<nettime> Art, Multiplicity and Awareness

[Noema Staff <staff@noemalab.org>]

Dear all,

I gave this lecture at ARCO 2005 International Forum 
(http://arcoenglish.artmediacompany.com/amigos/foro/programa.jsp), Art 

and Technologies II, in the panel "Art in the Garden of Diverging 
Paths". Madrid 12/02/2005.

(The complete lecture with the slides is on Noema at
http://www.noemalab.org/sections/ideas/ideas_articles/
capucci_art_multiplicity/capucci_art_multiplicity.html)

Thank you and best,

Pier Luigi

_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/

Art, Multiplicity and Awareness
Pier Luigi Capucci


Undeniably we live in a historical age which shows a wide art 
diffusion. Art is one of the most inflated words, and although we may 

think it is not enough, art permeates almost every realm of our culture 

and our expressions. Artistical production is often performed in mass 

media contexts and channels. There are major events, like this one, 
like the Venice Biennale or like monographic exhibitions on art masters 

of the past which are mediatic events before being cultural events, 
which attract thousands of people, if not hundreds of thousands [1], 
whose large majority are art amateurs. Art is also a form of economical 

investment with a solid although risky market, and experts encourage 
new investors and say that this market is growing [2].

This democratization of the art world in the sense Walter Benjamin 
outlined [3] has lead our culture to a pervasive spreading of art 
ideas, but often simply reduced to styles, exteriority, behaviours, 
moods, fashions, communications, publicities. And the spreading of the 

art culture has enforced the awareness of what we can call the cultural 

and economical power of the art realm, which, especially in the latest 

decades, seemed to assume under its wings almost every new form of 
expression. Let's think here for instance of video art, computer art, 

art holography, interactive art, net.art, and so on...


The art's overturning

The spreading of art has lead to weaken its identity, so we assist to a 

sort of overturning. By the second half of the Nineteenth Century 
photography had to assume some of the styles of paintings and emulate 

pictures to become art, in order to share the power of imaging and 
representing. Baudelaire, who had understood the "natural alliance of 

photography with multitudes", wrote in 1859 his famous letters to the 

Revue Francaise in defense of art [4], which he feared would have been 

"ruined and substituted by photography". We know that history went 
otherwise and that photography did not replace paintings but went 
alongside them. Only painting applications that photography could 
achieve better disappeared, like, as Walter Benjamin still recalls [5], 

the miniature portraits, because photography could make them more 
reliably similar to the original subject and at a cheaper price. 
Instead, painting had to refocus its language, starting on the path 
which lead it to abstraction, that is precisely what photography cannot 

achieve. In fact a photograph is made by a process of recording the 
light reflected or emitted by the subject [6]. A photograph can be 
defined as a trace of the subject which it represents, because it is 
never possible to avoid the actual presence of its reference during the 

process of image achieving: without a subject which reflects or emits 

light during the shooting, there is no photography (according to Roland 

Barthes [7], photography is a proof of reality; in front of a 
photograph I can never deny that what is in the image has been - for 
some occurrence, in some moment of its life, for some reason - in front 

of the objective). This is also true for photomontages, with the 
difference that it can be said for each photographic part of the image. 

And although photography can be considered a proof of reality, a 
photograph, like any other signs, can have no relation with truth, that 

is, as we know, a photograph can lie (which is precisely a definition 

of sign in semiotics).

What has been previously said can be of some use to understanding the 

rising of a new medium and its settlement inside the mediascape, the 
realm of the existing media. Every new medium evolves from an early 
self referential stage, especially keen on its language and on 
technical processes, to a mature stage where technics tend to become 
transparent, and allow the user to concentrate on the results, the 
goals. Any new media expands the mediascape - adding more chances of 
expression and communication - and steals space from the other media 
where it possibly works better than them, forcing the other media to 
refocus and redefine their languages. So the mediascape is in an 
endless adjustment state, or in a "remediation process" as Bolter and 

Grusin call it [8], both because of the evolution of its inner media 
and because of the arrival of the new media.

