Hi, everyone. Ricardo and Diane mistakenly posted this to the list at the end of December just before we launched the Resolutions for Digital Futures project. Because they submitted it specifically for this project, we're taking the liberty of reposting it.
Best, Renate and Tim An Illuminated nano_Play for the New Year(s): or a pharmakon gesture for the last year(s) by the *particle group* (http://pitmm.net) [The stage is dark now. Slow illumination of two white lab workers at opposite ends of a long table and a large screen behind them. Each sits facing a computer.] PRELUDE in stereo, or alternating lines between Dr. Ludin and Dr. Dominguez Fabrication 1 Let the particle go a short way and it will show you where the levels of meaning rises and falls, its blended muse traveling into a mold, the pebbles in dustduplicated triangles and mountains miniature as the desire to change. Let the particle move toward diminished containment with insistent allure. Fabrication 2 There is no such thing as the smallest particle of matter, so go forth towards other scales. Go forth, prey, go forth, dwell between PAR/T (i) C-L=E/s you there (i) hear . (We are clean now. Begin.) ACT ONE Dr.Ludin: Particle! Particle! burning bright In the labs of the night, What posthuman hand or eye Could frame thy fearful trans_patenttry? Dr.Dominguez: In 2005 researchers in the University of Texas in the United States found that carbon nanotubes squirted into the trachea of mice caused inflammation of the lungs and granulomas (tumour-like nodules of bloated white blood cells in the lining of the lungs), and five of the nine mice treated with the higher dose died almost immediately. Dr.Ludin: In what gene deeps or skies Burnt the ownership of thine eyes? On what code dare it aspire? What IP dare seize the fire? And what patent, and what part, Could twist the WIPO of thy heart? And when thy particles began to beat, What dread sensor? and what dread fleet? Dr.Dominguez: In another nanotoxicity experiment in 2006 at Tottori University, Japan, researchers showed that within a minute of contacting the mices tiniest airways, carbon nanotubes began to burrow through gaps between the surface lining cells and into the blood capillaries, where the negatively charged nanoparticles latched onto the normally positively charged red blood cells surface, thereby potentially causing the red blood cells to clump and the blood to clot. Dr.Ludin: What the atomic force hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the chip? what circuit grasp Dare its deadly errors clasp? When the nanities threw down their gears, And watered ownership with their tears, Did K. Eric Drexler smile his work to see? Did nano-carbon 60 who made the Lamb make thee? Dr.Dominguez: Researchers from the University of Rochester, New York, in 2006 reported an increased susceptibility to blood clotting in rabbits that had inhaled carbon nanospheres (buckyballs, an isotope of carbon shaped like a tiny football). Buckyballs present in water at 0.5 parts per million were taken up by largemouth bass, which suffered severe brain damage 48 hours later, the extent of the damage being 17 times greater than that seen in non-nano scale particles tested. Dr.Ludin: Particle! Particle! Burning bright In the labs of the night, What posthuman hand or eye Could frame thy fearful trans_patenttry? Dr.Dominguez: Nanoparticles in the lungs are translocated to the circulatory system and from there throughout the body, accumulating in the liver, spleen, and bone marrow. Nanoparticles inhaled through the nose and air passages are translocated to the brain through the olfactory nerves, and accumulate in the brain. Nanoparticles can enter the body through the skin; and quantum dots injected into the skin accumulate in lymph nodes with potential effects on the immune system. Dr.Ludin: Particle! Particle! Burning bright In the labs of the night, What posthuman hand or eye Could frame thy fearful trans_patenttry? ACT TWO [First lab image appears on the screen.] http://homepages.nyu.edu/~dl84/nano-la-jetee-4.mov Dr.Dominguez: Particle Capitalism! Particle Capitalism! Burning bright In the labs of the night, What posthuman hand or eye Could frame thy fearful trans_patenttry? Dr.Ludin: It is true that one cannot patent an element found in its natural form; however, if you create a purified form of it that has industrial uses say, oxygen you can certainly secure a patent. - Lila Feisee, Biotechnology Industry Organizations Director for Government Relations and Intellectual Property (2006). Dr.Dominguez: We are no longer under the sign of natural selection or even artificial selectionwe are now under the force of particle selection. Everything on the planet, from indigenous aromas to public spaces to our atoms, is now forced to march into the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) filters