Ideas

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.

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" 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.

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 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.

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...

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.

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'.

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 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.

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?

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.