a humanist in the world of bio-techno-logy
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Author: Barbara Kita CyberEmpathy ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12) The Archetypes of CyberspaceTRANSCRIPT
CyberEmpathy - Visual Communication Studies ISSN 2299-906X ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12) The Archetypes of Cyberspace www.CyberEmpathy.com
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BARBARA KITA
A Humanist in the World of Bio-Techno-Logy (book review)
CyberEmpathy - Visual Communication Studies ISSN 2299-906X ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12) The Archetypes of Cyberspace www.CyberEmpathy.com
Barbara Kita
A Humanist in the World of Bio-Techno-Logy (book review)
Abstract:
The fifth edition of the digital_ia festival resulted in a set of as many as 16 scientific texts (including Introduction) edited and collected by Piotr Zawojski in the volume entitled Bio-techno-logiczny świat (Bio-techno-logical world. Bio Art and Technoscience Art in the Time of Posthumanism and Transhumanism). The book edited by Zawojski destroys our confidence in not being influenced by semi-digital world surrounding us by proving that what is located in the area between users and technological entities affects us and, most importantly, more and more often becomes a subject of transdisciplinary reflection. Diversity of topics and the range of reflection presented in the book suggests (or even requires) creating next texts of such a type, a whole series with Bio-techno-logical World as its opening. Piotr Zawojski, the editor of the volume, is fully aware of this and he emphasises an initiatory nature of the presented reflections. Tags: Technoculture, Art, Technoscience Art, Posthumanism, Transhumanism;
BARBARA KITA Barbara Kita: Ph.D., Assistant Professor at the Department of Film & Media Studies, The University of Silesia, Katowice. She is author of wide range books and manuscripts. Her research interests are focused on film and media theory, and the issue of space.
CyberEmpathy - Visual Communication Studies ISSN 2299-906X ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12) The Archetypes of Cyberspace www.CyberEmpathy.com
The need to integrate artistic activities and scientific reflection is recognized by
Piotr Zawojski, the volume editor, already in the book Digital touch (2010)
where cyberculture is defined as “a new technocultural formation based on
cooperation of art, science and technology” (p.5). It seems that the next volume
encompasses such integrated reflection as it collects thoughts coming from
different fields of (post)(trans)humanist science represented by numerous
authors of diverse scientific and artistic background, who are theoreticians or
practitioners (although nowadays the distinctions are hardly recognizable).
The fifth edition of the digital_ia festival resulted in a set of as many as 16
scientific texts (including Introduction) edited and collected by Piotr Zawojski
in the volume entitled Bio-techno-logiczny świat 1 (Bio-techno-logical
world. Bio Art and Technoscience Art in the Time of Posthumanism and
Transhumanism). To say that the publication is a very original one (especially
in the Polish context) is surely not enough and, in a sense, untrue. It is untrue
due to its seemingly unprecedented character - initiatives related to the festival
in Szczecin already have their own tradition and their themes revolve around
the issues of art, reality and digitality as well as artistic practices and
theoretical concerns expressed by a group of professionals selected on the basis
of their interests, experience and practice. And their interests are usually
concentrated on the diagnosis of multiple transformations emerging at the
junction of technology, human being, art and philosophy. The selection of
authors is not accidental, they do not include people who would, “on request”,
adopt a position on “a given matter” - this time defined around the category
(sic!?) of bio-techno-logy (as the volume editor names the complexity of issues
in the Introduction). They are authors well known for their activity, who once 1 Piotr Zawojski – Author’s Official Website: http://www.zawojski.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/04/Bio_techno_ostateczne.pdf
CyberEmpathy - Visual Communication Studies ISSN 2299-906X ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12) The Archetypes of Cyberspace www.CyberEmpathy.com
again prove their ongoing and continuously deepened interests - Marcin
Składanek, Sidey Myoo and Piotr Zawojski. Names known from previous
digital_ia festivals and other works addressing similar issues also appear in
this volume, including, among others, Piotr Celiński, Ewa Wójtowicz, Anna
Nacher and Aleksandra Hirszfeld.
As interface, media and multimedia technologies users we often tend to get an
(unfortunately) wrong impression that particular aspects of life which has
become semi-digital do not apply to us. The book edited by Zawojski destroys
our confidence in this respect by proving that what is located in the area
between users and technological entities affects us and, most importantly,
more and more often becomes a subject of transdisciplinary reflection. In fact,
this would not be possible otherwise as the very subject of reflection of the
Authors of the texts eludes terminological univocity and is of hybrid and
indeterminate character. Zawojski indicates these changes in the introduction
by writing: "The issues of telepresence, bionic body, network philosophy and
networking are often areas where phenomena of the postbiological field
manifest themselves and postbiology is reciprocally related to new media
issues which treat technology and technoscience as a kind of matrix, a natural
environment" (p. 4., Introduction. Bio-techno-logy, or logos in the world of
biology and technology).
