative, conventional) that construct simulation? Which conflicts and power relations (in material or technological and sociocultural terms) are involved in their construction? And how do we make sense of them? Can these mechanisms be modified, enhanced, re-elaborated through artistic practice?
Simulation as a Global Resource
The idea of “simulation” is a very intriguing, multifaceted and complex issue. Words like “verisimilitude”, “emulation”, “imitation”, “copy”, “reproduction”, “clone”, “replica”… are commonly used.
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...