In this original Digital Art and Philosophy class, we will become familiar with different forms of digital art and related philosophical issues. Digital art is anything related to computers and art such as using a computer to create art or an art display that is digitized. Philosophical aspects arise regarding art, identity, performance, interactivity, and the process of creation. Students may respond to the material in essay, performance, or digital art work (optional). Instructor: Melanie Swan. Syllabus: www.MelanieSwan.com/PCA

1. Image: Emese
Szorenyi
Digital Art and Philosophy #4
Natural Aesthetics: BioArt, Biomimicry, Generative Art, SynBio.
Melanie Swan
University of the Commons and the Emerald Tablet Gallery
Syllabus: http://www.MelanieSwan.com/PCA

2. Digital Art is anything involving
computers and art
2

3. Sub-categories of Digital Art
Information Visualization Play, Performance, Virtual Reality
Natural Aesthetics: BioArt, Generative Art Identity, the Future 3

4. Review: Philosophy of Digital Art
1. Intro: Interactivity gives more
direct access to perception
2. Information visualization:
representing the unrepresented
3. Play, performance & virtual reality
– Performance of identity and sociality
– Unity of Apollo and Dionysius
– Gamer mindset: optimism,
motivation, action, team-building
– Ethics: act-based -> agent-based ->
situation-based
– Existence of virtual reality artworks
4

5. Natural Aesthetics Topic Clusters
BioArt
Macro-scale Biomimicry: Micro-scale Biomimicry:
Dwelling, The City, Spatiality Generative Art, Synthetic Biology
5

6. Ongoing Theme of Distinguishing
‘What is Real’
Proliferation in the categories of realism
Is this image of something real? What kind of real?
Real life? Artificial Life? Synthetic Biology?
Computer-generated image? 6

7. What is BioArt?
• Artwork created using
live tissue, bacteria, or
other living organisms
together with scientific
processes
• Collaboration of artists
and biologists
• Artists experimenting
with biology as an artistic
medium
7

8. Notable BioArtworks
• Earmouse (1997)
– Human ear grown on the back of a
mouse (science turned into art)
• GFP (green-fluorescent protein) Art
– Bunny (2000)
– GlowCats (2011)
• Lawn Chair sculpture (2002)
– Denise King, Carnivorous
Contraptions, Chlorophilia show
8

9. The Algae Opera (2012)
Digital Design Weekend, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
• Interactive performance and audience consumption piece
• Deep lung capacity of opera singer is perfect morphology for
producing CO2 to feed algae in a real-time experiment
• BioArt as commentary: produced by Agri, a collaborative arts group
examining the future of agriculture
9

10. Tissue Engineered BioArt
• Semi-Living Worry Dolls (Oron
Catts & Ionat Zurr 2002 SymbioticA
artistic laboratory)
• hymNext Designer Hymen Series
(Julia Reodica 2006)
• BioArt Exhibition Issues
– Maintaining wet bioart in a gallery
– Technique-sharing with local
biologists, bioreactors
– Living-matter transport (e.g.; UK
Human Tissue Authority)
– Artist/Biologist collaboration (e.g;
BioArt Initiative RPI)
10

11. Special Guest Speaker!
Healthy Art Lab Eco Art Practice
http://siembieda.com/ 11

12. B.U.R.G. (Building User Response Gizmos)
Site specific installation using energy data from a commercial building and small office
components (computer, light, charger), and turning them into human systems (heart
and lungs). San Jose, CA 2010
http://www.siembieda.com/burg.html 12

13. Aesthetics in Fluorescent-staining
13

14. Best Science Pictures of the Year
• National Geographic coverage
– 2012 International Science and
Engineering Visualization Challenge
– 2009 BioScapes Microscope Imaging
Contest Water Flea Crown of Thorns
MRI of Human Brain 3D CT Scan of Clam and Neuro-synaptic
White Matter Whelk Shell Computer Chip 14

15. Biomimicry
• Definition (bio: life, mimesis: imitate):
Emulating or being influenced by nature,
its models, systems, processes, and
elements in order to solve human
problems
• Wide-ranging levels of application
– Materials: biomolecular interface
– Organisms: cell, organ, structure
– Ecosystem: species, environment
– Planet and Universe: natural laws, energy,
complexity, turbulence
15

