aesthetics pros the tics
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Trusting Aesthetics to ProstheticsAuthor(s): Jon IppolitoSource: Art Journal, Vol. 56, No. 3, Digital Reflections: The Dialogue of Art and Technology(Autumn, 1997), pp. 68-74
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TrustingAesthetics
t o Prosthetics
Jon Ippolito
De gustibusnonest disputandum.
(There s no accountingfortastes.)
Criticism s Container:A LeakyProposition
68 Chris akes thecupof coffeerom Sandyas the ArtSitehome-
page downloadson hercomputercreen.A bannerat the top
of thepage reads, "ArtSite:TheBest of the Web. Arrayedunderneathare buttons abeled Artist Projects, Exhibition
Reviews,Critics'Forum,and Art Buzz "Ithink this is oneofthe best-curatedites on the Web,"Chris ays between ipsof
coffee. "Theyweed through the garbage and pick out the
good stuff-so you don't have to." Sandy nods her head.
"Soundsikeone-stop hoppingor artcriticism," hesays.
his scenario describes the typical WorldWide Web
site devoted to art criticismtoday.Modeled on the
table of contents of a magazineor the brochure or
a curated exhibition, such a site contains an exclusive
selection of artworks hat one or moreexpertshave deemed
to be instructive to the general public. This approachis
familiar. It's convenient. And it's completely at odds with
the social and technologicalunderpinningsof the Internet.
To cometo termswith a digitalculture,an interface o
art on the Webcannotmerely ape museumbrochuresand
magazines,which rely fortheir poweron self-containment,
exclusivity,and instructionby experts.Engagingthe Inter-
net on its own termswill requirean approach hat is radi-
cally distributed-one thatmaythreaten o spill beyondthe
appointed containers of traditional criticism. Crude ver-sions of this distributed criticism are already starting to
crop up on the Web,and the futurethey foretellpresentsa
seriouschallengeto conventionalaesthetictheory.Tobeginwith, the Web s not aboutcontainment. t is
easier and faster to jump from a server in Paris to one in
Tokyothan it is to download a digitized Poussin at one's
presentlocation. For this reason,a typical user is unlikely
to spendan afternoonon-line browsing inks confinedto the
Louvre'swebsite, an experience better suited to CD-ROM.
Instead,that userwill follow a link from he Louvre's ists of
other art sites to the Dia Foundation, from Dia to Ping
Chong'sWebpage, from there to La Mamaand the Robots
Bar and Lounge,then on to the NYC Marathonhomepage.The quintessentialWebsurf does not confine itself to insti-
tutionalboundaries; t puncturesthem. This fact robs con-
ventional aesthetic criticism, when applied to the Web,of
one of its most valuable tools: artistic intent. RolandBarthes's"deathof the author"notwithstanding,most of the
vocabularyof criticalanalysis-plot, closure, tone, pointof
view, composition-presumes that some author has inten-
tionallycraftedthe aesthetic experience in question. Even
if a novelist's intent is unknownto the reader-which is
true in mostcases, actually-the reader will tryto imagineit in order to understand he work:"Well,I guess Dickens
let Little Joe die to underscorethe tragic living conditions
of the underclass."So what does a critic do when the order
of pages is determinednot by an author'scarefulstructur-
ing, but by a reader'sarbitrarymeanderings?On the Web,
the user wanders freely out of one artist's intent and into
another's.1Hence any criticism consistent with a user's
experience of the Webmust abandonthe goal of corralingall the goodwork nto one patchof cyberspace.
From nstructiono Extraction
As the focus of each web surf centers more on the user's
intent than on a single author's, o each user is responsiblefor following the links she or he thinks are most worth-
while. Likewise, most electronic bulletin boardswill pub-lish anyone who is diligent enough to post to them.
Although there is a high price of admission-buying acomputer and modem, investing the hours necessary to
learnto ftpfiles orwrite htmlcode-by andlargethe Inter-
net is a nonexclusive arenafor discourse, in which every-
one who can pay the price of admissioncan have a voice.
Another arenafor discourse-albeit one with a high-er price of admission-is the university. The academic
equivalentof the website delivering "expert"advice is the
tweed-jacketedprofessordispensing knowledgeto the stu-
dents:
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Theprofessor halkstwo wordson the blackboard."Mimesis
and rhythm,"he says, turningtoface the class, "according
to Aristotle,are the twoproperties o which all arts aspire."
