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

Read Article

I Love Bologna, Italy

January 16th, 2011 in Category: Photography

Most tourists - for example, American tourists - go to Venice and Florence. Between those two fascinating cities lies the undiscovered gem which few tourists visit: Bologna.
Read Article

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.
Read Article

From The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Nerve Garden by Bruce Damer (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

October 4th, 2010 in Category: Real/Virtual Reality, The Illusion Beyond Art, The Technological Herbarium

Nerve Garden is a three-dimensional virtual world accessible on the Internet, a "Public Terrarium in Cyberspace," according to the definition of its authors, where the users of the Net can sow and witness the growth of virtual plants.
Read Article

Beginner’s Luck (a Casino Gambling story)

August 31st, 2010 in Category: Casino Gambling, Creative Writing, Photography

There was a famous and elegant casino at the Venice Lido called the Casinò Municipale di Venezia. My friends knew about the casino but had never been inside. To my surprise, Tony expressed his belief that I was destined to win a lot of money at blackjack. He announced that he intended to "stake me" money to play.
Read Article

Social Choreography: Steve Valk and the Situationists, by Alan N. Shapiro

August 4th, 2010 in Category: Guy Debord, Social Choreography, The Illusion Beyond Art

"We have to change the world. That's what we think. Change society. Change life. Do it for freedom. Get us out of this prison. We know one thing: this change is possible. All that remains is to figure out how to do it." With these words written in 1957, Guy Debord founded the Situationist International.
Read Article

Martin Heidegger’s Prophecy: Art and Technology, by Alan N. Shapiro

June 18th, 2010 in Category: Martin Heidegger, The Illusion Beyond Art

In lectures of the late 1930s - "The Age of the World Picture" and "The Origin of the Work of Art" - Heidegger delineated the "essence of modernity", pointing the way to an original exit from modernity onto a "generalized reflection on everything" for which modernity paved the way and which was its secret destiny.
Read Article

Framemakers: Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change, edited by Jeffrey Gormly

May 25th, 2010 in Category: Book Descriptions, Dance Theory, Social Choreography, The Illusion Beyond Art

A collection of essays from a diverse group of thinkers - leaders in their fields - exploring the notion of choreography as the aesthetics of change. Established practitioners re-imagine their own fields (theology, social dreaming and organizational change, ethics, community building) as choreographic endeavours.
Read Article

Only Impossible Exchange Is Possible, by Aurel Schmidt (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

April 15th, 2010 in Category: Jean Baudrillard, Zen Buddhism

Impossible exchange is an impossible subject. In Jean Baudrillard's book "Impossible Exchange", the matter is treated in such a way that one is better off with an associative and meditative interpretive approach than with a discursive reading.
Read Article

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.
Read Article

From The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Osmose by Char Davies (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

April 15th, 2010 in Category: Real/Virtual Reality, The Illusion Beyond Art, The Technological Herbarium

To enter inside a tree and exit it through the leaves after having participated in its process of chlorophyllous photosynthesis: this is one of the many journeys that Char Davies makes the user of "Osmose" experience in an immersive, interactive, and multisensorial VR environment that was developed and produced in 1995.
Read Article

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.
Read Article

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."
Read Article

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.
Read Article

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.
Read Article

Gregory Bateson and Cybernetics, by Alan N. Shapiro

April 14th, 2010 in Category: Gregory Bateson, Social Choreography

Patterns are everywhere, anywhere, and nowhere. Patterns are in between, ephemeral yet real. They exist in parallel to what we commonly call reality. We can only perceive them if we are precisely tuned in to their wavelength.
Newer Entries