16. Biomimicry
at the Macro Scale
16

17. Biomimicry at the Macro Scale
Himalayas Water Tower
Winner Evolo 2012 Skyscraper Competition
http://www.evolo.us/competition/himalaya-water-tower/ 17

18. Philosophies of Environment, Geography,
Spatiality, and Place
• Environmental philosophy
– Branch of philosophy concerned with the
natural environment and human’s place
within it
– General tenet: well-being and flourishing of
human and non-human life
• Conceptual concerns
– Defining, valuing, protecting, sustaining
environment and nature
– Moral status of animals and plants
• Practical concerns
– Overfished oceans, pesticides and
pollutants, extinction, deforestation
18

19. The Philosophy of Spatiality
• Basic space
– Mathematical space, distances between
cities, dimensions of home
• Lived space
– The world in which we move and find
ourselves at home
– An experience not usually reflected
upon, like ‘lived time’ or the sense of
having a body
– Personally and culturally-determined:
close-talker, crowded elevator, lofty
cathedral, open outdoors
http://www.phenomenologyonline.com/inquiry/methods-procedures/reflective-methods/guided-
existential-reflection/spatial-reflection/ 19

20. Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) and
the Philosophy of Spatiality
• Perception is a process of continuous
interaction between subject and
surroundings (The Phenomenology of
Perception 1945)
• Concept: originary self-experience
– Everyday experience: we separate spatial
experience and self-consciousness, the world
of things and the world of consciousness
– At their root, not two different realities;
cannot be defined separately from each other
– There is an original spatializing - the originary
self experience which is the experience
identically of I and here (cannot experience
an I without a here) 20

21. Feeling at home, dwelling,
belonging, placeness
21

22. Natural Dwelling
Living Treehouses (Fab Tree Hab) - Mitchell Joachim, Terreform (2003)
Tree Circus
22

23. Theory of Place: “Building, Dwelling,
Thinking” (Heidegger 1951)
• Theory and conceptualization of place
• Feeling at home, placeness, dwelling
• Central theme of dwelling1
– Not the conventional shelter or lodging
– As human implacement, being ‘in’ place
• Dwelling makes becoming possible
– The placeness of place
– Meaningfulness of our being
• The manner in which we dwell is the
manner in which we exist on Earth – as an
extension of our identity, of who we are
1LiuF. On Place-ness of Place: ‘Dwelling.’ The Sustainability Collection.
http://ijs.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.41/prod.461 23

24. Theory of Place: “Building, Dwelling,
Thinking” (Heidegger 1951)
Dwelling Virtually
• Virtual placeness
– What is it to dwell online, to dwell virtually?
– How can we build virtual spaces where we can
dwell meaningfully?
– How can we dwell virtually with meaningful
placeness?
• Heidegger: extend our identity,
authenticity, meaningfully become our
true selves
• ‘Home’ trope in technology
24

25. Theory of Place: “Building, Dwelling,
Thinking” (Heidegger 1951)
• Placeless, non-place, homelessness,
alienation
– Due to the loss of the meaningfulness of
being (Letter On Humanism 1949)
– Lost in the crowd voice, dwelling in
forgetfulness, dwelling here without
experiencing dwelling here
– Our essence is lost to us, we are
forgetting and not seeing the possibility
of becoming our true being
25

26. Nihilism and Nietzsche
“Nihilism stands at the door, whence comes this uncanniest of all guests?”
– The Will to Power (Nietzsche 1885)
• Nihilism: A viewpoint that traditional values
and beliefs are unfounded and that existence
is senseless and useless; placelessness,
homelessness; life is meaningless
• Past values had lost their force and with that
collapse, nihilism became an uncanny caller
• Madman with a lantern in the marketplace at
noon: “God is dead”(The Gay Science 1882)
“I can't go on. I'll go on.”
- The Unnamable [The Unspeakable] (Samuel Beckett 1953) 26

27. The City
• Over 50% people living in cities (2008);
estimated 5 billion in 2030
http://www.unfpa.org/pds/urbanization.htm
27