The dilemmas faced by the Authors are visible in the very titles which are more
often than not at least metaphorical in nature. There are in fact: "the uncanny
valleys" in Ewa Wójtowicz’s paper which is abundant in questions about a shift
in understanding of telepresence/telematics or about genetic surveillance.
CyberEmpathy - Visual Communication Studies ISSN 2299-906X ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12) The Archetypes of Cyberspace www.CyberEmpathy.com
Owing to Aleksandra Hirszfeld’s text about new media art we will find out what
kind of monologues are conducted by organs and tissues. The essay is,
however, rather a set of descriptions of phenomena, art works, performances
which only ascertains their corporeal-technological effect and lacks an attempt
of interpretation. Anna Nacher convinces us that "trees speak" when she
presents examples of experimental actions aiming at communication with
plants. Thus we become convinced that it is not groundless to speak to plants
which surround us and that this type of stimulation exists and is effective on a
certain level (a similar thread is addressed by Michał Brzeziński). Nacher
combines the spheres of botany and acoustics, and suggests to examine the
type of communication in the world of nature which occurs without any
involvement of a human factor, yet, by means of technology, it is carried out in
wireless communication.
Within the frame of almost classical discourses (if one can put it in this way in
the context of digital narratives) - Piotr Celiński’s redefinition of the concept of
medium seems particularly interesting with respect to the innovative character
of the issues discussed in the book. Celiński emphasises the existence of a new
kind of imaginarium which was entered by biomediations owing to artistic,
creative and scientific practices. On the other hand, Sidey Myoo suggests a
reflection on already historical questions within the bimodality of reality
ontology which always accompanies new situations of reception and
participation. The author - basing on his own experiences with creating
Academia Electronica - argues that “Continual participation in an environment
like Second Life can turn into an authentic existence”. A peculiar continuation
of the thought and an answer to ontological dilemmas at the junction of the
CyberEmpathy - Visual Communication Studies ISSN 2299-906X ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12) The Archetypes of Cyberspace www.CyberEmpathy.com
virtual and the real, deepened with ethical conditioning of the proposals
presented in the volume which concern: biological and anthropological
reevaluation under the influence of technology, art, science and creation is
gained from the conversation with Joanna Żylińska, the author of the book
Bioethics in the Age of New Media (2009). The philosopher postulates to
considerably broaden the understanding of the category of “the Other” and
proposes a type of “posthumanist” bioethics which more closely reflects
current needs of the era of digitisation, hybridisation and scientific progress
enabling communication with “the Others” and exploration of the areas so far
“invisible” for the human being.
The invariable subject of this type of publication is the question about identity
which can also be found here although it is not articulated directly (as what
type of identity, which identity, whose identity are we to ask about?). The
authors clearly want to underline the breakthrough moment of the change of
the paradigm - a rather risky, it would seem, way of thinking about art, culture
and technology – thinking not only from the point of view of a human being.
One of the important assets of the project, which sensitises human subjects to
a different understanding of the world, is going beyond the anthropocentric
conditions towards postanthropologic reflections or even posthumanist
visions. Bio art certainly does not provide answers to this type of dilemmas,
however it raises important questions about art in the era of a hydra with many
heads, a personified hybrid of a man with technology in science, the world of
nature with media, technology with the body or a living creature. Here a vast
perspective stretches from human + equipped with a bionic mind and body to
microbial painting. Human + is the subject of interest of Bartosz Kłoda-
CyberEmpathy - Visual Communication Studies ISSN 2299-906X ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12) The Archetypes of Cyberspace www.CyberEmpathy.com
Staniecko who directly writes about blurring the line between bios and techne
so that homo cyberneticus seems less a fictional character from the cinema of
the 1980s than an ever-relevant configuration which defines subjectivity.
Microbial painting, being the result of a vision-centric explosion of Western
culture, is meticulously reconstructed by Wojciech Sitek. From the vision
machine to creative (artistic) act, from scientific act to the effect in art, from
evolutionary art to generative art (the art of code), as the emergence of a digital
order into an artistic domain - as expressed by Marcin Składanek in one of the
most interesting, and most complete in terms of vision, articles in this volume.
Składanek focuses on presenting transgression from the formula of art of
artificial life (shaped analogously to the natural one) to generative design
which does not require a biological superstructure. “Constant balancing
between the artist’s intention and recipient’s responsibility for the shape of
interactive realisation and autonomy of a generative mechanism marks
progressiveness of the practices, both in terms of technology and concept” -
this is how areas of research into art itself are (should be) demarcated,
concludes the Author.
