Alan N. Shapiro, Technologist and Futurist

Blog and text archive about media theory, science fiction theory, future design, social choreography, Computer Science 2.0, new media art, robots and androids, Star Trek, The Prisoner, Jean Baudrillard, Albert Camus, Michel Foucault, and Marshall McLuhan

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Eduardo Kac: Living Works, by Claudio Cravero

June 3rd, 2011 in Category: Arts & Genomics, The Illusion Beyond Art

The first exhibition in Italy dedicated to the controversial figure of Eduardo Kac (Rio de Janeiro, 1962; he lives in Chicago). His research explores the frontiers between man, animal and robot, culminating in Transgenic Art, through which living beings become a single entity with the technological.
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Of Art, Biotech and the Body in the World, by Claudio Cravero

March 24th, 2011 in Category: Arts & Genomics, Rethinking Science

Research over the last fifty years, including work in biotechnologies and in genetics, now enables us to intervene in the development and growth of life forms. It is a reference point around which artists develop their research, enabling creators to make biotechnologies their artistic medium.
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From The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Interactive Plant Growing and Trans Plant by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

October 4th, 2010 in Category: Arts & Genomics, The Illusion Beyond Art, The Technological Herbarium

Botany forms the basis of Christa Sommerer's training: she dedicated herself to it after her secondary studies, at the Faculty of Biology and Botany of Vienna. Her intention was to investigate nature applying and elaborating methods suitable to the classification of plants. to achieve the formulation of systematic rules.
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The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti

July 29th, 2010 in Category: Androids & Artificial Life, Arts & Genomics, Book Descriptions, Rethinking Science, Science & Technology, The Technological Herbarium

"The Technological Herbarium" is a study of works of art that exemplify the importance of science and technology in artistic creation. It embodies the invention of a strong philosophical concept that enables the glimpsing – in the coming together of nature and new technologies in the domain of art – of a new real.
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From The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Teleporting an Unknown State, by Eduardo Kac (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

June 6th, 2010 in Category: Arts & Genomics, Rethinking Science, The Technological Herbarium

"Teleporting an Unknown State" is defined by Eduardo Kac as a biotelematic interactive installation in which the natural biological process at the basis of the artwork is activated by a telecommunications system managed by the computer.
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Considerations on Transgenic and Biotech Art, by Gianna Maria Gatti (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

April 15th, 2010 in Category: Arts & Genomics, The Illusion Beyond Art, The Technological Herbarium

At the Experimental Art Foundation of Adelaide, Australia, there took place in 2004 the exhibition "Art of the Biotech Era" organized by Melentie Pandilovski. It involved the principal exponents of the artistic sphere connected to biology, genetics and bio-technologies, showing their projects and realizations.
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Adolf Portmann on the New Biology, by Gianna Maria Gatti (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

April 15th, 2010 in Category: Adolf Portmann, Arts & Genomics, The Technological Herbarium

This action, offering light to the plant, enables the latter to externalize its 'interiority'. Suggesting this original meaning is the theory developed in the 1960s by the Swiss biologist Adolf Portmann. Focusing attention on the study of the form of living beings, Portmann elaborates the innovative concept of 'self-presentation'.
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Merleau-Ponty and Marx on Nature and Art, by Gianna Maria Gatti (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

April 15th, 2010 in Category: Arts & Genomics, Karl Marx, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Illusion Beyond Art, The Technological Herbarium

Interrogating Western philosophy, Maurice Merleau-Ponty pinpoints the original meaning of the concept of Nature. "In Greek, the word 'nature' comes from the verb φύω, which alludes to the vegetative; the Latin word comes from nascor, 'to be born', 'to live'; it is drawn from the first, more fundamental meaning."
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The Technological Herbarium: Introduction, by Gianna Maria Gatti (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

April 15th, 2010 in Category: Arts & Genomics, The Illusion Beyond Art, The Technological Herbarium

Infinite are the facets in which the living manifests itself. Infinite are the possibilities in which it expresses its existence. Art seizes these possibilities of existence, interprets them, advances unusual combinations of them, breaks up their consolidated connections.
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Gianna Maria Gatti’s The Technological Herbarium, by Alan N. Shapiro

April 14th, 2010 in Category: Arts & Genomics, The Illusion Beyond Art, The Technological Herbarium

The hybrid of art and technoscience is the carrier of a new worldview, a new era for cyberspace, new cognitive thought and cybernetic epistemology, and the emergence of authentic post-metaphysical thinking as pointed to by 20th century philosophers like Heidegger, Derrida, Merleau-Ponty and Bateson.
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“Jurassic Park” (film): Newman Eaten by a Dilophosaurus, by Alan N. Shapiro

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Arts & Genomics, Media Studies, Science Fiction Studies

Steven Spielberg's stated goal for the film "Jurassic Park" (1993) is to achieve what he calls "total realism." He wants to make cinema coincide with the real. This is a symptomatic fantasy that Jean Baudrillard diagnoses in "The Evil Demon of Images" as "cinema attempting to abolish itself in the absolute of reality."