28. The City
Cities of the
Future
28

29. Masdar
Energy City of the Future
29

30. Philosophy of the City (2008)
"I am a lover of learning, and trees and open country
won't teach me anything, whereas men in the city do."
(Socrates in Plato's Phaedrus, 230 d 3-4)
• Concerns of philosophy of the city
– Link to philosophies of place and
environment
– Seek ground for social ethics, political
theory
– Understand and resolve urban L’Enfant’s Plan of Wash DC
problems: inequality, prejudice
– Look at the relationship between place
and identity formation
• Anti-urban theory: intractability of
cities, urban blight
• EvoDevo: evolved vs designed space Rocinha favela, Rio de Janeiro
30

31. Foucault: Panopticism, Biopower and
Disciplinary Power (Discipline and Punish 1975)
• Panopticon: institutional building allowing
unseen observation of all inmates
– Internalizes self-monitoring, self-surveillance
• Society defined by micropower relations
– Top-down biopower
– Self-imposed disciplinary power Panopticon
• Modern societies observe and normalize
– Prison, factory, school, hospital, corporation
– Ordered defined spaces and behaviors
– Known and normalized what it is to be in this
space
• Contemporary examples?
– Quantified self-tracking
– Smartphone ID cards Quantified Self Gadgetry
31

32. Reconfiguration of Space: Vertical Farms
http://www.evolo.us/architecture/vertical-farm-in-san-diego/, http://www.verticalfarm.com/ 32

33. Reconfiguration of Space: Transportation
33

34. Reconfiguration of Space: Seasteading
34

35. De Novo Production of Space
• How should we organize our physical
and virtual space: new venues and
emergent models
– Physical-world: co-working, co-housing
– Online-world: social networks,
Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram
– Virtual-world: video games, ARGs
• EvoDevo: deliberate or evolutionary
layout of space?
– Provide structure for organic growth
– How to reduce bias in any model?
– How to facilitate empowerment,
agency, choice?
35

36. Implication for the Future:
Ambient Real-Time Services
Financial Footprints — spending patterns in Spain during Easter 2011
by MIT Senseable City Lab with BBVA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJrRhEvP3EE
36

37. Biomimicry at the Micro Scale
37

38. Digital Art Ontologies
Art created
using a
Computer
Human-created Program-created: Generative Art, AI art
Art about computing or technology Art displayed with technological means
38

39. Artificial Life (A-Life)
• Definition
– A field of study and an associated art form
– Examines systems related to life, its processes, and
its evolution
– Using simulations with software (AI), hardware
(robotics) or wetware (biochemistry, tissue
engineering)
• Artificial life imitates traditional biology by
trying to recreate some aspects of biological
phenomena
• Multiple practitioner audiences and work
product intentions
• Continuum analysis: natural to artificial 39

40. Artificial Life (A-Life) - Science
Tentacular - Evolved Virtual Creatures (2007)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm2n_ped-TA
Framsticks (2010)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9WVF6c8E7c
40

41. Artificial Life (A-Life) - Art
41

42. Reading: The Further Exploits of AARON,
the AI Painter (Harold Cohen, 1995)
• Gantry-connected painting unit (C/LISP)
• Declarative (this is an arm) and procedural
knowledge (how to connect an arm)
Ray Kurzweil and
Harold Cohen (1967)
42

43. Reading: The Further Exploits of AARON,
the AI Painter (Harold Cohen, 1995)
• Is artificial life being creative?
– What does an independent machine
intelligence do, given some knowledge
of the world and rudimentary physical
capabilities
– Is more possibility space illuminated?
Philosophical issue: incomplete nature
of representation
• Minimum conditions for a set of
marks to function as an image?
– Depends on the intentionality of the
mark generator
43

44. Reading: What is Generative Art?
(Margaret Boden, 2009)
• Defining the Social Space of Art
– Progression of categories of digital art
to be considered art by the art world
• Major traditional galleries accept
that traditional and CG-art are
players in the same space
– Harold Cohen’s AARON (Tate)
– Edmonds’s work as a development of
ColorField painters (Washington DC)
• London’s Kinetica gallery (2007)
– Interactive, robotic, and kinetic art
44