So, to get back to our overturning, if in the past any new media had to 

emulate paintings to equal art's heights, in recent decades we often 
assist in the opposite: traditional art which emulates and takes 
inspiration from media events, mass communications, new media [9]. This 

is not negative per se, of course, but enforces the idea that maybe a 

better way of interpreting our current world and culture is achieved by 

art forms which use media and technological instruments. And exemplify 

the idea that media and communications are today a crucial topic for 
art.


A quick look at information and communication technologies

Maybe it can be useful to give a quick look at information and 
communication technologies, which are basically, although not only, 
digital based technologies. The advent of the microchip in 1971, by 
Intel, and hence the birth of the Personal Computer in 1976, by Apple, 

lead to evolving handy, flexible, general purpose, highly standardized 

and cheap machines. Especially in the last decade computational 
technologies have grown incredibly in power. [slide1]

This slide represents the spectacular growth of the computing power in 

the Personal Computer area (with one CPU), expressed both in MIPS 
(Millions of Instructions per Second, in blue) and in MHz (in red), 
starting from the invention of the microchip in 1971. This power growth 

rate has even been overcome by the evolution of the video boards, which 

today allow us to flawlessly work with images, video, multimedia, 
videogames, three dimensional graphics on larger monitors and at higher 

resolutions.
The Personal Computer area is most interesting for us and for artists 

too especially for being economical. But to give a more general idea of 

power computing growth, I can recall that Deep Blue, the machine which 

in 1997 defeated the chess world champion Gary Kasparov, had a 
computing power of roughly 3 millions MIPS, while one of today's most 

powerful supercomputers, the NEC Earth Simulator with 4096 CPUs, 
reaches about 30 millions MIPS.

One of the most complete and interesting studies about power computing 

trend, especially compared to the human brain power and the evolution 

of robotics, was made by Hans Moravec [10], one of the most prominent 

scientists in this field. In his studies he foresees an evolution of 
robotics which in about fifty years from now will lead robots to 
surpass humans and progressively substitute them in all activities, 
leaving humanity suspended in a sort of limbo. These robots, that 
Moravec calls "the children of our minds" because they are the legitime 

sons of our culture and no more of our biology, will evolve towards new 

conquests leaving humans in the dust. Although we may or may not agree 

with Moravec, undeniably robotics is going to become one of the hot 
sciences in a near future, posing huge questions about philosophy, 
ethics - both for humans and robots -, society, about the obsolete 
distinction/opposition between "natural" and "artificial", and 
highlighting new approaches to the meaning of knowledge, life, biology, 

intelligence... And also artists started to work around these ideas, in 

many ways. [slide 2]

These and other technological acquisitions also lead to reconsider the 

role of the body, since sciences and technologies raise new 
possibilities of acting on the body's physiology, psychology and 
appearance. But what is even more important is the body's centrality in 

the cognitive processes raised by the biology of knowledge and robotics 

approaches [11]. A new paradigm which recomposes the historical "mind 

vs body" opposition into a unitary and indivisible system, so 
undermining the famous cartesian statement "cogito ergo sum", which in 

its consequences is still a pillar of our culture.

To get back to computers, the experts think that the exponential-like 

growth of calculation power will hold at least for a decade from now, 

possibly using different computing technologies (multicore, 
multiprocessing, clustering, optical technologies), and, in an 
unpredictable future, maybe also quantum computers.

But this growth in power would be of almost no interest for us without 

the decrease of calculation costs. [slide 3]

This graph by William Nordhaus [12], in some way specular to the first, 

shows that the power calculation has become cheaper and cheaper, 
spreading the use of computers as everyday tools. Moreover, since the 

microprocessors costs are continuously lowering and chips do not add 
significant costs to the objects which they can be added to, chips - 
and often dozens of chips - are embedded into any common objects and 
means: cars, watches, washers, toasters, telephones, TVs, toys, photo 

and video cameras, Hi-Fis, VCRs and DVDs, faxes, household 
appliances... And chips are also in artificial prosthesis or are 
implanted in human bodies. A population of obscure and obedient 
entities which untiredly work in a discreet and invisible way.

