Transvergence 1 - Short Summary introduction - 2006/05/02 11:14Hello and welcome everybody for the online Transvergence 1 discussion scheduled to take place between May 1-7. I am very much looking forward to the discussion ahead of us, and I would already now invite a vivid participation from the side of the authors and the audience.
I would like to jump right into the discussion by recalling some of the topics mentioned in the conceptual outline of the Transvergence topic. After this I will briefly introduce the three abstracts we are going to talk about with the authors this week.
According to the ISEA2006 organizers, the topic of Transvergence is meant to „go beyond the disciplinary“. The individual disciplines have in themselves become so complex that a further meaningful development (and, in a way, a further making sense of the world) seems possible only by introducing a kind of radical interdisciplinarity, or rather: transvergence. Also, and I am quoting from the conceptual outline, „there is a growing realization that the binaries of culture—us / them, good / bad, free / market — are not solutions. At least not sustainable ones.“ And the outline continues with what I think is a crucial question: „To what extent can we think of transvergence as a vector away from these divides, modeling practices across the domains of culture, creativity, academia, and entrepreneurship to dream up a responsible future?“
The papers that have been invited to this panel definitely go beyond (or transgress) the boundaries of known disciplines as well as known forms of institutions. What I would like to focus on in the discussion is how or whether the question of responsibility is addressed by the individual approaches. This seems like an obvious question (at least for me as a European especially as we have two abstracts dealing with questions of living tissues, cells, and life in general, and with „intensive genetic computation“.
Upon reading Oron Catts’ and Ionat Zurr’s abstract „Towards a New Class of Being – The Extended Body“ I was struck by what you are describing as massive ‚presence’ of disassociated living cells and tissues that is in the thousands of tons. As there’s no word to name this universe of living particles, you propose to call it „the extended body“ – an „amalgamation“ of the human body with tissue life and possibly an augmentation of the human body. Focussing on this living universe of disassociated living cells has a two-fold goal: a) detecting and identifying this universe and directing our attention on it, and b) by focussing our attention on that specific area, questioning the current assumptions about life. The extended body thus serves as a tool, an „ontological device“ with which to re-examine current biological or cultural classifications of „life“.
Gheorghe Dan and Alisa Andrasek propose in their abstract entitled „Phylotic BodyScapes | Entheogenic Gardens: poly-scalar heterotopic botany“ the development of a computational and production system that could generate ever new cultural and biological phenotypes out of the existing ones. The system would be „suitable for biomimetics and cultural mimetics, fashion, design and architecture“. Through processes of intensive genetic computation and extensive cross-breeding of genetic patterns (according to the authors, „design is understood as genetic inscription“) ever new forms could be generated in order to populate „real and irreal gardens patterned as phantasmagorical bodyscapes“.
The third abstract entitled „Voice and Code: From Spoken Word and Song to Writing to Music to Code“ by Josephine Bosma asks not only how the artistic use of program code reflects a changing attitude in the transcription and creation of meaning, but „also how this in turn reverberates in the use of our human voice, specifically in the arts.“ The focus of Josephine’s paper will be on artists such as Igor Stromajer, Fernando „Bifo“ Berardi, Alan Sondheim, Graham Harwood and others who use code for vocal expression in their own way. The projected paper thus seems to be pointing out a very interesting two-fold movement: the growing importance assigned to the performativity – not generativity, sorry, Josephine – of code („performative“ not in the sense of „performance“ but in the sense of „performativity“, i.e. code as a speech act that „does“ what it „says“) which at the same time is being performed live by the human voice.
I would now like to invite the authors, Oron and Ionat, Gheorghe and Alisa, and Josephine to please elaborate on their abstracts more in detail (and please correct me if I got something wrong about your topics). Could you, Oron and Ionat, please talk about responsibility, and could you describe the consequences of what you are calling the „extended body“? I would like to ask Gheorghe and Alisa to elaborate a bit on whether ths system they are describing is meant to function merely as a virtual generative design environment, or whether the plan is to plug it into some real world outlet? I would like to ask Josephine talk a bit more about the distinction between generative/performative (perhaps this is already too specialist – we can discuss this later as well, and first talk about the more general aspects). Another question for Josephine would be whether she sees the growing (?) presence of code in spoken word performances as a kind of „taking over“ of machinic languages of human communication. Which would be an interesting aspect. Last, but not least, as Gheorghe and Alisa’s and Josephine’s abstract mention code / genotypes and phenotypes: I would like to know how much of a metaphor you consider this, and/or how much this biological metaphor can be made productive in our context (this would entail the question on how much a living being is defined by its genes and how much by social factors)?
