Natural Aesthetics:Digital Art and Philosophy in the Era of Technologized Biomimicry
Melanie Swan Technology Philosopher
MS Futures Group+1-650-681-9482
August 7, 2013 – UC BerkeleySlides: http://slideshare.net/LaBlogga
What is Digital Art?
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Probably not what comes to mind!
Digital Art is anything involving Computers and Art
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The Legible City: Jeffrey Shaw
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http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/the-legible-city/Video: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/the-legible-city/video/1/
The Legible City by Jeffrey Shaw (1988-1991)
Boundary Functions: Scott Snibbe
Boundary Functions by Scott Snibbe (1998)http://www.snibbe.com/projects/interactive/boundaryfunctions/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ax4pgtHQDg
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What is Digital Art?
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Interactivity, Co-Creation, Ephemerality
What is Digital Art?
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What is Digital Art?
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What is Digital Art?
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What is Digital Art?
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What is Digital Art?Tactical Media, Hactivism, Electronic Civil Disobedience
Graffiti Research Lab and Stiktu augmented reality social graffiti
app from Layar
What is (early) Digital Art?
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Hypertext, hypermedia, net.art, web art
What is (regular) Art?
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Art is whatever the ‘artworld’ (e.g.; art schools, museums, critics, artists) considers to be art – Danto 1964
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Why Digital Art and Philosophy?
PhilosophyConcerned with: Understanding
Art, economics, politicsConcerned with: Experience
Concepts
Qualitative
QuantitativeScience and technology
Concerned with: Characterization and Innovation
Abstraction
Figuration
Enumeration
Deleuzean Concepts: rhizome, body without organs, molar, molecular, smooth, striated, figural, machinic, faciality, deterritorialization, haecceity, nomadology, the diagram,
desiring-production
Three disciplines for analyzing reality, "separate melodic lines in constant interplay with one another” – Deleuze, Negotiations 1997
Concepts in Natural Aesthetics
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• Digital Art and Natural Aesthetics: anything involving technology, art, and biology
• Philosophical concepts– Reality and Authenticity– Discipline portability– Form and function– De Novo creation– Individual and Society
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Is this image of something real? What kind of real? Real life? Artificial Life? Synthetic Biology? Computer-
generated image?
Distinguishing ‘What is Real’Proliferation in the categories of realism
What does it mean that it is impossible to tell?
Distinguishability of Computer Art
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• Is it “art” or “not art” if we can tell it was computer-made?
• ‘Repticity’ – representational authenticity
Concepts in Natural Aesthetics
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• Digital Art and Natural Aesthetics: anything involving technology, art, and biology
• Philosophical concepts– Reality and Authenticity – Discipline portability– Form and function– De Novo creation– Individual and Society
What is BioArt?