Definitelya fill-in-the-blank question or the exam, Sandy
thinks,as shejots the two words nto her notebook.
Fortunately there are other models of teaching
besides instruction, the one-wayflow of information rom
professoro student.Instruction s
onlyuseful where infor-
mationis scarce. This is certainlynot the case for today's
digitally literate aesthetes, who will be rewarded with a
daunting6,000 sites if they performa Lycos search on the
keyword aesthetics. What Internauts need now are not
instructors,but listeners who will work with them individ-
ually to help them choose what to pay attentionto, based
on correlations among informationwith different origins.
And there's nothing to say those listeners have to be
human;2 ome claim that intelligent softwareagentswill be
bettersuited to the herculeantask of sortingthe ten useful
sites from the 5,990 that are a waste of time. Whether
embodied in flesh or silicon, it is intelligence-and notinformation-that will enable students of on-line art to
extract what they need from the flood of wordsand images
streaming nto their modems.
Tobe sure, the softwareagents currentlyon the mar-
ket are no match for the Leo Steinbergs and Rosalind
Krausses of academe.TopicAgents (http://www.verity.com)and similar engines can do boolean searches across web
pages-with criteria likefind all occurrencesof the string'abstractexpressionism'with a date before'1955'-while
Smart Bookmarks http://firstfloor.com)an lie in wait and
report significantchanges to favoritewebsites. Othercom-
panies such as PointCast (http://www.pointcast.com) nd
WebCompass(http://www.quarterdeck.com)have devel-
oped prototypes or an electronic newspaper,the so-called
Daily Me, that features only news and articles tailored to
each individual interest-whether Middle East peace
negotiations, stock market quotes, or Miami Dolphinsscores. Again, however,the features are selected by cate-
goryorkeyword,whichrequiresusers to know whatthey're
lookingfor in advance.This is hardlythe sort of apparatusone would expect to lead a revolutionin aesthetic theory;morelikely, it will simply wear down the groovesof exist-
ing aesthetic categories ratherthan venture onto untestedartistic territory. And these agents aren't as nimble at
applyingmore abstractor philosophicalcriteria; rytellingone to find an on-line artwork hat exemplifies "mimesis"
or "rhythm."The agents that will revolutionizethe way artworks
are reviewed and evaluated will be not glorified search
engines such as these, but a new generationof agents with
distributed ntelligence, designed to learnfromtheir users'
preferencesand extrapolate hem.
MechanizedSubjectivity: he ProstheticEgo
Chris's omputercreenfillswith a list of websites,whichshe
visits one by one. "Are hey supposed o be in some kind of
order?" sksSandy."No," epliesChris."Atfirstheagent ust
spitsout sites randomly o get a handle on yourpreferences.Mostof the suggestions t gave me the irstfew sessionswere
totallyuseless-I ratedthemall 0 or1 exceptor afew vague-
ly interesting ites. Nowthat I'vebeenapprenticinghe agent
forseveralmonths,I regularlydole out an 8 or 9 with every
batch."The irst site, JennyHolzer'sPlease ChangeBeliefs,
downloadson the screen. "Nosurpriseshere-anything she
does is an 8 on myscale."The nexttwo,someratherdryarti-
cles on Victorianphotography,she begrudgesa measly 4.
"Thoughtyou likedphotography," ays Sandy. "Yeah,but
somethingbothersme aboutthosesites, I'm not sure what-
I'mjust not interested n that today.""What's his?" blurts
Sandy,as a Hustlerpictorialfillsthescreen."Mustbe its sto-
chastic unction,"mumblesChris,as shetypesa 0 in thepop-
up window next to the site. As the next site downloads,
geometricorms swirlacrossthe screen. "Notanotherractal
screensaver,"murmursSandy. "Yeah,butI kind of like thisone,"says Chris."The unny thing is that even after three
monthsof trainingthis agent, the sites it givesme still don't
seemto haveanything n common-exceptthatI'mfinding its
suggestionsmoreand more nteresting."