of globalization. The neo-liberal matrix that started to emerge fully in the 90s has played itself out on three stages: digital/Virtual Capitalism, genetic/Clone Capitalism and nanotechnology/Particle Capitalism. Each of these stages of techno-capital is being integrated via a new deep harmonization of the global Intellectual Property agenda: copyright laws, trademark laws and patent laws. A process that starts in the research chambers and ends in ownership enclosures, from patenting technology to patenting life, from patenting information to patenting atoms and creation of Trans_patents. Dr.Ludin: Particle Claimed! Particle Claimed! Burning bright In the labs of the night, What posthuman hand or eye Could frame thy fearful trans_patenttry 3,156,523? What is claimed is Element 95. from Glenn Seaborgs US patent 3,156,523, issued November 10, 1964 the shortest patent claim on record. Dr.Dominguez: Remember that almost as soon as scientists figured out how to manipulate life through genetic engineering, corporations figured out how to monopolize it. A dangerous precedent was set back in the 1960s when a Nobel Prize-winning physicist invented the chemical element Americium (element no. 95 on the periodic table) and acquired US patent #3,156,523. In the US alone, patents awarded annually on nano-scale products and processes have tripled since 1996. The current nanotech patent grab is reminiscent of the early days of biotech its like biotech on steroids in the words of one patent attorney. At stake is control over innovations that span all industry sectors from electronics, energy, mining and defense to new materials, pharmaceuticals and agriculture. As the Wall St. Journal put it, companies that hold pioneering patents could potentially put up tolls on entire industries. [A voice of Dr. Carroll from a recording or live reading also possible] Trans_Patent 6608386: Sub-nanoscale electronic devices and bacterial processes July 12, 2006 By Assignee(s) Yale University/YU (New Haven, CT) Inventors: Reed; Mark A. (Southport, CT); Tour; James M. (Columbia, SC) Sometimes Lila would feel a bit itchy as she floated in her partner a few hours before integration-birth. Most birthing was now a trans_patented condition involving sub-nanoscale trading it was the only way to pay the cost of life now. So every hour during this last trimester Lila and her partner would ferment mass nanowire production on her in-vitro skin in collaboration with the Yale University Inc., nanoteria colonies. She could feel the oldest most sustainable microbes on the planet staging WIPO-2 contracts for the latest off-scale metal-changing particles. Hundreds upon hundreds of Yale University Inc., products were waiting impatiently for Lila to catch a bit of crying air at the edges of her partners canal to install and run for just in time delivery. Delivery was all that mattered now. Dr.Ludin: Governments, industry and scientific institutions have allowed nanotech products to come to market in the absence of public debate and regulatory oversight. An estimated 500 plus products containing invisible, unregulated and unlabeled nano-scale particles are already commercially available (including food products, pesticides, cosmetics, sunscreens and more) and thousands more are in the pipeline. Meanwhile, no government has developed a regulatory regime that addresses the nano-scale or the societal impacts of the invisibly small. This unregulated agenda is being driven by the new protocols of Venture Science the core of Particle Capitalism. Dr. Dominguez: Only a handful of toxicological studies exist on engineered nanoparticles, but it appears that nanoparticles as a class are more toxic than larger versions of the same compound because of their mobility and increased reactivity. This raises serious health concerns because nanoparticles can slip past guardians of the bodys immune system, across protective membranes such as skin, the blood brain barrier or perhaps the placenta. Dr. Ludin: Some governments and scientists are belatedly conceding that nano-scale particles raise unique risks for health, safety and the environment. Given the knowledge gap, some experts recommend that release of engineered nanoparticles be minimized or prohibited in the environment: Release of nano-particles should be restricted due to the potential effects on environment and human health. Nanotechnology and Regulation within the framework of the Precautionary Principle. Final Report for ITRE Committee of the European Parliament, February 2006. Dr Dominguez: Until more is known about their environmental impact we are keen that the release of nanoparticles and nanotubes in the environment is avoided as far as possible. Specifically we recommend as a precautionary measure that factories and research laboratories treat manufactured nanoparticles and nanotubes as if they were hazardous waster streams and that the use of free nanoparticles in environmental applications such as remediation of groundwater by prohibited. Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering, Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies: Opportunities and uncertainties, July 2007. [A voice of Dr. Carroll from a recording or live reading also possible] Dr. Carroll: Late Onset of Particle Capitalism (i) 27 07 2006 Strike when the iron is hot: the spot bubbles to the surfacered-facedsome malicious, illicit strawberry, singed below a soft cap of hair, I discover it there by accident, demand an explanation. Vague mumblings of scalp stimulation, postpartum emotion in high gear. I dream of an embedded chip, my sons induction into the matter market. What matters is this: He is okay. Well, temporarily. Weeks later, the market crashes, so to speakin the ER, we become parental footnotes while the real work is doneintubation, a central line, the social worker in talcum tones. The doctor lays down her hand, a pack of worst case scenarios that fan out across the table. He may not make it through the night and if he does we cannot predict the extent of the devastation. Devastation? Loss of limbs, loss of hearing, loss of vision, permanent brain damage, multiple organ failure. Unable to process listing-as-event, I adhere to my own paranoid versions of the tale: they are removing the chip*, deactivating the product. He is temporarily checked into an upscale refurbishing clinic. On a respirator to regain consciousness, he manufactures nipple dreams, which intersect with my own fantasies of his lopsided smile, an escape-artists grin. In other words: recycling lines pared out to me, choking on their saccharine-sweet cadences, I wish first that he might live and then greedily branch out to demand additional reassurance. The white-coated herds that hoard expertise like pocket change prove all too accommodating, commodity-trading interpellation: late onset GBS, bacterial meningitis; each one of us, a petri-dish, navigating the birth canal. ACT THREE Dr. Ludin: We wish we could take grey goo off the Center for Responsible Nanotechnologys list of dangers, but we cant. It eventually may become a concern requiring special policy. Grey goo will be highly difficult to build, however, and non-replicating nano-weaponry may be substantially more dangerous and more imminent. We identified several severe risks. Economic disruption from an abundance of cheap products Economic oppression from artificially inflated prices Personal risk from criminal or terrorist use Personal or social risk from abusive restrictions Social disruption from new products/lifestyles Unstable arms race Collective environmental damage from unregulated products Free-range self-replicators (grey goo) Black market in nanotech (increases other risks) Competing nanotech programs (increases other risks) MORE CAN BE IMAGINED or perhaps sounded: http://www.ninawaisman.net/nano/nanoEmbed.html Some of the dangers described here are existential risks, that is, they may threaten the continued existence of humankind. Others could produce significant disruption but not cause our extinction. A combination of several risks could exacerbate the seriousness of each; any solution must take into account its effect on other risks. Some of these risks arise from too little regulation on a global scale. Dr. Dominguez: Working nanotechnology will be a significant breakthrough, comparable perhaps to the Industrial Revolutionbut compressed into a few years. This has the potential to disrupt many aspects of society and politics. The power of the technology may cause two competing nations to enter a disruptive and unstable arms race. Weapons and surveillance devices could be made small, cheap, powerful, and numerous. Cheap manufacturing and duplication of designs could lead to economic upheaval. Overuse of inexpensive products could cause widespread environmental damage. Attempts to control these and other risks may lead to abusive restrictions, or create demand for a black market that would be very risky and almost impossible to stop; small nanofactories will be very easy to smuggle, and fully dangerous. There are numerous severe risksincluding several different kinds of riskthat cannot all be prevented with the same approach. Simple, one-track solutions cannot work. The right answer is unlikely to evolve without careful planning. [A voice of Dr. Carroll from a recording (perhaps)] Dr. Carroll: When Lily was lucky, she got a contract for weapons. The pay was good because it was dangerous. The weapons would come gushing suddenly out of her with much loss of blood, usually in the middle of the night: an avalanche of glossy, freckled, somewhat transparent bits of weapon goo-particles, each one with a number of soft blue eyes and rows of bright sharp teeth. No