Transcript Perseverance ::eco art::bio art::urban gardening::tending the physical commons:: cybernetics::artificial life:: Perserverance from At-the-Edge-of-Art • “Antibodies persevere.

Perseverance
::eco art::bio art::urban gardening::tending the physical commons::
cybernetics::artificial life::
Perserverance from At-the-Edge-of-Art
• “Antibodies persevere. If you've had chicken pox as a child, your
blood already contains millions of chicken-pox antibodies that
replicated during the original infection. The fact that these extra
antibodies stick around provides your body with a 'silver bullet'
against any future chicken pox infections--which translates for most
people into lifelong immunity from chicken pox. Antibodies also
provide their host with a somatic memory: even if a patient cannot
recall having chicken pox, doctors can tell by testing for the
appropriate antibodies in her blood.”
Perserverance from At-the-Edge-of-Art
• Likewise, art that perseveres can create an analogous resource, a
sort of cultural memory that persists in a society's collective
unconscious. Art can persevere in various ways. Homeric hymns
persevered by constant retelling; music and drama by interpretable
scores; paintings by storage in a vault. To let this heritage
disappear would be to deprive the social body of the immune
resources it has built up over its lifespan. Yet this is exactly the fate
that will befall digital culture without a new preservation paradigm
to accommodate it.
Perserverance
• 2 ways that we explore perserverance:
1.art that perserves +/or extends life - literally
• commons - physical, informational, creative commons
• works on the edge of the bio-sciences
2.perserverance of the art - how is it maintained? is there a
chance it can sink into oblivion because of obsolete platforms?
• variable media
Phil Ross: BioTechnique, etc.
• controlled environmental spaces
• refines a variety of sculptural artifacts
• natural systems within a frame of social and historic contexts
• the lens of human artifice
• to achieve a specific focus
• website
Future Farmers
• F.R.U.I.T. ::
• wrappers, demonstrators, tracking fruit
• Victory Gardens:
• planting demo gardens, education, distribution
• website
Fallen Fruit
• Public Fruit Jam
• Public Fruit Maps
• Public Fruit Tree Adoptions
• website
Brief History of Cybernetics
• cybernetics: “the entire field of control and communication theory ,
whether in the machine or in the animal” -- Norbert Wiener
Brief History of Cybernetics
• 1st wave cybernetics: networks, information -- observance of
systems
• Wiener, Shannon
• 2nd wave cybernetics: autopoesis, emergence, AI -- observer
becomes complicit
• Varela, Maturana
• 3rd wave cybernetics: virtuality, AI -- reality is infused with
information patterns
Brief History of Cybernetics
• Autopoesis: auto (self) poesis (creation)
•
idea that a thing creates the structure of it’s own existence
• in terms of networks, the relations are continuously regenerated
+ realized, and the thing itself is actualized.
• Emergence:
•
how complexity emerges from simple systems
•
ants, software, cities
from Muse to Mutation
• Code as Muse (week 4) to:
• Code as dynamic preservation
• rewrite the code, redo the work
• generative
• performative
• stays alive through mutation
Tom Ray, Tierra
• “wildlife sanctuary for computer viruses”
• program code that copy themselves and release on hard drive.
• OS occasionally mutates code
• mechanism to erase mutated algorithms that fail to function
properly or cause errors.
• self-replication, mutation, competition
• website
Problem of Perseverance
• static or dynamic?
• “death by wall label”
• sculture or performance?
• “oral media of performed culture have been replaced by storage
media of recorded culture.”
• “in the hands of creators profiled in this chapter, genetic processes
promote the perseverance of many species of virtual or biological
creatures. but only those genetic systems that are themselves
designed to persevere dynamically hold out the hope of keeping
their creatures alive rather than preserving them as inert output.”
• maximize adaptability rather than stabilize (tierra)
Symbiotica: Meart, Pigs Wings, etc.
• Symbiotica website
• Meart - “a Semi-Living artist”
• cultured nerve cells that grow and live in a neuro-engineering
lab, in Georgia institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA
• body” is a robotic drawing arm that is capable of producing
two-dimensional drawing focusing on creating the artist rather
than the artwork. MEART proposes to embody the fusion of
biology and the machine - creativity emerging from a semiliving entity.
• Wetware' – neurons from embryonic rat cortex grown over a
Multi Electrode Array.
• 'Hardware' – the robotic drawing arm
• 'Software' – that interfaces between the wetware and the
hardware.
• The Internet is used to mediate between its components and
overcome its geographical detachment.
• What is the storage paradigm for this kind of work?
Stelarc & TCA, Extra Ear 1/4 Scale
• Stelarc grows an ear on his arm
• plans to add a microphone and broadcast sounds to the
internet
• what is life? is this partial life? how is the wholeness of the
body defined?
Natalie Jeremijienko, One Trees
• Made 1000 clones of the same tree, planted throughout Bay Area.
• Trees are radically different throughout area
• Clones are not the same!
• Trees end up giving lots of information about location they are
growing in.
• website
Variable Media
• The Variable Media Network proposes an unconventional
preservation strategy based on identifying ways that creative works
might outlast their original medium.
• This strategy emerged from the Guggenheim Museum’s efforts to
preserve its world-renowned collection of conceptual, minimalist and
video art. The growth of the Variable Media has been supported by
the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology, and
subsequently promoted by the Forging the Future alliance. The aim
of this diverse network of organizations is to develop the tools,
methods and standards needed to rescue creative culture from
obsolescence and oblivion.
• independence from medium
• website
Critical Art Ensemble
• 5 artists specializing in computer graphics and web design,
film/video, photography, text art, book art, and performance.
• art, critical theory, technology, and political activism
• biotech, tactical media
• manifest as installation, video, theory, posters and pamphlets
•free range grain
•website
Critical Art Ensemble
• Strange Culture:
• double meaning of “culture”
• CAE work in the realm of information commons open up scientific
knowledge - to DIY culture especially as it relates to public health
and environment.
• what are the stakes in doing this kind of work?
Next Time/ Last Class!
• The Posthuman, the Future of the Future
• Landscape and Manufacture (“Manufactured Landscapes”),
Commodity Fetishism, Labor and Gender.
• The Cyborg Manifesto, When Computers Were Women,
Manufactured Landscapes
• Prepare for FINAL:: Wednesday, June 8th 8:00am.