The notionof a prosthetic ego, an agentthat learns a user's
tastes and amplifiesthem, is not pure fantasy.There are at
least three models for this kind of agent accessible rightnow on the Web,thougheach relies on a somewhat differ-
ent mechanism to determine its recommendations.3One
model is collaborativefiltering. Firefly (http://www.firefly
corner.com), currently the most popular example of this
technique, solicits the preferencesof thousands of users to
create a database of likes and dislikes. In its resource for
music lovers, for example, Firefly offers the visitor to its
website a list of ten pop musicians rangingfromMadonna
to Tracy Chapmanand invites the user to rate them, from
"the best" to "it'salright" o "hate it!"(fig. 1). When done,
the user clicks a button marked more and Firefly presentsten more albums, this time a little closer to the user's
tastes. The user rates them again and clicks more to see
more albums. In theory,by the time the user has repeated
this process six or seven times, Fireflyshould consistentlybe listing albums the user prefers (and perhaps some the
user hasn't heardof but wouldlike anyway).Now,Firefly s
no supercomputerprogrammedwith aesthetic principles;it's only a database of people's likes and dislikes. Fireflydoesn't knowwhy people who like Tracy Chapman end to
prefer James Taylorover AC/DC. It just knows that theydo. Firefly's database correlates a user's responses with
otherpeople's,and the morepeople who use it, the better it
gets.4This communaldatabase is a kind of aesthetics with-
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FIG. 1 Detailof the musicratingpagefromPattieMaes'sFirefly ebsite http://www.firefly.com/).Copyright ireflyNetwork, nc.
out exclusion. No one's in charge, and theoretically, no
one'staste is moreimportant han anyoneelse's.
Besides its originalincarnation as a music resource,
Fireflyhas just withinthe past few monthsbegun a collab-
orationwith the search service Yahoothatapplies collabo-
rativefilteringto help identifyinterestingweb pages. Users
can jump-startthe process by submittingtheir bookmark
files to Firefly for recording;Firefly will then promptthe
user with addresses for new websites that correlate with
those the user has alreadybookmarked. Toaccess this ser-
vice, the user must first establish a MyYahoo site at
[http://edit my.yahoo.com/config/login], hen click on the
my agent button.)There is a visual analogueto Firefly'sregistrationof
users' tastes called interactive genetic art-for example,the International Gallery of Genetic Art on the Web
(http://robocop.modmath.cs.cmu.edu:8001)5-butit oper-ates on a very differentprinciple fromFirefly's.Again the
first screen gives the user the opportunity to rate eight
examples of something.In this case, they'renine examples
of bad computerart:squiggly lines, circularpatterns,gar-ish fractals. Again the user clicks more and sees new
imagesthatget moreand moreinteresting.But in this case
it's not otherviewers'responses that are determiningwhat
the new ensemble of imageswill look like, but the splicingof the programcode-the "breeding"-of the computer
algorithms hat createdthe originalnine images (fig. 2a, b).
Furthermore,he algorithmswhose imagesthe viewer rates
highest get the most computercode passed on to the next
generationof images,while the algorithmswiththe poorest
ratingsdon'tget any of their DNA passed downto the col-lective progeny. So if the user likes one algorithm that
makes circles and anotherthat makes squiggly lines, the
next generationmight have squiggly circles. (Fortunately,like human sex, the results are usually harder to predictthan this simplistic example.)
Even more than Firefly and interactive genetic art,the Tierra project (http://vrml.arc.org/tierra/index.html)
represents an experiment in decentralized aesthetics.
Whenusers select circles and squiggly lines in interactive
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Therelationship f binarynumbersn computermemoryo visual icons is
analogous to the
biologicalrelationship f
genotype to phenotype.Thege notype or geneticcode s are crossbred
usinga splicingandmutationechnique.
A mutationmayor maynotocccur at a speci icsite n the Icon.Thecrossbreedingof allcombinations f fouriconsproducesa family
of twelve new icons.Four cons are selectedto continue o the next
generation.
2x magnification fa se lected 100th
generationIcon.