There is also a multitude of voices directly related to bio art, both practical
(Hirszfeld, Brzeziński) and analytical, Małgorzata Dancewicz or Magdalena
Worłowska. The proposals mainly attempt to describe and interprete various
examples (Stelarc, Kaca, Sellars, Strumiłło, or the whole gallery of characters of
Polish artists presented by Worłowska: Malik, Mańczak, Wierzbicka,
Kowalska) often embarking on an experimental path of activities in art which
can be described as ecological (from land art to ecological criticism), providing
examples on the verge of corporeal autonomy mutated by the Other with the
CyberEmpathy - Visual Communication Studies ISSN 2299-906X ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12) The Archetypes of Cyberspace www.CyberEmpathy.com
use of the latest technology and genetics or bio art as continuation of
performative activities. Affectiveness appears to be a kind of extended
aesthetics in the time of trans-species interaction and mutation, which is
postulated in Brzeziński’s text. The author convinces us that the affect “bridges
the gap between humanities - mind and body and natural sciences”.
A thoroughly different phenomena is Zbigniew Oksiuta’s essay entitled I, the
chamber dweller. A vision to have one’s own and self-sufficient chamber -
apartment - house may be (for some people is) attractive. The place is not so
intelligent (in the sense of a digital-technological system controlling the house
and our needs), it is a biological autopoietic cell, a system, a type of dwelling
whose core is the user. “A living habitat - a biological cell, a personal biosphere
can become a new mediator between nature and culture” - as the author puts
it.
Bio-techno-logical World. Bio Art and Technoscience Art in the Time of
Posthumanism and Transhumanism is the book which presents a very
attractive and, at the same time, actually hardly recognised (particularly in
Poland) area of research/creativity/activities located at the junction of art,
technology, media, humans (or rather posthuman subjects) and science.
Diversity of topics and the range of reflection presented in the book suggests
(or even requires) creating next texts of such a type, a whole series with Bio-
techno-logical World as its opening. Piotr Zawojski, the editor of the volume,
is fully aware of this and he emphasises an initiatory nature of the presented
reflections. Zawojski is also the author of the last article about dilemmas of art
in the time of post- and transhumanism (maybe it would be worth to revise the
CyberEmpathy - Visual Communication Studies ISSN 2299-906X ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12) The Archetypes of Cyberspace www.CyberEmpathy.com
order of the essays). His text to a large extent organises the way of thinking
about issues indicated in the title and, at the same time, defines the notions
from the title explaining their new/reassessed meanings (a notable example is
the question of understanding posthumanism and transhumanism which are
not the end of humanity but which need to be defined anew in the context of
the new Other. It is a basic question for understanding the essays included in
the volume). Zawojski also writes: "Reflection on the practical consequences of
the biotechnological revolution is a real challenge for people for whom the
future of art, technology, posthumanism and transhumanism is not just a
linguistic game. Research perspective which allows to integrate life sciences
[...] and computer sciences [...] in a way that meets the requirements of our
epoch is a kind of epistemological imperative. " This strong statement of
research attitude seems to be present in most of the proposals of the authors of
this volume, which, either in a clearer or more subtle way, take possession of
potential readers’ imagination making them reflect on matters broader than
bio art which, to a large extent, is the protagonist of this publication. Yet, while
introducing us into much broader areas, the authors are fully aware of the
complexity of the discourses which ceased to exist separately and function in
multidimensional correlates at the junction of technology, biology and science
instead.
It is also a book that inscribes itself in very modern areas of thinking about art
and puts forward for further consideration the issues of artist's obligations not
only towards art, but also towards the artistic material - human body or other
(animal) body. Posthumanist and transhumanist discourses presented in the
book most often become the starting point for discussions taking place within
CyberEmpathy - Visual Communication Studies ISSN 2299-906X ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12) The Archetypes of Cyberspace www.CyberEmpathy.com
dynamically developing (also in Poland) animal studies. Such opening to a
slightly different problematics seems to be a natural consequence of the
resignation from anthropocentric approach in favour of obscuring the
boundaries between “humans, animals and machines” (p.281). It triggers or
even forces an attitude of continuous reinterpretation of dynamic phenomena
occurring at the intersection of these areas. Such a shift of perspective brings a
really surprising reflection that will not leave the reader indifferent.
Barbara Kita
A Humanist in the World of Bio-technology (book review)
CyberEmpathy - Visual Communication Studies Journal
ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12). The Archetypes of Cyberspace.
ISSN 2299-906X. Marika Wato.
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web: www.CyberEmpathy.com