Re: [-empyre-] Living Experiments

[nik gaffney]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
On 18/09/13 06:01, Adam Nocek wrote:
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> Thanks, Phillip, for this excellent post! I really like the way you want
> to extend, for example, Oron's insights and take them outside of the
> laboratory setting. To do this, you seem to imply, or in any case, play
> with the idea that "experiment" should be thought in much broader terms
> than the "scientific experiment." I wonder if you could comment on how
> you see the experiment functioning outside of this setting, or how,
> alternatively, a broader sense of experiment might transform the laboratory?

...perhaps a broader notion could be 'structured curiosity' with the
degree of structure or direction shifting between undirected tinkering
(threshold noise) at one extreme and highly structured, specifically
directed protocol at the other. curiosity lies beneath every experiment,
but not every curious act is structured as an experiment. is the
curiosity focused on a specific outcome or question ("is there a Higgs
Boson?"), exploratory ("what would happen if...?"), transformative (with
the aim of changing the experimenter) or something else?

with regard to how this can work in a setting that is situated "outside"
of an explicitly/exclusively scientific context, we have found it
illuminating to adopt particular techniques where useful (pragmatic
epistemology?) and reject them if they get in the way.. .

"The Scientific Method" (c.f.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method)

 - begin the experiment with a clear statement of intent
 - create a structure to facilitate the intent
 - do things and document them as they happen in an appropriate form
 - review what has been documented in a form accessible to others
 - change "statement of intent" if required and repeat

"Against Method"
 - is the process, product or production sufficiently interesting to
reward further experimentation? is there a good story?
 - anything goes

and on...
nik

-- 
[ f o a m ]  ->  http://fo.am
   grow your own worlds [借景]
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[-empyre-] Living Experiments

[Adam Zaretsky]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Ethics and Aesthetics Relations in terms of Genetically Modified Human
biopolitics

The formal judgment of production scores for newborn chicks
in the linked PDF (below) might have some play here...
If applied to human flesh based art derivatives

Lets try and figure out which is more oppressive ­

the relativistic ethical dimensions of aesthetic based biopolitical actions
or 
the aesthetic (emo) basis behind the formation of biopolitical ethics based
decisiveness .


itp.nyu.edu/classes/germline-spring2013/files/2013/01/Judging-Poultry-for-Pr
oduction.pdf







THE 4-HS

Head, Heart, Hands, and Health are the four Hs in 4-H,
and they are the four values members work on through fun and engaging
programs.

Head - Managing, Thinking
Heart - Relating, Caring
Hands - Giving, Working
Health - Being, Living
THE 4-H PLEDGE

I pledge my head to clearer thinking,
My heart to greater loyalty,
My hands to larger service,
and my health to better living,
for my club, my community, my country, and my world.

Starting a county Genetically Modified Human show

Keeping GM Humans has become more popular in both the rural and urban areas.
Because of their novelty, IGM transgen humans make an excellent animal for a
4-H or FFA animal project. Those youth raising next-humans want a place to
show off their project. If your county does not have a post-integrity
HGProduct show, consider adding one, as a stand alone show or as part of the
county fair. Jesse Lyons will be discussing what is involved in starting a
new genus Homo show. Mr. Lyons is an Extension Associate at the University
of Missouri specializing in New Reproductive Technology and Fertility
Aesthetics. He is also an FDA certified H+ judge.

https://learn.extension.org/events/972

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[-empyre-] Living Experiments

[Adam Zaretsky]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hacking the Human Genome

Lets take a moment to think about the changes in relationships between
ethics and aesthetics in terms of inborn (bred) cultural design of the human
form, consciousness, duration and sensual range. I mean, as we find
ourselves in a new reproductive technology crisis, future human children are
becoming design issues. Is it just another kind of pollution?

Just Another Kind of Pollution

In human culture, IGM has had its precursors. The laws of sexual attraction
have always been bent by the pollution of arranged marriages. The cancer
maps of environmental toxicology reveal other sources of genetic pollution,
the errors we have created in the name of industrial metabolic devolution,
toxic waste (for instance BPE, DDT, cesium-137, etc.) There are also forces
of mutagenesis geologically and astrobiologically present in our ecosphere.
Without our influence, organic and so-called natural disasters have
influenced anatomy through flexible fitness regimes: cosmic radiation
fluctuations, tannins in the water, belladonna. The beauty of our felt form
is the result of all sorts of environmental hardship. The rate of rate of
rate of rate of change does change and the shape of living things to come do
alter to fit. The question of pollution reshaping human genealogical
integrity is therefore situational to say the least. It is perhaps still
wild.

