class .09

high/low cultures - the creation of life
nov 11th 2009

#00: some final notes on 9evenings and notions of openness in art
- Clarisse Bardiot, "Diverting/Adapting Technologies"
http://prehystories.ning.com/profiles/blogs/a-final-note-on-9-evenings
http://www.fondation-langlois.org/flash/e/index.php?NumPage=574

- Umberto Eco, Open Work
http://prehystories.ning.com/profiles/blogs/interpretation-help-for-9
----- In „Opera Aperta“ („Open Work“, 1962), Umberto Eco defines a work of art as open, when it allows for various ways of „reading“ and interpreting it, when it embraces things that cannot be fully planned or foreseen, when the author/creator includes and welcomes chance, pluralism, complexity, multiplicity of meaning, unprecictability, ... It results in a willing loss of complete control on the side of the author. Eco especially puts the term openness in the contemporary-historical context of the early 60s. The computer and new scienctific developments challenge the arts + their means of expression: „The old forms were developed for representing an ordered, hierarchal and mappable reality. Inheriting a set of univocal conventions, the artist breaks or subverts the formal language to create work which allows varied interpretations, reflective of a contemporary worldview which is less hierarchal and more pluralistic.“ (http://distributedcreativity.typepad.com/reading_group/2005/10/post...)

- Roland Barthes, "Death of the Author", 1967
http://prehystories.ning.com/profiles/blogs/interpretation-help-for-9-1
------ excerpt, please understand "text", "author", "reader" in a very broad sense:
"Thus is revealed the total existence of writing: a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author. The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination. Yet this destination cannot any longer be personal: the reader is without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted. Which is why it is derisory to condemn the new writing in the name of a humanism hypocritically turned champion of the reader’s rights. Classic criticism has never paid any attention to the reader; for it, the writer is the only person in literature. We are now beginning to let ourselves be fooled no longer by the arrogant antiphrastical recriminations of good society in favor of the very thing it sets aside, ignores, smothers or destroys; we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author."
----- openness of the text, infinitely unfinished, each reader is co-authoring


#01: macro level - Robots vs Cyborgs

#01a: background
- robots: constructed from inanimate matter
- cyborgs: combination of cybernetics and organism

- for artist including the computer in sculpture/performance means to
----- give up (part of their) control
----- reflection on the human condition
- topos: life made from inanimate matter
----- definition of a topos: archetype, an idea that resurfaces over time, though changing in appearance it stays the same
----- golem, homunculus; from Frankenstein to Rocky Horror Picture Show
video: the golem, 1920: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zag79w8eIQ
----- alchemy, science, magic + what happens when you mess around
----- out of the lab, out of control --> the sourcerer's apprentice, Dr. Faust
----- creation of life as a scientific as well as artistic goal
----- Hans Moravec, "Serious attempts to build thinking machines began after the second world war. One line of research, called Cybernetics, used simple electronic circuitry to mimic small nervous systems, and produced machines that could learn to recognize simple patterns, and turtle-like robots that found their way to lighted recharging hutches." (http://www.aec.at/en/archives/festival_archive/festival_catalogs/festival_artikel.asp?iProjectID=8899)

#01b: examples

robots
- Chico McMurtrie/Rick Sayre, "The Tumbling Man", 1991
----- pneumatic robot, animated sculpture
----- lims controlled by two players, computer choses which limbs correspond with each of the participants, shifts over time;
----- "the ability for the sculpture to make decisions has opened up new boundaries"
----- questions power and control, letting go of control, and the power of collaboration
----- earlier work as a puppeteer --> computer has led to the freedom of his sculptures
----- http://www.aec.at/en/archives/prix_archive/prix_projekt.asp?iProjectID=2474


- Time's Up (artist collective from Linz, including Tim Boykett, Tina Auer et al)
----- "Sensory Circus", 2004:
---------- http://www.aec.at/en/archives/festival_archive/festival_catalogs/festival_artikel.asp?iProjectID=12973
---------- http://timesup.org/sc/index.html
----- "Body Spin", 2000:
---------- http://www.aec.at/en/archives/festival_archive/festival_catalogs/festival_artikel.asp?iProjectID=8287
---------- http://www.timesup.org/spin/

cyborgs
- Stelarc
----- body becomes obsolete, parts can be exchanged or modified --> just like in machines
----- machines to enhance the body
----- body as an object, not a subject
----- "redesigning the body / redefining what is human"
----- http://www.aec.at/en/archives/festival_archive/festival_catalogs/festival_artikel.asp?iProjectID=8882
----- blogpost-title: "Stelarc"
----- "Third Hand", 1992:
---------- http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/third/third.html
---------- http://www.aec.at/en/archives/festival_archive/festival_catalogs/festival_artikel.asp?iProjectID=8882
----- "Parasite Visions", 1997:
---------- http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/parasite/index.htm
---------- http://www.aec.at/en/archives/festival_archive/festival_catalogs/festival_artikel.asp?iProjectID=8472
----- http://prehysteries.blogspot.com/2008/07/stelarc.html + discussion + reading
----- "technologies also become obsolete": but can be replaced by always better + newer ones, the body becomes a constant site of construction
----- "stelarc's body of work"
----- the subject and the object, being a body and having a body

- Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto", 1985
----- "Simians, Cyborgs and Women", includes the Manifesto (chapter 8, p89 ff): http://a.aaaarg.org/text/3254/simians-cyborgs-and-women

- The Squames, "Cumulus", 1991


#02: interlude: virtual reality
- http://prehysteries.blogspot.com/2008/10/virtual-reality-vr.html


#03: micro level - life from the labs

- SymbioticA:
----- biological art
----- Australian based laboratory, where artists and scientists collaborate
----- "artistic inquiry into new knowledge and technology with a strong interest in the life sciences"
----- "this research is speculative in nature"
----- "SymbioticA strives to support non utilitarian, curiosity based, and philosophically motivated research"
----- "new means of artistic inquiry, one in which artists actively use the tools and technologies of science, not just to comment about them, but also to explore their possibilities."
----- blogpost-title: "SymbioticA"
----- http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/
----- video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOEJ92JNlgU


- Joe Davis, artistic molecules (sincethe mid 80ies)
----- some artistic molecules: "Microvenus", "Milkyway", "Riddle of Life"
----- blogpost-title: "Joe Davis, Microvenus": http://prehysteries.blogspot.com/2008/07/joe-davis-microvenus.html
----- www.thegatesofparadise.com/joe_davis.htm
----- http://www.aec.at/festival2000/texte/artistic_molecules_2_e.htm
----- "art as a form of life"
----- artistic graphics translated into genetic code and implemented into bacteria, replicated, sent to space
----- works at MIT's Rich Lab for about 10 years now, unpaid
----- video seen: "Gone Fishing", report on ABC
(http://abcnewsstore.go.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/DSIProductDisplay?catalogId=11002&storeId=20051&productId=2008171&langId=-1&categoryId=100032)