91 4 JonF.Sinon, .
iFe~i~~? ~
- E l ic w
i~
...... =MElk aR~An~
FIG. 2a, b Diagramillustratinghow genetic algorithms can be interbred to produce new images. At left: the selective cullingof the offspring of an initialset of"parent" icons. At right: sample icons produced by such a procedure. Copyright1994 John F.Simon, Jr.; mages courtesy the artist.
genetic art, they are deciding which characteristicsare to
be passed on to futuregenerations.Tierra s so decentral-
ized, however,that there is almost no humanintent wield-
ed whatsoever.The idea behindthis project,by TomRayof
the Universityof Delaware and the AdvancedTelecommu-
nications Research laboratory n Tokyo,is to create algo-rithms whose survival is determined by natural selection
rather than human selection. To activate this "wildlife
sanctuary" or computer programs,Ray copies a few short
stringsof machine code onto his computer.Everyso manyminutes, the computer'soperating system executes all of
these algorithms,which are designed to reproducethe way
computerviruses do: by making copies of themselves on
the hard drive. Of course, if left unattended, pretty soon
these prolificlittle creatureswouldtake up all the roomon
Ray'sPC, so Ray built in twochecks on their proliferation.
First, every few cycles the operating system inserts some
randommutation nto the programcode of one of the algo-rithms. Usually this "bug" prevents the algorithm from
reproducing,but occasionally it enables the algorithmto
reproduce aster, thus outstripping the older, unmutated
algorithms. Second, the operating system punishes an
algorithmthat performstoo poorly.Every time the misfit
algorithmgenerates an errorcondition-say, by using an
unrecognizedcommandlike "cpoy"instead of "copy"-it
gets a demerit. Toomany demeritsand the operating sys-tem erases it fromthe hard drive: t becomes extinct. What
makes Tierra a radical approach to the construction of
knowledgeis that once Rayhas configuredhis computer o
handle mutations and demerits,all he has to do is let someprimitive algorithms loose on his PC and watch them
evolve. There'snothing guiding their evolution except for
their competitionfor territory disk space) and food (CPU
time). Yet self-guided evolutionhas given rise to artificial
forms of protolifethat Ray could not have imagined.Tier-
ra's indigenous population now includes parasitic stringsthat rely for their reproduction on being embedded in
longerhost strings(fig. 3); symbioticorganisms hatrepro-duce each other in alternating generations;and nocturnal
creatures that migrateto the darkside of the earthto seek
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FIG. 3 Image romTierra: volutionnAnotherUniverse, ideobytheAnti-Gravity orkshop,ourtesy f TomRay http://www.hip.atr.co.jp/-ray/pubs/images/images.html).n hisconceptual endering, Parasitetwo-pieceobject)executes he code of a neighboring ostorganismto replicatetself,producingaughterparasitetwo-piecewire rameobject).
out inactive hard drives on a computernetwork.In some
sense, Tierra s a device for generating possibilities-witha minimal interventionof human will.
Despite the variety of approaches represented by
Firefly,interactive genetic art, and Tierra,at the heart ofeach of them is a distributedapproach o knowledge.6This
distributedapproachcould make possible the mechanism
of subjectivity, in the form of the agent described in the
scenario at the beginningof this section. This agentwould
encode an individual's aesthetic sensibility in software,
actingas a prosthetic ego that could faithfullyreproduce-and even predict-that person's artistic tastes. Such a
prosthetic ego would not be beholden to the self-contain-
ment, exclusivity, and reliance on instructionthat makes
more traditionalmodels of criticism ill-suited to the Inter-
net, yet because it disavows those principles it wouldpose
a challenge to the notion of an aesthetic theory-or any
theoryforthat matter.By theirnature,theories chunkphe-nomena into generalities that can be applied to future
cases of similar phenomena.Some of these aim to be uni-
versal (as in Aristotle's claim that all art functions bymimesis or rhythm); thersaimto be contextual(as in Nel-
son Goodman'sclaim that art tends to display symptomslike syntactic repleteness andmetaphoricexemplification).In no sense, however,can the aesthetic criteriaof the pros-thetic ego be boiled down to a set of axioms or symptoms;
the criteria arespreadout across the entire computational
systemand can only be invokedby applyingthe entiresys-tem to a given circumstance.(In the case of Tierra,the cri-
teria aren't even affected by a user's input, but are an
emergentpropertyof the competition among organisms).7Because they are based on generalizedcriteria,aes-
thetic theories often inspire their adherents to establish a
canon of artworks that fits those criteria, which are pre-sumed to apply to any artworkviewed by any audience at
anytime. This one-canon-fits-allapproach s diametrically
opposedto the prosthetic ego, which does not assume that
every person desires or needs the same kind of artexperi-ence. A given user maychoose to exclude figurativepaint-
ing fromher purview by ratingthat workconsistently low
scores, but that doesn't mean that Francis Bacon and
Philip Pearlsteinmightnot simultaneouslybe at the top of
another user's pantheon. Unlike most aesthetic theories,
prosthetic aesthetics can easily accommodate-indeed,
help to cultivate-the developmentof manymutuallycon-
tradictoryaesthetics withinthe same envelopingculture.
