
Alan N. Shapiro
media theory,
science fiction theory,
future design research



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From The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti: Artworks of Nicola Toffolini (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)
Nicola Toffolini works on the nature-technology marriage by elaborating singular ecosystems enclosed in glass and aluminium cases of marked formal elegance. Inside plants have been placed which, in order to live, depend on sophisticated electronic mechanisms, which visitors operate from the outside interactively.
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Impressionist Paintings by Florence Morrison, Installment 3
My mother was a realist and slightly impressionist painter of natural and nautical scenes who paradoxically studied with the abstract master Mark Rothko.
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Anticipating the Future through Knowledge of the Fiction in Social Reality, by Alan N. Shapiro
I was the keynote speaker at the conference on “Das Wissen der Zukunft” (“Knowledge of the Future”) that took place at the University of Vienna on November 4-5, 2011.
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The Jig She Saw: Reflections on Creating Relational Encounters in Participatory Theatre, by Regan O’Brien
I will be reflecting on the theories and practice of creating and performing The Jig She Saw: Reflections on You, a small scale immersive, interactive performance installation. The project is rooted in Relational Aesthetics as discussed by Erin Manning in Relationscapes, and in social choreography in relation to William Forsythe’s research on the ‘choreographic object’.
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Julian, California: The Museum of Reality
Driving up and down the southern California coast between Los Angeles and the Mexican border, every town looked the same. Most everywhere in America it is like this. “Reality” has been reduced to a cloned instantiation from a formula: replicated instances of the same shopping malls, supermarkets, mega-stores, and chain restaurants everywhere you go.
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On the trail of Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Žižek in the American Desert
OBJECTS IN THIS MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR. We understand Baudrillard to be a unique thinker – perhaps one of the half-dozen greatest thinkers of the twentieth century. America is a milestone work of social commentary about the USA by a French author, in the same tradition as Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.
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General Patton Memorial Museum
General Patton Memorial Museum 62-510 Chiriaco Road, Chiriaco Summit, California 92201 “A Military History Museum With Exhibits from World War I through the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars And our Tank Yard with Armored Vehicles from World War II through Vietnam.”
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Authentic Existence in Heidegger’s “Being and Time”
In his excellent essay on Heidegger’s Being and Time, my nephew James Shapiro argues (among other things) that Heidegger gives little content to or explanation of what he means by authentic being. Jamie said that he was influenced in formulating this view by one of his philosophy professors at Boston University, Daniel Dahlstrom.
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On Heidegger’s “Being and Time”, by James Shapiro
Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time is a work primarily concerned with the explication and understanding of the specific brand of existence and consciousness that is unique to man—or perhaps stated more succinctly, what it means to be a human being. This unique human existence Heidegger calls Dasein.
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Pietro Mussini: A habitat of an interlocked nature, by Franco Torriani
Pietro Mussini: A habitat of an interlocked nature, by Franco Torriani (published in book form by Edizioni Diabasis, Reggio Emilia, Italy, 2010) (English translation by Julian Delens) How far can an artistic practice really produce, and place in a given space and time, place-unrelated objects (in respect to a given place), it’s an underlaying matter…
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Cactus League Baseball: San Francisco Giants vs. Oakland Athletics
It was early March on planet Earth. In any of the other places where I have hung out during my apparently long yet in fact rather brief life so far as coder and Richard Daystrom wannabe – Frankfurt, Berlin, New York, Boston, Ithaca, Bologna, Zurich – it would be freezing cold in winter.
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Eduardo Kac: Living Works, by Claudio Cravero
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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Sartre and Derrida: The Promises of the Subject, by Christina Howells
Sartre and Derrida: The Promises of the Subject Chaque fois unique, la fin du monde by Christina Howells Christina Howells is Professor of French at Wadham College, Oxford University. She has published books on Sartre, on Derrida, and on French women philosophers. She teaches literary theory, French literature, and recent French thought.
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Impressionist Paintings by Florence Morrison, Installment 2
The traveler had long arduous journeys behind him. Ahead was an easy walk to paradise. Something akin to a time tunnel had been constructed, rendering all our adventures completely safe. Fences are not for separating. They are for connecting. Solitary and solidary.
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