IGM: Tailored Wilding

Intentional Inheritable Genetic Modification of the Human Genome (IGM) is
the making of transgenic humans. The ethical dimensions are faceted: who
decides, which traits, towards what imagined end, who is born, how true to
type, who judges, who births, what is the architecture or cultural form
appropriate to the transgen-posthuman and finally, what are the aesthetics
of the new, laterally engineered types?

Bioart as the Doing-Of Key Technologies

IGM Key Technologies Targets ­

Human gene insertion potential sites on the human body are:

1. The whole somatic body of women and men (including germ cells)
2. Targeted ovaries and testicles
3. In vitro or in situ sperm and ovum
4. Post fusion zygote or blastula
5. Human Embryonic Stem cells (HESc), isolated lines in tissue culture
6. Developing human embryos and/or embroid bodies (preimplantation embryos)
7. Primordial germ cells (presperm or pre-eggs also known as spermatogonia
and oogonia.)

IGM Key methods:

1. Minimally invasive germcell access: physical (often surgical) getting to
potential sites
2. Which genes to pick and why: a taxonomy of all possible traits in the
life world
3. Transcript for alterity: designing vectors and cassettes for trans gene
infection of the human genome
4. Methods of transport: getting the infectious construct (plasmid or raw
DNA) into the germline nuclei, i.e. 1) genegun, 2) microinjector, 3)
plasmids 4) electroporators, 5) agrobacteria and 6) lipofection.
5. Inbreeding kindred: methods of stabilizing a human novel transgenic line

IGM spaces of interest:

1. Divisions of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility
2. Departments of Obstetrics & Gynecology
3. IVF/fertility clinics
4. Hospital based gene therapy trials
5. Transgenic animal production
6. Abortion clinics ­ family planning
7. Surrogate mother agencies
8. Sperm donor agencies
9. Medical waste embryo disposal or medical research reuse containers
10. International Space Station (ISS), HESc in orbit research ongoingŠ

The challenge, to an artist non-expert, is to take a hands-on approach to
the mechanisms of new reproductive devices and practice inventive methods of
genetic alteration. The research includes continued analysis of the
burgeoning technology¹s potential effect on future, posthuman concepts of
race, class, gender, disability and sensuality. But the artistic process
here is based on materials, methods and time based, new media sculptural
results that have agency and volition beyond the technique used to mold
them. Bioart experiments on the bench are based on the doing-of key
technologies while allowing for a feeling-with the post alteration being as
a post-person familiar.


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Re: [-empyre-] Living Experiments

[Adam Nocek]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Thanks, Phillip, for this excellent post! I really like the way you want to
extend, for example, Oron's insights and take them outside of the
laboratory setting. To do this, you seem to imply, or in any case, play
with the idea that "experiment" should be thought in much broader terms
than the "scientific experiment." I wonder if you could comment on how you
see the experiment functioning outside of this setting, or how,
alternatively, a broader sense of experiment might transform the laboratory?