Another main acquisition of our culture is the so called "real time 
information". Before the birth of the telegraph the information could 

be carried at a speed which had the same numerical order of the speed 

of humans, animals and things. Today people and things can be pushed to 

some thousands kilometers per hour, but the information instead can 
approximately reach the speed of light: that is today the information 

can be pushed to a speed which is about five hundred thousand times 
quicker than the speed of people and things [13], and with a transfer 

cost which is much less expensive. And it should be noted that the 
human kind has achieved this relevant goal in roughly only two 
centuries of evolution.

On wired and wireless "real time information" many of the 
telecommunication tools we currently use or that every day keep us 
informed are based, with applications from telephony to television, 
from Internet to telepresence, from wireless networks to mobile 
communications... Many artists, with different approaches and objects, 

use these instruments in their works. [slide 4]

In this field there is also the evolution of an art of online 
cooperation, which roots are in the hacker philosophy, based on 
knowledge and resources condivision, on peer participation, on 
collective working, which shows a totally different approach to the 
traditional art making and questions the classical artist's figure 
[14].

Of course there should be many other topics worth discussing in the 
trend which lead computing systems from machines for a tecno-economical 

elite to simple tools for common people and artists ("the computer for 

the rest of us", as once Steve Jobs, one of the inventors of the 
personal computer, said). Here I can at least briefly recall the 
evolution of "user friendly" operating systems, the evolution of 
software and of graphical interfaces (GUIs), the proliferation of cheap 

periferals for many tasks, the interoperability of many standards.

But although this process may seem in someway extraordinary, we are 
still in a sort of "stone age" of computing. In fact some experts, like 

for instance Michael Dertouzos, claimed about an "unfinished 
revolution" of information technologies, and on the desirable advent of 

an "anthropocentric informatics" [15], that is an informatics centered 

on people instead of on machines, where computers should understand 
humans and not, as today happens, where humans have to understand 
computers. It is a vision which for many reasons has still a long way 

to go, and where informatics has to work in conjunction with other 
disciplines, like artificial intelligence. Other experts instead turn 

their interest in discussing on friendliness, ergonomy, usability - and 

we could add "transparency" - of machines use and software [16].

And, of course, what is most important, we are in the "stone age" of 
computing also because only less than 10% of the World population can 

have access to these technologies, as cheap and "user friendly" as they 

may be.


Art and interactivity

One of the consequences in art of the technological trends previously 

outlined is interactive art. With technological instruments artists can 

give a sort of life to their works. Artists can easily and quickly 
manage and modify the dynamics of the artworks, give them a memory of 

their logic states, of their operating conditions and of their 
behaviour. Artworks react to the environments they are put into, 
acquire a sensibility to the world and to the presence and activity of 

the user.

Real interactive artworks can modify their morphostructure in response 

to the user's behavior and to the environment. The former classical and 

passive viewer or spectator becomes an active participant and sometimes 

a co-author of the artwork. The artwork shifts from the status of a 
closed object to the status of an open process of biunivocal 
relationships: the artwork itself resides in the interaction process, 

without which it is only hardware with a little or no artistic 
interest. And since interactivity varies because of the users' 
behaviour and because of their psychological and physyological states, 

the final artwork - the result of the interactive process - can never 

be completely predicted [17]. Hence the artwork is not based on 
identity - on a morphostructure which is stable and unchangeable, like 

that of a picture or a sculpure - but on difference - on a 
morphostructure which is unstable, metamorphic and ever changing. 
[slide 5]

Since these artforms are defined by the interaction with the user and 

the environment, the best suited places for their exibition do not 
appear to be the traditional artplaces like museums and galleries. With 

some remarkable exceptions museums and galleries, as they normally 
work, are usually closed spaces, with a specialized public who is aware 

of and respects the physical distance requested by traditional 
artworks. Museums and galleries generally require "spectators" and not 

"participants", "viewers" and not "users". In these spaces 
traditionally devoted to art, there is a symbolic, cultural and sacral 

distance between the user and the artwork. A distance which can only be 

crossed with the eyes and the mind, while the artwork can only be 
contemplated and must never be touched or - worse - modified in order 

to preserve its main artistic value: the originary intention of the 
artist.