OK, so much for an introduction – now it’s your turn.
I would like to invite the authors to elaborate on their proposed abstracts.
After the elaboration session I will come back to each of you with a bag full of questions ...
Inke Arns
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Oron Catts
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Re:Transvergence 1 - Short Summary introduction - 2006/05/03 15:40Inke asked us to respond to the following question: Could you, Oron and Ionat, please talk about responsibility, and could you describe the consequences of what you are calling the „extended body“? The issue of responsibility is very important for our practice as well as to development of a new discourse concerning the fragments of life. When one encounter these ferments in an industrial or biomedical setting they are objectified, instrumentalised or simply treated as raw materials for (more often then not) the production of wealth – their actual function, source and ethical rights seems to be secondary to their profit potential. The idea of developing the concept of the extended body is to attempt to look at these (semi) living fragments as something else, something the require care and attenuation. As the extended body is product of technology gone biological the notion the responsibility and duty of care should be in the forefront. In addition, the current taxonomy of life still based on Judeo-Christian creation and hierarchical concepts might not be the most appropriate tool to deal with the semi-living. So here we have an instrumentalised, hierarchical story that needs to be dismantled and debunk through the idea of the extend body. It is, as mentioned, an ontological device that we use on a phenomenological level with our work (see www.tca.uwa.edu.au ) and on a theoretical level through our texts.
Oron
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Joel Slayton
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Re:Transvergence 1 - Short Summary introduction - 2006/05/03 21:18At question is what premises of responsibility are the appropriate tools for illuminating a discourse on extended body? One might argue that the social-political- ethical expectations that run parallel with research/development involving protological functions of biology are informed more by modernist sensibilities of science. That seems somewhat obvious in that the mechanisms of extended flesh are economically driven.
What I find interesting is the notion of ‘ontological device’, which I assume to mean the literal nature of the metaphysical systems (processes) that enable extended biology and not the artifacts themselves? If that is at least somewhat the case, and not dening the economic values of the artificats themeselves, what is the nature of the interacting elements that comprise these systems of production? How are we to consider them? For example, my understanding of in vitro cell production is that it can be grown from any source of cells including human although never part of a complete living organism. It would appear that notions of 'normalcy' have something to do with the ontolgoical device which in my mind is less cultural and more protological?
joel
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Inke Arns
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Dan/Andrasek's abstract - 2006/05/07 13:05OK, here are some more thoughts concerning Gheorghe Dan’s and Alisa Andrasek’s abstract:
Gheorghe Dan and Alisa Andrasek propose in their abstract entitled „Phylotic BodyScapes | Entheogenic Gardens: poly-scalar heterotopic botany“ the development of a computational and production system that could generate ever new cultural and biological phenotypes out of the existing ones. The system would be „suitable for biomimetics and cultural mimetics, fashion, design and architecture“. Through processes of intensive genetic computation and extensive cross-breeding of genetic patterns (according to the authors, „design is understood as genetic inscription“) ever new forms could be generated in order to populate „real and irreal gardens patterned as phantasmagorical bodyscapes“.
But what’s the concrete aim of growing, mutating and hybridizing ad infinitum existing phenotypes and thus creating ever new forms? To put it provocatively: Is this generative design approach of interest beyond the field of design? And is it interesting in the field of design?
In your abstract, you write that „Gardens were always optimistic reflections of the world“. This is an interesting observation I think. It implies that today gardens (like the one you propose, possibly?) could have turned into the exact opposite: into pessimistic reflections of the world, breeding the worst potentialities one could think of. Do you take this possibility into consideration in your project?
You seem to imply that evolution essentially is something positive, or, to put it more precisely, that it alyways develops things towards the better, optimizing their shapes. Could the idea of an evolutionary development that turns out bad (i.e. that develops the worst possible forms/shapes) be of interest for design (provided that you are aiming at the field of design)?
especially as we have two abstracts dealing with questions of living tissues, cells, and life in general, and with „intensive genetic computation“.