Thanks,
Adam


On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 12:42 PM, Phillip S Thurtle  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Thank you for the wonderful discussion so far. I’ve been tasked to
> share with you how I think about “living experiments”. This is my
> first exposure to Empyre (which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed) and I don’t
> have a sense of the distributed dynamics of the group. So I apologize
> in advance for what may appear as any unnecessary simplifications,
> redundancies, or obfuscations.
>
> For me, one of the most enduring lessons of bioart is how it tangibly
> demonstrates the ways we enable, privilege, and promote specific types
> of lives through daily practice. For instance, what are the types of
> lives that can occur through laboratory practice (such as the
> semi-living that Oron has talked about).
>
> I’m especially interested in thinking about extending this insight
> into how this occurs outside of the laboratory, how the other ways
> that we are embedded in political economy, aesthetics, and daily
> practice create new lives while changing others. This is where some of
> my work now focuses, thinking about the historical and material
> conditions for the emergence of new types of life.
>
> The first reason, I think this is interesting is that it is a
> necessary perspective for any type of “affirmative” biopolitcs, where
> “affirmative” is thought of in the Zarathustrian sense of an embrace
> of that which may come to pass (not that it is good, productive, or
> positive but that it happens). Second of all, as we have seen echoed
> in previous posts, bioart can encourage thinking beyond typical
> ethical formulations, such as how do I behave in a specific
> circumstance, to something that might be called “aesthetic”,
> “political”, or even “moral” ways of thinking, such as can how can the
> distributed “I” that I participate in might encourages less oppressive
> and more creative lives. Also, this isn’t just an issue for what one
> might constitute as various forms of life; rather, it is a way of
> navigating a world where complexity and material constraints often
> produce unintended consequences (although I would argue that studying
> what we call “living” can give special insights into processes of
> change). In short, I’m interested in the bioart experiments that we
> keep performing on each other.
>
> The way that the idea of “experiment” links past, present, and future
> is what really fascinates me. In any complex, immanent system,
> responses are not always what one expects. Approaching life (your
> life, others lives, my life) as an experiment places a focus on the
> unexpected outcomes that come about through multiply linked and
> variable ontologies. One of my favorite examples is the echolocation
> of bats. Bats send special audio signatures into the environment to
> find out what is out there. The return of the echo can tell bats not
> only about distance, but also about movement, surfaces, even the
> histories of objects (as long as that history changed the reflective
> properties of that object). Listening and acting are intertwined in a
> way that the term “experiment” can suggest.
>
> Thanks for making it this far. Phillip
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
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[-empyre-] Living Experiments

[Phillip S Thurtle]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
Thank you for the wonderful discussion so far. I’ve been tasked to
share with you how I think about “living experiments”. This is my
first exposure to Empyre (which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed) and I don’t
have a sense of the distributed dynamics of the group. So I apologize
in advance for what may appear as any unnecessary simplifications,
redundancies, or obfuscations.

For me, one of the most enduring lessons of bioart is how it tangibly
demonstrates the ways we enable, privilege, and promote specific types
of lives through daily practice. For instance, what are the types of
lives that can occur through laboratory practice (such as the
semi-living that Oron has talked about).

I’m especially interested in thinking about extending this insight
into how this occurs outside of the laboratory, how the other ways
that we are embedded in political economy, aesthetics, and daily
practice create new lives while changing others. This is where some of
my work now focuses, thinking about the historical and material
conditions for the emergence of new types of life.

The first reason, I think this is interesting is that it is a
necessary perspective for any type of “affirmative” biopolitcs, where
“affirmative” is thought of in the Zarathustrian sense of an embrace
of that which may come to pass (not that it is good, productive, or
positive but that it happens). Second of all, as we have seen echoed
in previous posts, bioart can encourage thinking beyond typical
ethical formulations, such as how do I behave in a specific
circumstance, to something that might be called “aesthetic”,
“political”, or even “moral” ways of thinking, such as can how can the
distributed “I” that I participate in might encourages less oppressive
and more creative lives. Also, this isn’t just an issue for what one
might constitute as various forms of life; rather, it is a way of
navigating a world where complexity and material constraints often
produce unintended consequences (although I would argue that studying
what we call “living” can give special insights into processes of
change). In short, I’m interested in the bioart experiments that we
keep performing on each other.

The way that the idea of “experiment” links past, present, and future
is what really fascinates me. In any complex, immanent system,
responses are not always what one expects. Approaching life (your
life, others lives, my life) as an experiment places a focus on the
unexpected outcomes that come about through multiply linked and
variable ontologies. One of my favorite examples is the echolocation
of bats. Bats send special audio signatures into the environment to
find out what is out there. The return of the echo can tell bats not
only about distance, but also about movement, surfaces, even the
histories of objects (as long as that history changed the reflective
properties of that object). Listening and acting are intertwined in a
way that the term “experiment” can suggest.