So maybe interactive artforms are better suited for places where 
interactions can get a higher quantitative and qualitative probability 

to take place: the social environment, the public spaces, the 
infosphere of communications, the Net. Or we have to invent new museums 

and galleries. Once Peter Weibel defined as "contextual art" [18] these 

artforms sensible to and modifiable by the human and the environmental 

context. These forms of expression expand the chances of art thanks to 

the participation of the user, thanks to their social dimension and 
their versatility in communications, so recalling the utopias of a 
"diffuse aesthetics" [19].


Art and communications

As we know, art could be defined by a sort of tautology: "art is what a 

society - a culture - decides to be art". But in a world where from 
Duchamp onward literally anything can become "art" all the gaps tend to 

vanish. And the more the artfield broadens, the more art becomes 
uncertain, weak, contradictory. So mass media and mass communications 

become relevant in deciding what art can be and what it cannot be.

To exemplificate this concept let me present you one work, the Darko 
Maver Project by 01.org. As you may know, 01.org [20] is a duo working 

in the realm of media activism. In 1998 01.org invent an artist, Darko 

Maver, whose name is the real name of a Slovenian criminologist, gave 

him a birthplace (near Belgrade), a very detailed biography [21], and a 

corpus of artworks, sculptures, performances, exhibitions and writings. 

[slide 6]

Briefly, Darko Maver was abandoned at eight by his parents and after 
being hosted in an orphanage was adopted by the family of an arms 
dealer. He studied at the Fine Arts Academy of Belgrade and his 
artworks and performances are violent, macabre, politically oriented, 

they show injuried bodies, hypersimulations of violent murders. His 
artworks are reviewed in Yugoslavian newspapers and magazines which 
discuss Maver's poetics, and since artists often theorize on their 
work, Darko Maver also becomes a poet. [slide 7]

Of course everything was invented. At the beginning there was a website 

with Darko Maver's curriculum. The artworks images were "actually 
photos of real crimes, horrifying images of corpses available on the 
Internet on websites like www.rotten.com, at the disposal of anybody 
whom has guts enough to watch them" [22], and no magazine ever 
published about Maver. But everything was packaged for the media and 
the art realm, and in the summer of 1998 Maver became a "real" artist, 

with a series of exhibitions.

The story goes on: in October 1998 Darko Maver is imprisoned in 
Podgorica because of his anti-patriotic behaviour. [slide 8]

This has the effect of enhancing media coverage and opening some new 
exhibitions on his work. Specialists and art critics discuss his 
"provocative" work and poetics in newspapers and magazines, Darko Maver 

becomes a sort of dark and mysterious martyr of truth. [slide 9]

So, when the situation in Kosovo breaks with the NATO intervention in 

the Balkaans, for Darko Maver it's time to die, following his destiny, 

channelled by the media, of a damned icon living in a damned world, of 

an artiste maudit, a romantic idea which is perfectly suited for the 
artworld. In fact on May 15 1999, a laconic communicate with a photo of 

the body is sent to the press agencies announcing Maver's death in the 

prison of Podgorica. [slide 10]

The photograph, actually taken in a garret in the center of Bologna, 
rapidly circulates on the Internet and the press, and Darko Maver 
becomes a myth, dead under mysterious circumstances (Homicide? 
Suicide?), in a sort of last tragic performance in perfect synchrony to 

his work. Celebrations start with articles and exhibitions which 
culminate in an official invitation to the 48th Venice Biennale, where 

on September 23 an installation is presented to a large public with a 

documentary on the artist. [slide 11]

The real artwork, the art and media swindle, has come to its 
conclusion. At the beginning of 2000, in a long press release entitled 

"The Great Art Swindle. Do you ever get the feeling you're being 
cheated?" [23] 01.org reveal the fake, together with a photograph in 
which Darko Maver resurrects in the room where he was found dead. 
[slide 12]