Because prosthetic egos would be customized for
individual users, the distributed aesthetics they embodycould not be taught,only apprenticed.Professorsat Colum-
biaarefree to expoundon theiraesthetic criteria to lecture
halls full of impressionablestudents;writers for Artforum
are free to pass judgments that thousands of people will
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read when the magazinehits their doorstep;but because it
learns by example rather than by instruction, each pros-thetic ego must be trainedby an individual user. Forthose
used to expressing aesthetic judgments in words, it mayseem odd that the aesthetic criteria learned by prosthetic
egos cannot simply be distilled into a Cliff Notes version
and passed on. After all, one of the main reasons to store
information n electronic circuits is so it can be instantly
liquefied:downloadedfroma website, squeezed througha
modemline, or massaged into a table or histogramor piechart. What a prosthetic ego acquires, however, is not
informationbut intelligence. There is no single sector on a
harddrive, no single subroutineof programcode, no par-ticularstringof Is andOs thatcorresponds o a specific bit
of aesthetic sensibility that a prosthetic ego has learned.
That sensibility is embodied in the overall state of the
agent. So how does one go aboutteaching aesthetics if the
content one is teaching is nowhere n particular?
Unfortunately, f a prosthetic intuition can't be putinto words, it's rather difficult to talk about it-which
points to an importantimitation of mechanizedsubjectivi-ty thatwouldprobablyprevent t fromever completely sup-
plantingconventionalcriticism, even for on-line artworks.
Fundamental to the aesthetic experience is not just the
refinementof one's own sensibility, but the sharingof that
sensibility with others.
"Soyou'rereally intojazz," says Sandy, as Chris tunes the
radio to Miles Davis's Flamenco Sketches. "Yeah-I didn't
usedto like it, butafriend lent mesometapes,and afteryoulisten to itfor a while it kind of growson you. Whendiffer-entperformers lay the same tune, it sounds totally differ-
ent-even when the same performer plays at differenttimes.""Idon'tknow,"says Sandy, 'jazz musiciansalwayssound to me like they'reustfooling around,like they don't
know where they're going." "Theydon't," replies Chris,"that's he excitementof it. Jazzgreats like MilesDavistake
risks,which is what art is all about."
This kind of dialogueaboutart,whether t occurs at a
CAA panel or in a car on the way to work,is essential to
the propagationand maintenance of culture as we know it.
Without such a social dimension, the prostheticego could
merely refine individual users' areas of interest without
exposing them to unfamiliarstyles or methods. It is inter-esting to note in this regardthat much of the rhetoric,and
presumablythe impetus, for collaborativefilteringcomes
from marketing; Digital's each-to-each technology
(http://www.each.com),ne of Firefly'scompetitors,offersa
toyrecommendation ite-doubtless to hone Junior's hop-
ping acumen. Is this the fatal flaw in the mechanism of
subjectivity, that it would discourage aesthetic dialogueand encourage the fragmentationof culture into myriadmarketniches of nonoverlapping aste?8
FromApprenticeshipo Breeding
There are a number of potential solutions to this predica-
ment, as exemplified by the three models of distributed
aesthetics discussed above. The creatorsof Fireflysolved
the problemby encouragingconversationamong its con-
stituents. RegisteredFireflyusers have the optionof mak-
ing their own homepages, on which they can list their
favoritebands, makingit easy for others of like mind to e-
mail them or meet them on-line in chat roomsto pursue a
dialogue in real time. Prosthetic egos might be passedback and forth in an analogous dialogue: once users have
apprenticed their agents well enough, they could simply
exchange agents-essentially trying on someone else's
taste for a day.Ultimately,however,this isn't much differ-
ent from simply trading favorite CDs. Like the dialogue
among Firefly's users, the exchange of prosthetic egoswould rarely put users in touch with artradicallydifferent
fromtheir own tastes, since they would naturally gravitateto users who like the same artiststhey do. The advantageof
collaborativefiltering is in some ways its downfall: if all
the relationships in the community are based on sharedtaste, what incentive is there to strike up a relationshipwith someone whothinks differently?
