Category: Rethinking Science

The Technological Herbarium: Introduction, by Gianna Maria Gatti (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

The Technological Herbarium: Introduction by Gianna Maria Gatti (translated from the Italian by Alan N. Shapiro) 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.

April 15, 2010
Gianna Maria Gatti’s The Technological Herbarium, by Alan N. Shapiro

Gianna Maria Gatti’s book The Technological Herbarium (subtitled: “Vegetable Nature and New Technologies in Art Between the Second and Third Millennia”) is a study of ‘interdisciplinary’ works of art that exemplify the increasing importance of science and technology in artistic creation.

April 14, 2010
“Jurassic Park” (film): Newman Eaten by a Dilophosaurus, by Alan N. Shapiro

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.”

April 13, 2010