Author: Alan N. Shapiro

The Star Trekking of Physics, by Alan N. Shapiro

In spite of the proliferation of exhilarated technoculture and its multidisciplinary, wired self-image, there remain some straightlaced, uncool tendencies within the techno-elite which boil over at the thought of all this openness to the humanities and the soft.

April 15, 2010
Captain Kirk Was Never the Original, by Alan N. Shapiro

In its prevalent forms, the cottage consumer industry of Star Trek is a classic virtuality of identification where the viewers’ senses of self, otherness, and reality are blurred by the contemplation of iconic spectacles. The fanatic relationship to media objects and fetishized paraphernalia is a partial, transitional realization of the reign of simulacra.

April 15, 2010
Considerations on Transgenic and Biotech Art, by Gianna Maria Gatti (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

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.

April 15, 2010
From The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Osmose by Char Davies (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

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 virtual reality environment that was developed and produced in 1995.

April 15, 2010
Adolf Portmann on the New Biology, by Gianna Maria Gatti (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

This action, offering light to the plant, enables the latter to externalize its ‘interiority’. A fascinating interpretation that, deriving from an unusual vision of the artwork, instills in it a deeper and certainly original value. Suggesting this original meaning is the theory developed around the time of the 1960s by the Swiss biologist Adolf Portmann.

April 15, 2010
From The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Telegarden by Ken Goldberg (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

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, over the course of the summer, at the leading international exhibitions of digital art and technology.

April 15, 2010