Engineering Nature

Description

This is the third book in a series drawing on papers presented at annual Consciousness Reframed conferences.  In addition to focusing on the 2003 conference, it also includes papers published in the journal Technoetic Arts.  With some 45 contributors, each chapter presents current issues arising in the context of art, technology and consciousness.

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Arts visuels
• Mathematical
• Life Sciences
• BIOLOGY
• Sciences et techniques
• Computational
• General officer
• Physics
• Consciousness
• General
• 454 Life Sciences
• ART
• Science
• Physique
• Physical attractiveness

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841509280
• Langue: English

Extrait

Engineering Nature
Art & Consciousness in the Post-Biological Era
Edited by Roy Ascott
First Published in the UK in 2006 by
Intellect Books, PO Box 862, Bristol BS99 1DE, UK
First Published in the USA in 2006 by
Intellect Books, ISBS, 920 NE 58th Ave. Suite 300, Portland, Oregon 97213-3786, USA
Copyright 2006 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 1-84150-128-X
Cover Design: Gabriel Solomons
Copy Editor: Wendi Momen
Printed and bound in Great Britain by 4edge, UK.
Contents
Preface
Introduction
1. The Mind
1.1 Towards a Conscious Art Robert Pepperell
1.2 Effing the Ineffable: An Engineering Approach to Consciousness Steve Grand
1.3 (Re)Constructing (Non)Dualism Andrea Gaugusch
1.4 Another View from the Blender Michael Punt
1.5 Bio-electromagnetism: Discrete Interpretations Nina Czegledy
1.6 MEDIATE: Steps Towards a Self-Organising Interface Paul Newland, Chris Creed and Maestro Ron Geesin
1.7 Facts about P-E-M (Psycho-Enhanced Memberships) you must know Armando Montilla
1.8 Happenstances Evgenija Demnievska
1.9 Ontological Engineering: Connectivity in the Nanofield Roy Ascott
2. The Body
2.1 Are the Semi-Living Semi-good or Semi-evil? Ionat Zurr and Oron Catts
2.2 Absent Body Project Yacov Sharir
2.3 Our Body as Primary Knowledge Base Kjell Yngve Petersen
2.4 Electronic Cruelty Gordana Novakovic
2.5 Design Against Nature Anthony Crabbe
2.6 Why Look at Artificial Animals? Geoff Cox and Adrian Ward
2.7 Biopoetry Eduardo Kac
3. The Place
3.1 Real Virtuality: Authenticity in Electronic and Non-electronic Environments Eril Baily
3.2 Sharing Virtual Reality Environments across the International Grid (iGrid) Margaret Dolinsky
3.3 Interactive, Responsive Environments: a Broader Artistic Context Garth Paine
3.4 Towards Defining the Atmosphere and Spatial Meaning of Virtual Environments Ioanna Spanou and Dimitris Charitos
3.5 Symbiotic Interactivity in Multisensory Environments Stahl Stenslie
3.6 Aesthetics Within Ego Shooter Games Maia Engeli
3.7 Creative Communities in Networked Hybrid Spaces Mauro Cavalletti
3.8 From Multiuser Environments as Space to Space as a Multiuser Environment: Cell Phones in Art and Public Spaces Adriana de Souza e Silva
3.9 Arch-OS v1.1 (Architecture Operating Systems), Software for Buildings Mike Phillips and Chris Speed
3.10 (an)Architecture, Eros, Memory: the Naxsmash Project Christina McPhee
3.11 Who Plays the Nightingale? Claudia Westermann
3.12 Breeding, Feeding, Leeching Shaun Murray
4. The Text
4.1 The Potential of Electronic Textuality Dene Grigar
4.2 Art and Information David Topping
4.3 Metaphorical Vestiges on Info-Viz Trails Donna Cox
4.4 Interstellar Messaging, Xenolinguistics, and Consciousness: LiveGlide Meets the SETI Enterprise Diana Reed Slattery and Charles Ren Mathis
4.5 Art and HCI: A Creative Collaboration Ernest Edmonds, Linda Candy, Mark Fell and Alastair Weakly
5. The Art
5.1 The Idea Becomes a Machine: AI and A-Life in Early British Computer Arts Paul Brown
5.2 The Interactivity of the Moving Document as the Diegetic Space of Consciousness Clive Myer
5.3 Assimilating Consciousness: Strategies in Photographic Practice Jane Tormey
5.4 Simultaneity, Theatre and Consciousness Daniel Meyer-Dinkgr fe
5.5 Cinematic Soteriology: Darshanic Effects in the Tamil Bakthi Films Niranjan Rajah
5.6 Search For Utopia: Human Consciousness and Desire Julia Rice
5.7 Super Interactivity: Art, Consciousness, and the Dawn of the Participatory Age Alex Shalom Kohav
5.8 Pete and Repeat were Sitting on a Fence: Iteration, Interactive Cognition and an Interactive Design Method Ron Wakkary
5.9 Visual Art as an Earning Process: The New Economics of Art Nicholas Tresilian
5.10 Culture, Ecology and the Real Paul O Brien
5.11 The Immersive Experience of Osmose and Eph m re: An Audience Study Hal Thwaites
5.12 On Making Music with Artificial Life Models Eduardo Reck Miranda
5.13 Artistic Strategies for Using the Arts as an Agent through the Creation of Hyper-Reality Situations Karin S ndergaard
6. The Future
6.1 The Nanomeme Syndrome: Blurring of Fact and Fiction in the Construction of a New Science Jim Gimzewski and Victoria Vesna
Contributor Biographies
Preface