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• Artists using biology as an expressive medium
• Artwork created using live tissue, bacteria, or other living organisms together with scientific processes – Requires collaboration of
artists and biologists• Term coined in 2000 by
Eduardo Kac, an American artist born in Brazil
Petri Dish Paintings
Notable BioArtworks
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• Earmouse (1997)– Human ear grown on the back of a
mouse (science turned into art)• GFP (green-fluorescent protein) Art
– Bunny (2000) – GlowCats (2011)
• Lawn Chair sculpture (2002)– Denise King, Carnivorous
Contraptions, Chlorophilia show
The Algae Opera (2012)Digital Design Weekend, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
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• Interactive performance and audience consumption piece• Opera singer produces Co2 to feed algae to feed the audience• BioArt as commentary on agricultural futures (produced by Agri)
Tissue Engineered BioArt
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• Semi-Living Worry Dolls (Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr 2002 SymbioticA artistic lab)
• hymNext Designer Hymen Series (Julia Reodica 2006)
• BioArt conceptual issues– Is the commentary strengthened by ‘real biology’ as
the medium? – New medium requires new commentary
• BioArt exhibition issues– Maintaining wet bioart in-gallery– Technique-sharing with local biologists; collaboration
between artists and biologists (e.g; BioArt Initiative RPI)
– Living-matter transport (e.g.; UK Human Tissue Authority), compliance (e.g.; Steve Kurtz)
23http://www.siembieda.com/burg.html
Group data project: Human systems (heart, lungs) representation of commercial building energy consumption (San Jose, CA 2010)
B.U.R.G. (Building User Response Gizmos)
Concepts in Natural Aesthetics
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• Digital Art and Natural Aesthetics: anything involving technology, art, and biology
• Philosophical concepts– Reality and Authenticity – Discipline portability– Form and function– De Novo creation– Individual and Society
Best Science Pictures of the Year
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Neuro-synaptic Computer Chip
3D CT Scan of Clam and Whelk Shell
MRI of Human Brain White Matter
• National Geographic coverage – 2012 International Science and
Engineering Visualization Challenge– 2009 BioScapes Microscope Imaging
Contest Water Flea Crown of Thorns
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Aesthetics in Fluorescent-staining Practices
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Framsticks (2010)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9WVF6c8E7c
Tentacular - Evolved Virtual Creatures (2007)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm2n_ped-TA
Form and Function: Artificial Life (A-Life)
• A field of study and an associated art form– Examines systems related
to the evolution of life• Art or Science?
– Depends on practitioner and intention
Practitioner Intent: Science
Artificial Life (A-Life)
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Practitioner Intent: Art
What is Generative Art?
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• Art created with the use of an autonomous system– Computing or mechanical system employed– System independently determines features
• Minimum conditions for a set of marks to function as an image? Depends on intent
Generative Art - Computers, Data, and Humanity | Off Book | PBS (2011)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0OK1GiI83s
Condensation Cube (Hans Haacke 1963)
Evolved Noise (Karl Sims 2012)
77 Million Paintings (Brian Eno 2007)
AARON, the AI Painter (Harold Cohen, 1995)
Form and Function: Macroscale Biomimicry
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Macroscale Biomimicry
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Himalayas Water TowerWinner Evolo 2012 Skyscraper Competition
http://www.evolo.us/competition/himalaya-water-tower/
Biomimicry for Natural Dwelling
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Living Treehouses (Fab Tree Hab) – (Mitchell Joachim 2003)
Tree Circus
Theory of Place: “Building, Dwelling, Thinking” (Heidegger 1951)
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• Feeling at home, placeness, dwelling, belonging
• Central theme of dwelling1 – Not conventional shelter or lodging– Human implacement, being ‘in’ place
• Dwelling makes becoming possible, instantiates– The placeness of place– Meaningfulness of our being
1Liu F. On Place-ness of Place: ‘Dwelling.’ The Sustainability Collection. http://ijs.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.41/prod.461
Dwelling: The City
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• Living in cities: – Over 50% worldwide population in 2008– 5 billion in 2030 (estimated)
http://www.unfpa.org/pds/urbanization.htm
MasdarEnergy City of the Future
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Reconfiguration of Space: Vertical Farms
36http://www.evolo.us/architecture/vertical-farm-in-san-diego/, http://www.verticalfarm.com/
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Reconfiguration of Space: Transportation
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Reconfiguration of Space: Seasteading
De Novo Production of Space
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• ‘Home’ trope in technology
• Organizing physical and virtual space– Physical-world: co-working, co-housing– Online-world: social networks, Facebook,
Pinterest, Instagram– Virtual-world: video games, ARGs
• Virtual placeness – How can we build virtual places for dwelling
meaningfully?