The example of interactivegenetic art, on the other
hand, suggests a moreradicalapproachto the exchangeof
aesthetic tastes. Each user'sprostheticego is ultimatelya
computerprogram,a set of adaptiveinstructions that exe-
cutes everytime the user invokes that agent. In that sense,these agents are directly analogous to the graphic algo-rithms of genetic art and could thereforetheoretically be
bred in an analogous way by splicing their programcodes.
The result, a cross-productof two totally subjective facul-
ties, would have no parallel in our culture today.Throughthe mechanizedsplicing of programcode, the imaginationof one humanbeing could be mated inseparablyto that of
another. Nor need this breeding of subjectivities be
restrictedto onlytwoparents,since it is notmuchharder o
splice three or ten programcodes than to splice two.Theycan even be interbred n differentproportions: 2)G+ (1)N+ (-1)Kcould representthe offspringof twopartsprosthet-ic Greenberg, one part prosthetic Nochlin, and one part
prostheticantiKramer i.e., an agentwhose ratingsare the
mathematicaloppositesof Hilton Kramer's).
Theabovescenariostill leaves humanbeingsin chargeof the breedingof subjectivities; t would be up to the breed-
er whether o cultivateever morerefinedorever moreeclec-
tic tastes.Peoplemight ryto controlsuch interbreedingwith
the electronic equivalent of kinship taboos. Or perhaps
eugeniclaboratorieswouldcrop up acrossthe country, ulti-
vatinghothouseaesthetics with the goal of gainingthe most
marketsharewith a superiorbreedof artcritic. The Tierra
project,however,pointsthewaytowarda finalstagein mech-
anizingthe subjective: etting prostheticegos evolve on their
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own in a wildlife sanctuaryfor feral subjectivities. What
would t meantohave anexperimentalaboratoryoraest
ics, proliferating utside the influenceof academics,cri
andhistorians,a populationof artificial ritics on the loo
The prospect of detaching from the conscious n
an aspect of cultureso profoundlyhumanmaythreaten
sense of control,but it is important o remember hatt]
are alreadycountless selections made for us every da
an unconscious level-within ourownbiologicalenvel
It was once thought hatthe human mmunesystemwoi
in a way analogousto the waythat aesthetics does todc
white blood cell that encountered an "interesting" or
body in the bloodstream "learned" ts chemical signaand then somehow nstructedthe otherlymphocytesin
body to latch onto other bodies with that signatureaccordance with this paradigm,critics act like the lymj
cytes of the social body:after first "discovering"an ai
they teach others that this artist is worth attention.
course, the artistic newcomer is "tagged" for succ
while the bodily newcomer is tagged for destruction]
killer t-cell.) But lymphocytesdon't attendclasses, andbloodstream is no university; so biologists realized tl
had to be a less hierarchical,moreadaptivemechanisi
work.Researchby GeraldEdelman,based on a theory
proposedby Sir Frank MacFarlaneBurnetin the 195(
revealed that the human immune system is based no
instruction but on selection. Every lymphocyte in
body's population is outfitted with a receptor that re(
nizes a different unfamiliarprotein.11When a lymphowith the right receptor happens to come in contactwi
piece of an alien microbe, the successful fit triggers
lymphocyte's genetic machinery to go on a reproduc
spree, dividing into hundreds of thousands of clone
itself. These clones then spread throughout the blc
stream, latching onto other copies of the microbe
marking hemfordestruction.
One of the interesting consequences of this me(
nism is that the immune system has a somatic men
quite independentof the brain's.If a given body has i
attackedby the measles bacillumin the past, there wil
a disproportionatelyarge populationof measles-sensi
lymphocytes n the bloodstream, eft overfromthe prolationof these lymphocyteswhen the bodyfirst encount,
the disease. This makes the body better preparedto Iwith the disease in the future;the same somatic men
explains the success of vaccines. Perhaps by creatii
populationof independently evolving prosthetic egoscan inoculate culture in advance to prepare it for fu
aesthetic developments. Whether or not this happ,there can be little doubtthat as on-line artproliferateswill need as much help as we can get in coming to te
with it all-whether that help is from human aesthete
their mechanizedequivalents.
Notes
The Webaddresses published in this essay were current at the time of writingbut
are subject to change.1. If there is a conventional critical theorythat applies to meandering through
electric neighborhoods, t is probably sociology rather than aesthetics. The e-mail
"chain letter,"forexample, is a beautiful expos6 of the intersection of professionaland casual networksof power.