Thanks for making it this far. Phillip
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[-empyre-] Living Experiments

[Adam Nocek]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi all,

A wonderful discussion this week. I thank you all for participating! I
thoroughly enjoyed -- and I am continuing to enjoy -- all your posts on
bioart and related fields. I'm especially intrigued by the discussion on
"aesthetics." I think that bringing together Neal White, Jennifer Fisher,
among others, into conversation with Brian Massumi and A.N. Whitehead et
al. is challenging and important work. More thoughts later.

I'd like to extend a special thanks to Oron Catts and Rich Doyle for their
wonderful contributions this week!

This week I'd like to welcome four new guests into the fold: Adam Zaretsky
(who is no stranger!), Phillip Thurtle, Maja Kuzmanovic, and Nik Gaffney.

Here is a bit of bio for each of our guests:

Phillip Thurtle is director of the Comparative History of Ideas program and
associate professor in History at the University of Washington. Thurtle is
the author of The Emergence of Genetic Rationality: Space, Time, and
Information in American Biology 1870-1920 (University of Washington Press,
2008), the co-author with Robert Mitchell and Helen Burgess of the
interactive DVD-ROM BioFutures: Owning Information an Body
Parts (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), and the co-editor with
Robert Mitchell of the volumes Data Made Flesh: Embodying
Information (Routledge, 2003) and Semiotic Flesh: Information and the Human
Body (University of Washington Press, 2002). His research focuses on the
material culture of information processing, the affective-phenomenological
domains of media, the role of information processing technologies in
biomedical research, and theories of novelty in the life sciences. His most
recent work is on the cellular spaces of transformation in evolutionary and
developmental biology research and the cultural spaces of transformation in
superhero comics.

Adam Zaretsky, Ph.D. is a Wet-Lab Art Practitioner mixing Ecology,
Biotechnology, Non-human Relations, Body Performance and Gastronomy. Zaretsky
stages lively, hands-on bioart production labs based on topics such as:
foreign species invasion (pure/impure), radical food science
(edible/inedible), jazz bioinformatics (code/flesh), tissue culture
(undead/semi-alive), transgenic design issues (traits/desires), interactive
ethology (person/machine/non-human) and physiology (performance/stress). A
former researcher at the MIT department of biology, for the past decade
Zaretsky has been teaching an experimental bioart class called VivoArts at:
San Francisco State University (SFSU), SymbioticA (UWA), Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute (RPI), University of Leiden’s The Arts and Genomic
Centre (TAGC), and with the Waag Society. In the past two years he has
taught DIY-IGM at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and New York University
(NYU).  He also runs a public life arts school: VASTAL (The Vivoarts School
for Transgenic Aesthetics Ltd.) His art practice focuses on an array of
legal, ethical, social and libidinal implications of biotechnological
materials and methods with a focus on transgenic humans.

http://www.youtube.com/VASTALschool 



Maja Kuzmanovic holds a Master of Arts in Interactive Multimedia and her
specialization is interactive film and storytelling. She is currently
director of the Brussels-based laboratory, FoAM, where she works with
various art and technology collectives and explores novel modes and
resources of cultural expression. She was involved in the development of
the Design Technology course at the Utrecht School of the Arts. She
previously worked as Artist in Residence at the Center for Mathematics and
Computer Science in Amsterdam, and the National Center for Information
Technology in Sankt Augustin, Germany. In 1999, Kuzmanovic was named by
MIT’s Technology Review Magazine as one of the top 100 young innovators of
the year. Her current interests span alternate reality storytelling,
patabotany, resilience, speculative culture and techno-social aspects of
food & food systems.

Nik Gaffney is a founding member of the Brussels-based laboratory, FoAM, as
well as a media-systems researcher. Gaffney has previously worked as a
graphic designer and programmer for Razorfish AG in Hamburg and Moniteurs
in Berlin. His studies covered the fields of computer science, cognitive
science and organic chemistry at Adelaide University. As one of the
founders of the artists' collective, mindfluX, he worked on installation
pieces, performances and the editing and distribution of the electronic
magazine mindvirus. Gaffney has been an active collaborator in the
performance group Heliograph, helping shape their vision for hybrid arts
performance. He is a member of and prominent contributor to farmersmanual,
a pan-european, net-based, multisensory disturbance conglomerate, whose
'ship of fools' filled the canals of Venice with sound during the 2001
Biennale.
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