This story can someway exemplify how the art realm works today. What is 

often exhibited is not only - and sometimes not at all - the artwork 
itself, but the communication it evocates and which it is evocated 
from. We could say that, at least from the rising of the avantgardes in 

the second half of the 19th Century, the artworld has always worked in 

such a way. In the end, what are art critics and historians, museums 
and galleries, press offices, collectionists, amateurs, art events and 

exhibitions, art magazines, art merchants, academies and universities, 

if not also a wide, complex and articulated communication system which 

presents, contextualizes, promotes and possibly sells the artworks? But 

the difference with today maybe is that in the past at the beginning 
there was a real object to exhibit, document, contemplate, investigate, 

acquire, sell... Everything started from the real presence of that 
object. In the 20th Century, as the mass media progressively grow in 
power and diffusion the avantgardes progressively centralize the idea, 

the event, the project and its communication instead of the object, and 

in the end they disappear. Today, in the global communication era, the 

art object tends to vanish, its centrality is taken up from 
communications, it is substituted by communications to an extent that 

the art object can be simply an accessory or it may not even exist: 
today in the beginning there are communications. This trend is 
encouraged by technological media, which almost by definition tend to 

emphasize processes, information and communication processes. In the 
case of Darko Maver some galleries continued asking for his artworks 
also after 01.org declared he was a fake, although they knew that all 

the Darko Maver world was an invention. If they were interested in 
either showing the fake and its mediality or the 01.org media project, 

in any case they would have showed pure communications.

As I recalled before, "art is what a society decides to be art". In our 

society of communications, especially mass communications decide what 

art is and what it isn't, who an artist is and who she or he isn't. 
And, more, mass communications can decide to be art. Yes, as we noted 

before, art has become more popular, "democratic", but has reached this 

goal relying on communications. An italian philosopher, Mario Perniola, 

recently published a book entitled "Contro la comunicazione" [24] 
("Against Communications"). With "communications" he actually means 
"mass communications", which he defines as "the opposite of knowledge", 

"the enemy of ideas" because communications tend to dissolve all the 
contents they deal with under an appearance of democracy and 
progressism in directly addressing to people, while indeed they 
constitue a populistic obscurantism [25]. Mass media communications 
influence politics, culture and art. They are undeterminated because 
they tend to be one thing, its opposite and what lies in between the 
two. So, Perniola states, communications are much more totalitarianist 

than the traditional political totalitarianisms because they comprehend 

also antitotalitarianism. Communications are global in the sense that 

they also include what denies globality [26].

So, to come back to us, have culture and art to be slave of 
communications? Has art to be managed and directed by the mass media 
and by the interests they pursue? In his book Perniola reaches a 
conclusion, which may not sound new but which is argued in a practical 

way: the only possible alternative to communications' power are 
aesthetics and art, in their applications into real life. An 
alternative to the communication effects has to be found in an 
aesthetical feeling of things which is neither too far from the real 
needs and expectations of the individuals nor slave to the idolatry of 

immediate money and success. I think that the Darko Maver Project as 
well as other projects of artists working in the media field go in this 

direction, especially when they work at a wider, global level, like for 

instance, to cite another 01.org project, the Nike Ground [27]. [slide 

13]

Publicity has always considered the artfield as an immense and free 
deposit of ideas, concepts, styles to use and often to sack. Why 
shouldn't art do the opposite, that is reuse publicity logos, mass 
media icons, marketing and communication techniques? The art of the 
20th Century showed some remarkable examples in this direction (for 
instance collages, Dadaism, Pop Art, just to cite some), but undeniably 

net.art and media art give a new power to this topic, especially when 

they dismantle the languages and the logic of the communication 
establishment.


Some new fields for the artists

Although my intervention has been mainly focused on communication and 

art, I must recall that 2005 is the Year of Physics, and more 
generally, the year of science. In 1905, one hundred years ago, Albert 

