Category: Rethinking Science

Re-Thinking Science, by Alan N. Shapiro

Influenced by Heidegger’s “The Question Concerning Technology”, Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, and Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s epic science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey, I believe that we have come to the end of the long era of technology being conceived and developed as a tool for the ‘domination of nature’.

February 11, 2013
From the Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Giardino Cablato (Cabled Garden) by Pietro Mussini (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

The digital images of flowers, fields, and gardens created by Pietro Mussini at the computer do not constitute the work in itself, but rather a moment of passage, useful for re-elaborating nature according to different solutions, studying forms and expressive combinations of nature’s sounds and colors, constructing graphically that which will be concretized in sculpture.

June 18, 2011
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.

June 3, 2011
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)

Christa Sommerer has a strong interest in botany: she dedicated herself to this after her secondary studies, enrolling in the Faculty of Biology and Botany of Vienna. Her intention was to investigate nature with methods suitable to the classification of plants for the purpose of achieving the formulation of systematic rules.

October 4, 2010
From The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Nerve Garden by Bruce Damer (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

All images © Copyright Bruce Damer, embedded here with the permission of the artist. 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.

October 4, 2010
Interview with AVINUS Press about The Technological Herbarium

AVINUS Press (Anabelle Assaf): Worum geht es im Technologischen Herbarium? (Kunst? Technologie? Natur? Informatik?) Welche Art von Kunstwerken hat die Autorin gewählt, und was macht diese so besonders? What is The Technological Herbarium about? (art? technology? nature? computer science?) What kind of artworks did the author choose, and what makes them so special?

September 8, 2010