2. WarrenSack explored the undervalued role of the computer as "privileged
questioner" in "Online LanguageGames,"a paper given at the College Art Asso-
ciation panel "Cyberspace:TrojanHorse or RomanHoliday: A Discussion of Our
Electronic Future" on February12, 1997. More informationon this conference is
available at (http://idea.ucdavis.edu/caa/intro.html).3.
Althoughit is not
currentlyemployedon the
Web,the most effective tech-
nology for implementing prosthetic intuitions may be neural networks,intercon-
nected weighted logic cells that can be trained to recognize simple patterns and
navigate mazes. Some similar technologies currently n development are the Foot-
prints programof Pattie Maes and Alan Wexelblat and the Darwin data mining
programof Thinking Machines Corporation.4. Technically speaking, Fireflyconstructs a vector fromthe weightseach user
assigns to different albums and runs a statistical comparison of this vector with
those of other users.
5. Karl Sims is perhaps the best-known practitionerof interactivegenetic art,
but to date only descriptions of his work are directly available on the Web.
6. In fact, a system that unites all three approaches is already being explored
by Pattie Maes and Alexandros Moukas, though not much informationwas avail-
able on it at the time of this writing. The project they have proposed, Amalthaea,
would be an artificial ecosystem of competing agents that discover and
filter information. More information can be found at (http://www.media.mit.edu/
-moux/research.html).
7. The contrast between the axiomatic model of conventional theory and theemergent criteria of the prosthetic agent has a mathematicalanalogy in the con-
trast between integrable and iterative equations. Integrable equations, for cen-
turies the favored tool of mathematicians for modeling nature, are those whose
solutions can be deduced by mathematical manipulation (they can be "integrat-
ed"). The solution to an integrable equation can be written down in a compactfor-
mula useful forcalculating the state of the system at any future time. Over the last
thirty years, however, physicists have realized that most situations fromreal life
cannot be directly integrated;the only way to find the future state of such systemsis to calculate the time evolution of the system for one moment,then calculate it for
the next, and so on. While mathematicians are adept at finding closed solutions to
integrable equations with pencil and paper, the tedious step-by-step analysis
requiredfor iterativeequations is best accomplished by a computer.8. Jaron Lanier has criticized conventional agents on different grounds: he
claims they dumb downhumanjudgment. While it is true that some researchersin
the field have made extravagantclaims for the way agents will personalize users'
experience of the Internet,Lanier gnores the potentialusefulness of agents in other
capacities. (Wouldhe accuse a screwdriverof dumbing down construction work-
ers?) Consistent with his disdain forartificialintelligence in general, he denies the
possibilitythat any intelligentagent of the future could possibly approachthe sub-
tlety characteristic of human thought. If by subtlety one means unpredictability,then Lanier'scriticism does not applyto distributed ntelligence, whoseoutputfor a
given input cannot merely be reduced to a set of predeterminedcriteria. Lanieris
closer to the mark n his claim that intelligent agents maybe susceptible to bribingor hacking by advertisers. The example of TV is not terribly promising:consider
how much of an averagenightly newscast is outright,or indirect,advertising.9. The advent of artificial ife has broughtnew meaningto Marshall McLuhan's
dictum that humans are the reproductive organsof machines.
10. Gerald M. Edelman, Bright Air,Brilliant Fire: On the Matterof the Mind
(New York:Basic Books, 1992), 74-78.
11. This is made possible by the fact that the lymphocyte genes responsible for
the shape of that receptor are especially prone to jumbling duringtheir formation.
See ibid., 77. Whythen, don't some of these randomlyproduced lymphocytes latch
onto thebody's
ownproteins
and mark them for destruction? Because these lym-
phocytes areprogrammed o self-destruct if they attach to molecules present in the
thymus gland, where proto-lymphocytes develop. See Richard C. Duke, David M.
Ojcius, and John Ding-E Young,"Cell Suicide in Health and Disease," Scientific
American,December 1996, 82.
ens, JONIPPOLITOs an artist whose work is now on view at
, we Sandra Gering Gallery Online (http://www.interport.net/
-rms -gering). As exhibition coordinator at the Guggenheim
;s or Museum, he has curated and coordinated shows of new
media since 1993.
FALL1997