Biology and Post-Biology
Symposium:
- ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art
- More presentations from ISEA2011:
Session Title:
- VIDA: New Discourses, Tropes and Modes in Art and Artificial Life Research
Presentation Title:
- Biology and Post-Biology
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Panel: VIDA: New Discourses, Tropes and Modes in Art and Artificial Life Research
This talk will address a few thorny issues key to VIDA’s mission and my own work in emerging technologies of art: the tensions between complexity and reductionism, emergence and determinism, and living and non-living via another dualism, Biology and Post-biology. Central to this discussion are two projects Relative Velocity Inscription Device (a VIDA prize winning project, 2002) and Ocular Revision (2010). The former project is a live scientific experiment in which DNA from my own family’s skin color genes are literally raced against one another in a DNA fingerprinting gel, implying a valuation of their speed such as genetic fitness.
In the latter project, the notion of Genetic Mapping is turned upside-down, as I create satellite-like images of the Earth’s hemispheres by inserting uniquely processed E. coli DNA into a custom, circular electrophoresis apparatus. These projects reflect upon epistemic differences in the life sciences between the Biological and the Post-biological periods. Whereas Biology defined the cell as the basic unit of life and thus took upon itself a new object, life itself, Post-biology shifts the focus of the life-sciences to non-living matter, DNA. Furthermore, this Post-biological turn takes a further cybernetic twist as the non-living matter of DNA is increasingly treated as a pure code, rather than a material substance. The differences are not simply a matter of scale in which more powerful tools allow us to look deeper, but rather a shift from the primacy of vision altogether toward a hyper-rationalized, statistical observation. I believe that these issues reflect a changing vision of organic life, a topic fundamental to emerging artistic practices and the VIDA mission.