It has just been published, both in Russian and English, the book edited and curated by Dmitry Bulatov Evolution Haute Couture: Art and Science in the Post-Biological Age. Part 2: Theory, Kaliningrad, BB NCCA, 2013. The volume, that contains an essay of mine, is a wide attempt to represent the contemporary theoretical panorama about the influence that the “new sciences” and disciplines (Biology, Genetics, Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Life, Robotics, Cybernetics, Neurosciences, Nanotechnologies…) can achieve in the contemporary culture and in the art forms, in order to foster a global reflection about this evolution. The Part 1, about the practice in these disciplines, was published in 2009, and here you can find some information about it.
From the book’s brochure:
EVOLUTION HAUTE COUTURE:
ART AND SCIENCE IN THE POST-BIOLOGICAL AGE
Part 2: Theory. Edited and curated by Dmitry Bulatov
560 pp. with 293 b/w ill., Kaliningrad: BB NCCA, 2013
How can the radicalization and redundancy of science and technology progress be defined? What is the evolutionary potential of 21st Century technology trends such as robotics, IT, biomedicine, and nanotechnology? Each of these trends actualizes traditionally formed boundaries of the beginning and end of human existence, the demarcation of norm and pathology, and the distinction of the non (or semi) organic model or entity. These, and other issues, cannot be taken into consideration without the experience of contemporary techno-biological arts – the representatives of which do not so much confirm the technological versions of contemporaneity, as determine these versions’ boundaries. Art created under new conditions of postbiology – that is, under conditions of an artificially fashioned lifespan – cannot help but take this artificiality as its explicit theme. In questioning the causes and consequences of technological progress and its central role in today’s society, renowned representatives of contemporary art, science and philosophy are attempting to elucidate the foundation that gives rise to “artificial,” “technological” reality, as well as to explain how this reality impacts us. Is it possible to reinvent a language that can simultaneously construct and describe the world of technology? The aim of this book is to show how artists are creating new forms and new identities – not as the protagonists of a historically-determined technological narrative, but as its creators.
This volume contains essays by artists, philosophers, scientists, and art historians, including Stephen Wilson (US), Roy Ascott (UK), Pier Luigi Capucci (IT), Paul Brown (UK/AU), Jon McCormack (AU), Simon Penny (US), Ana Viseu (CA), Susan E. Ryan (US), Laura Beloff (FI), Jana Horakova (CH), Dmitry Galkin (RU), Louis-Philippe Demers (SG), Chris Hables Gray (US), Erkki Huhtamo (US), Stelarc (AU), Andrew Pickering (UK), Steve M. Potter (US), Thomas S. Ray (US), Jens Hauser (GER/FR), Robert Mitchell (US), Konstantin Bokhorov (RU), Oron Catts (AU), Ionat Zurr (AU), Melinda Cooper (AU), Luciana Parisi (UK), Colin Milburn (US), Dmitry Bulatov (RU), Joanna Zylinska (UK), Eugene Thacker (US), and Boris Groys (US)
Additional info: postbiology@gmail.com
Website of the Part 1: http://videodoc.ncca-kaliningrad.ru/eng/
INTRODUCTION
Dmitry Bulatov Art and Science as the Conjectured Possible
I. PATENT FOR LIFE:
Doorway to the Post-Biological Culture
Stephen Wilson Issues in the Integration of Art, Science and Technology
Roy Ascott The Tao of Variability: The Multiple Self in a Multiple Reality
Pier Luigi Capucci Declinations of the Living: Toward the Third Life
II. ARTIFICIAL BUT ACTUAL:
Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life
Paul Brown Notes Towards a History of Art, Code and Autonomy
Jon McCormack Evolutionary and A-life Art: Cosmic Pyramids and the Origination of Novelty in Machines
Simon Penny Art after Computing
III. LIMITS OF MODELING:
Evolutionary Design and WearComp
Ana Viseu WearComps and the Informed Informational Body
Susan Elizabeth Ryan Emotional Exchange: Wearable Technology as Embodied Practice
Laura Beloff The Body in Posse: Viewpoints on Wearable Technology
IV. SHINING PROSTHESES:
Robotics
Jana Horakova Robot and Kitsch: From the Myth of Technological Progress Towards the Medium of Subversive Strategies of Posthumanism
Dmitry Galkin Cybernetic Art in the 1950s-60s: Robotic Sculptures
Louis-Philippe Demers Machine Performers: Neither Agentic nor Automatic
V. BODY AS TECHNOLOGY:
Techno-body Modification and Cyborgization
Chris Hables Gray The Uncanny Evolution of Homo Cyborg
Erkki Huhtamo Cyborg is a Topos
Stelarc Fractal Flesh / Liminal Desires: The Cadaver, the Comatose and the Chimera
VI. MODULATING A SIGNAL:
From Cybernetics to Neuroengineering
Andrew Pickering Brains, Selves and Spirituality in the History of Cybernetics
Steve M. Potter Better Minds: Cognitive Enhancement in the 21st Century
Thomas S. Ray Future Minds, Mental Organs, and Ways of Knowing
VII. MORE THAN A COPY, LESS THAN NOTHINGNESS:
Bio and Genetic Engineering
Jens Hauser Toward a Phenomenological Approach to Art Involving Biotechnology
Robert Mitchell Bioart: Media, Evolution, Culture
Konstantin Bokhorov The Painful Supremacy of the Ethical
VIII. SEMI-LIVING:
Synthetic Biology and Tissue Engineering
Oron Catts Synthetic Control – (Un)limited Life
Ionat Zurr In Continuous State of Semi-Living: A Partial Survey of Contemporary Artists Working with Living Tissue
Melinda Cooper Topological Architecture – Tissue Engineering and the Permanent Embryogenesis of Form
IX. POST-SODOM AND POST-GOMORRAH:
From Nano to the Technological Unconscious
Luciana Parisi Nanoarchitectures: The Arrival of Synthetic Extensions and Thoughts
Colin Milburn Postmortem: The Necrosis of Nanotechnology
Dmitry Bulatov A New State of the Living
X. RE-CODING:
Differing from the Future
Joanna Zylinska ‘Inventing Well’: Creativity, Biology and Life
Eugene Thacker Exobiologies
Boris Groys Immortal Bodies: Communist Resurrection
XI. APPENDIX
BIOGRAPHIES
INDEX OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Dmitry Bulatov
Dmitry Bulatov is an artist, curator and art theorist. His research focuses on different aspects of interdisciplinary art media, as well as on submediality aesthetics. His artworks have been presented internationally, including 49th and 50th Venice Biennale (2001, 2003), Ars Electronica Festival (ORF, 2002) and many others. Bulatov has taken part in numerous international contemporary art conferences and given lectures in Russia, USA, Canada, Germany, Mexico, Singapore and Hong Kong. In 2007 his artwork has been selected by Wired magazine as the world’s 10 top innovations. In 2009 he has been awarded the National Innovation Award for Contemporary Visual Arts. He has curated about more than twenty major exhibitions in Russia and abroad, including “SOFT CONTROL: Art, Science and the Technological Unconscious” as part of the Maribor – European Capital of Culture 2012. Since 1998 Bulatov is the curator at the Baltic Branch of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts (Russia).