Dwelling Virtually
Concepts in Natural Aesthetics
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• Digital Art and Natural Aesthetics: anything involving technology, art, and biology
• Philosophical concepts– Reality and Authenticity – Discipline portability– Form and function– De Novo creation– Individual and Society
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Synthetic Biology (SynBio)
• Definition: the (re)design and construction of new biological entities such as enzymes, genetic circuits, and cells
• Goal: deliver function, safety, and beauty• Metaphysical issues (nature of reality)
– ‘What is life?’ – DNA change necessary for a ‘different’ organism? – What are living machines, in themselves?– Ontological classification and naming
• Ethics – Practice standards: safety, accountability, documenting
work– Unintended consequences, dual-use debate
• Epistemology– Limits on biological knowledge-seeking?
“This century’s transistor”
Source: Swan, M. Synbio Revolution: Biology is the Engineering Medium, 6/26/11 http://futurememes.blogspot.com/2011/06/synbio-revolution-biology-is.html
Artificial ligase enzyme
Mycoplasma laboratorium
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Current Opinion in Chemical Biology
December 2012 Volume 16Issues 5–6
Pages 461-622
Mechanisms • Aesthetics • Molecular imaging
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Synthetic AestheticsHow would you design nature?
• Connecting synthetic biology, social science, and art and design1
– Teams: Bioengineers and Synbio Designers• Molecular design aesthetics
– When we make new molecules should they be beautiful? Are naturally occurring molecules beautiful? What is an ugly protein?
– Is ‘form follows function’ relevant? Can function be beautiful?
– What aesthetic criteria to apply? Aesthetics of chirality1http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/H01912X/1 and
http://www.genomicsnetwork.ac.uk/media/Synthetic%20Aesthetics.pdf
Concepts in Natural Aesthetics
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• Digital Art and Natural Aesthetics: anything involving technology, art, and biology
• Philosophical concepts– Reality and Authenticity – Discipline portability– Form and function– De Novo creation– Individual and Society
Quantified Self (QS) Art
45Quantify Me (Laurie Frick 2013)
Fries by Month (Lauren Manning 2010)
Quantified Creativity (Amy Robinson 2013)
CrowdArt
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Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir 3, 'Water Night' (2012)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3rRaL-Czxw
Role of Aesthetics in Science/Tech
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• Level 1– Beauty, good design, improved
function, interaction design– Examples: Molecular Design Institutes
(UCSF, NYU), NJACS Award for Creativity in Molecular Design, "Synthetic Aesthetics” (MIT Press 2014)
• Level 2 (Rancière)– Mode of formalization of experience, a
human capacity– Emancipation: new experience,
building capacity
Mary Franck CODAME (Art + Tech)
Summary: Philosophical Issues in Natural Aesthetics
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• ‘What is real?’ – Reality Multiplicity• ‘Repticity’ - Representational Authenticity
– InfoViz: representing the unrepresented– Synbio: creating the unrepresented (de novo creation)
• Portability: using another discipline’s medium– Artists -> biology; Scientists and engineers -> biology
and art; Artists, Scientists, Laypersons -> data• How to dwell meaningfully in new spaces• Pervasive inseparability
– Form and function, individuality and society, technology and aesthetics
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Natural Aesthetics:Digital Art and Philosophy in the Era of Technologized Biomimicry
Melanie Swan Philosopher in Residence
MS Futures Group+1-650-681-9482
June 6, 2013 - Stanford UniversitySlides: http://slideshare.net/LaBlogga
Thank you!
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• Is it all right to interfere with natural processes?– Just a better way of ongoing manipulation buy
humans (e.g.; plant and animal breeding)? – What constitutes a qualitative change?
Nodes: crop-breeding, GMO, SynBio– Order of magnitude issue – how can we think
of change at the new paradigm level or order of magnitude level (Kuhnian paradigms)
• Different set of concerns in de novo generation?
Philosophical Issues in Biological Innovation
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Unprecedented Crowd Access to the Tools of Creative Production
Printing Press Blogger, Twitter, FlickrTumblr, Instagram, Pinterest
Scribe
Midi Keyboard Garage Band, SoundcloudOrchestra
Computer-generated Imagery (CGI)
SporeCreature Creator
Animation