natural aesthetics:digital art and philosophy in the era of technologized biomimicry

Natural Aesthetics:Digital Art and Philosophy in the Era of Technologized Biomimicry

Melanie Swan Technology Philosopher

MS Futures Group+1-650-681-9482

[email protected]

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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Interactivity, Co-Creation, Ephemerality


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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


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• 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)


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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


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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


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Quantified Self (QS) Art

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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

http://www.youtube.com/TechnologyPhilosophe

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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

[email protected]

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