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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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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From The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Telegarden by Ken Goldberg (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

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

Telegarden is a telerobotic installation that enables users of the World Wide Web to see and cultivate a real garden. Conceived in 1994, it was activated in June 1995 at the University of Southern California and presented at the leading international exhibitions of digital art and technology.
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Nature: A Fragment, by Johann Wolfgang Goethe

April 15th, 2010 in Category: German Literature, The Technological Herbarium

Rereading the reflections in which, at the end of the 17th century, Goethe voices his hymn to Nature, one acquires the sense of just how advanced is contemporary man in adding those 'secrets', in gaining access to that 'forge', in procuring those 'powers' which Goethe credits exclusively to the great artist Nature.
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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."
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