Einstein wrote three important studies which posed the basis of modern 

science and which deeply influenced philosophy and technologies in the 

20th Century. The first article was on the Brownian Motion and 
explained the apparently inexplicable motion of small particles 
suspended in a fluid, demonstrating that it is caused by the continuous 

striking of the molecules in the fluid on the particles. This writing 

opened the doors to the atomic and corpuscular theory of matter. The 
second article was on the Photelectric Effect, and signs the beginning 

of the dualism wave-particle, of the light quanta that later would be 

called photons. The third article is on the Restricted Relativity, and 

ties the idea of time to the observer's motion and to the space/time 
structure. Although these ideas may seem far from everyday life, they 

gave birth to many technologies and tools we currently use, and which 

are used by artists. The Photoelectric Effect is at the basis of solar 

cells and of luminosity sensors in automatic devices and digital 
cameras. The stimulated emission of radiation is at the basis of the 
lasers, and gave birth to holography and to all such common devices 
like CD/DVD-ROM readers and writers, optical trackers and mice. The 
Restricted Relativity gives the necessary corrections in the making and 

working of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) mounted in cars, in 
palmtops, in PDAs and shortly in mobile phones.

Artists have always demonstrated they can use, discuss and enrich 
science and technology. And as "free spirits", as once Pierre Restany 

defined them, artists can both show us our inner dreams come true and 

raise a radical criticism on technologies' use. They can both give us 

awareness and possibly initiate a reflection on ethics, on the 
technologies' impact on culture. [slide 14]

Artists have many paths today to investigate, and I'll quickly outline 

here a few which I think can be particularly interesting:

Robotics. It seems this century will be the century of robotics (and of 

communications). Besides all the reflections about conscience, 
evolution, social impact, this must lead to a sort of roboethic [28], 

and rediscover the anthropological positivity of the term "artificial" 

applied to technologies, as expression of freedom. There is a wide 
discussion running on these topics and we are preparing a special issue 

on robotics and art on our web magazine Noema [29].

Artificial life [30]. Only some basic questions. Has carbon-based life 

only to be considered? What does life mean? How life can be defined? 
What are the borders between what can be considered as life and what 
cannot be defined as living?

Biogenetic, genomic and biotechnological art [31]. These are other hot 

topics with plenty of consequences, possibly even wider and more 
problematic than the ones raised by robotics, because they act on the 

basis of animal and human life and work on what we can call the "long 

term memory". And sometimes the artists working in this field are 
discouraged or even opposed by the establishment, as some recent cases 

show [32].

Indeed there are very interesting working realms for the artists, and, 

as far as I can see from today's works on these topics, I am sure I 
shall enjoy their research and they will help me to understand my time. 

Again.

Thank you for your attention.


Notes

[1] For instance the Venice Biennale attracted 243 thousands visitors 

in 2001 and 260 thousands in 2003. From 
http://www.labiennale.org/en/biennale/history/4.html

[2] See "The art market", 
http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3D3503888; 

"Art Market Watch", 
http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/news/artnetnews/artnetnews3-11-02.asp; 

Nomisma, Laboratorio sul Commercio dei Beni Artistici, November 2004, 

http://www.nomisma.it/upload/20041126-002.pdf.

[3] See Walter Benjamin, Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen 

Reproduz=EFerbakeit, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1955. In 
English, in a recent edition: "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical 

Reproduction", in Howard Eiland, Michael W. Jennings (eds.), Walter 
Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 3, 1935-1938, Cambridge MA, Harward 

University Press, 2002.

[4] From Charles Baudelaire's letters to the director of the Revue 
Francaise, published in June, 10 and 20, 1859, during the "Salon de 

1859", which opened at the Champs Elis=E9es on April, 15 1859.

[5] See Walter Benjamin, op.cit.

[6] See Pier Luigi Capucci, Realt=E0 del virtuale. Rappresentazioni 
tecnologiche, comunicazione, arte, Bologna, Clueb, 1993.

[7] Roland Barthes, La chambre claire, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1980.

[8] Jay D. Bolter, Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New 
Media, Cambridge MA, The MIT Press, 2000.

[9] Pier Luigi Capucci, Arte e tecnologie. Comunicazione estetica e 
tecnoscienze, Bologna, Edizioni dell'Ortica, 1996.

[10] Hans Moravec, "When will computer hardware match the human 
brain?", Journal of Evolution and Technology, vol. 1, 1998. 
http://www.jetpress.org/volume1/moravec.htm

See also Hans Moravec, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human 
Intelligence, Cambridge MA, Harward University Press, 1989.