matter how ill or exhausted Lily felt, she would shovel them, immediately, into rusted tin cans or milk cubes and tie down the lids with auto-clean tape. If she didnt do that, immediately, if she fell asleep, the particles would eat her. Thrashing in their containers as she carried them down the steps, the particles would speed eat each other, till nothing was left the last one left would always eat itself the highest state of artificial evolution, her sister would whisper to her before the accident. She would have to hurry, shuffling as fast as she could under the weight of so many containers, to the Neighbors. The Neighbors only paid her for the ones that were left alive. It was piecework. Dr. Ludin: Its a Small World After all Nanoera Inc. Dr. Dominguez: Particle Capitalism does not represent a new phase of capitalism in a temporal sense yet, at the same time there is an uncanny sense that something new is happening here. Dr. Ludin: Your Matter Is Our Market NanoMiX Corp. Dr. Dominguez: Particle Capitalism is not just an encroachment of capital on a new domain of science. But that this new domain of precise atomic and molecular manipulation is now being constituted as a business plan about what constitutes material reality as just another tale of the matter market. Dr. Ludin: Reassembling Your World One Atom at a Time NanitesNow Inc. Dr. Dominguez: Particle Capitalism functions as unregulated form of venture science that implodes the ethos of science to the valuation of life-as-matter with the valuation of the market. Dr. Ludin: Market Catch Your Self NanoCatch Inc. Dr. Dominguez: Recombinant society falls quickly before nano-fest destiny. Biotechnology, like digital networks, becomes a side event before the next state of command and control society. Each of us will rapidly become the by product of artificial nanotechnology vitamins, interdependent molecular subassembly engines, and marked by inter-linked termination dates. We will become more than replicants and less than nothing. The cross-roads between the imaginary and all too real construction of nanotechnology is perhaps already behind us. Dr. Ludin: In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the table: human beings, nature, and machines. I am firmly on the side of nature. But nature, I suspect, is on the side of the machines. Dr. Dominguez: Not much difference between a banana and a human. Same Atoms, just arranged differently. Dr. Ludin: Not much difference. Dr. Dominguez: Not much difference at all. [Both lab workers shut down their computers, eat a banana, and walk away.] p.s. An illuminated nanoscript by Amy Sara Carroll, Ricardo Dominguez and Diane Ludin for iPod nano video presentation created for the *particle group* project installation at gall...@calit2 (http://gallery.calit2.net): http://post.thing.net/node/2234 In(rez)solute/resolution(s) for 2009! To all softskins! from the *particle group* -- Professor Ricardo Dominguez is principal investigator at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology and an assistant professor for University of California at San Diego's visual arts department. He has had extensive experience both participating in and investigating activism; he created a program that allows an activist group to slow any Web site to a halt by flooding it with requests, a form of protest known as a virtual sit-in. Through this, Dominguez got the attention of the National Security Agency. He is currently developing a performance project on nanotechnology called B.A.N.G. lab (Bits, Atoms, Neurons and Genes). Project sites: site: http://gallery.calit2.net site: http://pitmm.net site: http://bang.calit2.net site: http://www.thing.net/~rdom blog:http://post.thing.net/blog/rdom Diane Ludin is an artist and writer. She filters the ideological gaps of power through a radical poetics by playing with the representations of biotech and informatic labour industries. Resulting projects include internet-based collages, installations and performances that explore ideas of media representation as information. Diane Ludin has presented her work in the US and Europe. Commissioned works include internet art projects for The Walker Art Center, Franklin Furnace, New Radio and Performing Arts and The Alternative Museum. Collaborative performances and broadcasts with The Electronic Disturbance Theater, FAKESHOP, Las Fantasmas, Prema Murthy, Francesca da Rimini, Ricardo Dominguez and Agnese Trocchi. Diane Ludin lives and works in Brooklyn and received an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. http://www.thing.net/~diane _______________________________________________ Renate Ferro and Tim Murray Co-Moderators, -empyre- a soft-skinned-space Department of Art/ Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art Cornell University -- _______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