These papers have been selected in part from the proceedings of the Fifth International Research Conference of Consciousness Reframed: Art and Cconsciousness in the post-biological era that took place July 31st -August 3rd, 2003 at the Caerleon campus of the University of Wales, Newport. Since the first conference, which I convened there in 1996, a consistent level of excellence, originality and insight has been maintained in the papers presented -a clear indication, I believe, that the issue of consciousness in the arts, and the significance of science and technology in this context, are of dynamic relevance to contemporary culture. Other papers, which add significantly to this issue, have been selected from Technoetic Arts, the international journal of speculative research, published by Intellect Ltd, of which I am founding editor.
The issues signalled in these articles, together with the proceedings of previous Consciousness Reframed conferences, and the texts of the journal, provide a rich exploration of the technoetic principle in art (that which prioritises the technologies of consciousness), and, taken as a whole, constitute a valuable archive of the ideas that are informing emergent fields of transdisciplinary theory and practice. Many perspectives can be brought to bear on art in the post-biological era, and whether they are scientific, poetic, spiritual, ethical, or social, they each occupy a place at the cutting edge of our 21st century s artistic adventure.
Matters of mind, and the navigation, and perhaps eventually the explanation of consciousness are of cardinal significance to both art and science, just as they have always been at the very centre of the search for knowledge and our exploration of the numinous in previous, even archaic cultures. This book embodies the writings of artists and scholars from twelve countries in four continents, and so may be considered as a valuable reflection of international thought, practice and meditation on the place of technology and consciousness research in the current techno-culture.
Roy Ascott
Director of the Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth
Introduction
Past ontologies have always taken the view that nature engineers events, rather in the way that the cosmos engineers time and space. Simply put, there is either a big design with a built-in telos or an emergent coherence that can be rationally apprehended. Classically, we have assumed that time flows only one way, events are connected in causal relationships, reality has been engineered ab initio . The clockwork model persists, with many cognitive scientists seeing the mind as an epiphenomenon of the brain. With this model it is possible to conceive of reverse engineering nature, the better to surpass or at least mimic natural process.
Quantum science, while recognising the linear lawfulness of macroscopic events, takes a different view: at levels below its atomic and molecular materiality, nature is without the status of certainty; the complimentarity of particle and wave, matter and spirit, provides only for indeterminate outcomes. Non locality and non linearity are qualities at the very foundations of life, the specificity of all quantum events depending on our active participation as observers.
The artist, dealing mostly in metaphor, is sensitive to these conflicting descriptions of nature, while depending finally on intuition to resolve or enrich the ambiguities of interpretation. As one who builds worlds with images, texts, movement or sound, the artist is particularly responsive to the idea that nature is constructed. Some may go so far as to see the material world as an epiphenomenon of the mind, or as an aspect of the flux and flow of a universal field of consciousness.
The understanding of what constitutes nature has undergone considerable revision in the past hundred years, with some arguing that the term should be removed from enlightened discourse, and others asserting that it was never more than a ploy for enforcing the immutability of moral values, a part of the project to normalise the irrational and uncontrollable in human behaviour. In some cultures it replaces the spiritual .
Computer assisted technologies have allowed us to look deeper into matter and out into space, to elicit or construct meaningful patterns, rhythms, cycles, correspondences, interrelationships and dependencies at all levels. Computational systems have led us to an understanding of how the design and construction of our world could constitute an emergent process, replacing the old top-down approach with a bottom-up methodology. Nano science has been particularly suggestive in this, as well as other, even more challenging respects. Telematic systems have enabled us to distribute ourselves over multiple locations, to diversify our identity, to extend our reach over formidable distances with formidable speed. We have learned that everything is connected, and we are busy in the technological process of connecting everything. Nature and consciousness may be terms to describe the inward and outward manifestations of a profound, complex and numinous connectivity that not simply pervades the universe but constitutes it.
The role of mixed reality technologies and telematic media can be seen to have much potency in creating a dynamic equilibrium between natural and artificial processes and systems, which is to say, between the giv