[11] See Maturana and Varela's work, and, before, Maurice 
Merleau-Ponty's approach in La structure du comportement, Paris, 
Presses Universitaires de France, 1942. On the biology of knowledge see 

in particular Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, El =E0rbol del 
conocimiento, Santiago de Chile, Editorial Universitaria, 1984. On 
body-technologies issues see Pier Luigi Capucci (ed.), Il corpo 
tecnologico, Bologna, Baskerville, 1994. Among the many exhibitions on 

these topics, see in particular "Digitized Bodies =96 Virtual 
Spectacles", curated by Nina Czegledy, a travelling exhibition held in 

2001-2002 (http://www.digibodies.org/).

[12] See William D. Nordhaus, The Progress of Computing, March 4, 2002, 

version 5.2.2, 
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/refs/prog_030402_all.pdf, 

p. 43.

[13] See Pier Luigi Capucci, "Tecnologie del vivente", in Mario 
Morcellini, Michele Sorice (ed.), Futuri immaginari, Rome, Logica 
University Press, 1998. Also published in Noema, 
http://www.noemalab.org/sections/ideas/ideas_29.html and 
http://www.noemalab.org/sections/ideas/ideas_30.html

[14] In 2004 this concept was discussed in the international conference 

"Networks, Art & Collaboration", organized by Geert Lovink and Trebor 

Scholz at the Department of Media Study, The State University of New 
York, at Buffalo http://www.freecooperation.org/

[15] See Michael Dertouzos, The Unfinished Revolution, London-San 
Francisco, HarperCollins, 2002.

[16] Among the many texts on these topics see Donald Norman, Defending 

Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine, New York, Voyager, 1994 
(CD-ROM); Of the same author: The Invisibile Computer, Cambridge MA, 
The MIT Press, 1998. Jakob Nielsen, Designing Web Usability, Macmillan 

Computer Publishing, 2000. Jef Raskin, The Humane Interface, Reading 
MA, Addison-Wesley, 2000.

[17] See Roger F. Malina, "The Beginning of a New Art Form", in Hannes 

Leopoldseder (ed.), Der Prix Ars Electronica, Linz, Veritas Verlag, 
1990. Also Pier Luigi Capucci, Arte e tecnologie. Comunicazione 
estetica e tecnoscienze, op.cit.

[18] See Peter Weibel (ed.), Kontext Kunst, Koeln, 1994.

[19] See Filiberto Menna, Profezia di una societ=E0 estetica, Milano, 

Lerici, 1968.

[20] See http://www.0100101110101101.org/

[21] F.A.C., Darko Maver Biography, first published on the Internet, 
1998.

[22] http://www.0100101110101101.org/home/darko_maver/story.html

[23] See 01.org and Luther Blissett disclusure, Noema, 
http://www.noemalab.org/sections/ideas/ideas_articles/maver.html

[24] Mario Perniola, Contro la comunicazione, Torino, Einaudi, 2004.

[25] Op.cit., p. 6.

[26] Op.cit., p. 9.

[27] See http://www.0100101110101101.org/home/nikeground/index.html and 

http://www.nikeground.com/

[28] Gianmarco Veruggio, "Io, robotico", Le Scienze, n. 434, October 
2004.

[29] http://www.noemalab.org

[30] On the birth of this discipline see Charles G. Langton (ed.), 
Artificial Life, Reading MA, Addison-Wesley, 1989. Also Charles G. 
Langton, C. Taylor, J. D. Farmer, S. Rasmussen (eds.), Artificial Life 

II, Reading MA, Addison-Wesley, 1992. Domenico Parisi, "Vita 
artificiale e societ=E0 umane", Sistemi Intelligenti, Year VII, n. 3, 

December 1995.

[31] See Jens Hauser (ed.), L'art biotech', Nantes, Filigranes 
Editions, 2003. Many thanks to Franco Torriani for this rare 
catalogue.

[32] It is, for instance, the case of the Critical Art Ensemble. About 

CAE see http://www.critical-art.net/ and http://www.caedefensefund.org/

--
Noema Staff
staff@noemalab.org
http://www.noemalab.org


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