45. What is Generative Art?
• Art created with the use of an autonomous system
– System independently determines features
Evolved Noise Condensation Cube
(Karl Sims 2012) (Hans Haacke 1963)
Generative Art - Computers, Data, and Humanity | Off Book | PBS (2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0OK1GiI83s 45

46. Generative Art
• EvoDevo: top-down designed vs bottom-up
evolved; building a garden or planting a seed
• Distinction between artist and works, rights,
crowdsourced artworks (remix)
77 Million Paintings
(Brian Eno 2007)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsAXBtH4wMY
46

47. Contemporary Innovation in Biology
1. Regenerative Medicine: Tissue Engineering, Stem Cell
Therapies, 3D BioPrinting (Focus: replacement)
2. Synthetic Biology (Focus: enhancement & de novo genesis)
3. Genetic Engineering: RNAi, Zinc Finger Nucleases,
histone remodeling
4. Nanomedicine, Targeted Nanoparticles
5. Era of Big Health Data: Omics
6. Personalized Medicine and Crowdsourced health
7. Biomolecular Interface: organic/inorganic hybrids
47

48. Philosophical Issues related to
Innovation in Biology
• Is it all right to interfere with natural processes?
– Have always been manipulating (e.g.; plant and
animal breeding), this is just a better way
– What constitutes a qualitative change? Nodes: crop-
breeding, GMO, SynBio
– Order of magnitude issue – how can we think of
change at the new paradigm level or order of
magnitude level
• Is there a different set of concerns with de novo
generation?
48

49. Synthetic Biology
“This century’s transistor”
• Definition: Synthetic biology (synbio) is
– Design and construction of new biological entities such as
enzymes, genetic circuits, and cells,
– Redesign of existing biological systems
• Biology as an engineering medium
– Engineering principles applied to harness the fundamental
components of biology
• Main approaches
– Metabolic engineering (bacteria produce diesel)
– Extending E. coli capacity (yeast produces medicine)
– Biomimicry (replicate biological function in synthetic systems)
– de novo Synthesis (create new functionality)
Source: Swan, M. Synbio Revolution: Biology is the Engineering Medium, 6/26/11
http://futurememes.blogspot.com/2011/06/synbio-revolution-biology-is.html 49

50. Philosophical Issues related to
Synthetic Biology (Metaphysics)
• Nature of reality and existence
– Definition of ‘What is life?’
– How much DNA change is required for a sub-species or
‘different’ organism? Constellations of related organisms
– What are living machines, synbio products in themselves?
• Ontological classifications
– Organizing, naming, classifying modified and de novo plants
and organisms
– Develop an ontology of the products of synthetic biology
using philosophy of language (e.g. theory of conceptual
metaphors)
– Redefining existing ontologies structured around outdated
paradigms: living/non-living, organic/non-organic
Source: Philosophy and Synthetic Biology: Philosophical Problems and Concerns in Working With
Living Organisms http://gcat.davidson.edu 50

51. Philosophical Issues related to
Synthetic Biology (Other)
• Ethics
– Safety, accountability, responsibilities, unintended
consequences, right to do this work (playing God?),
dual-use debate
– Standard risk models appropriate?
• Epistemology
– How do I know that my methods are safe, etc.?
– Limits on knowledge-seeking and dissemination?
• Axiology (values, valorisation)
– Synthetic biology product ownership, patenting
Source: Philosophy and Synthetic Biology: Philosophical Problems and Concerns in Working With
Living Organisms http://gcat.davidson.edu 51

52. Aristotle:
Approaches to Knowledge
I know how
• Epistêmê: Scientific knowledge, theory. to do it
Universal, invariable, context-independent theoretically
• Technê: Craft art, practice, technique. I know how
Pragmatic, variable, context-dependent, to do it
oriented toward production, doing practically
• Phronesis: Ethics. Deliberation about
I know when
values with reference to praxis (the to do it
appropriate application of a skill)
• Poiesis Taking Action. To make, transform,
do, produce, bring-forth (Heidegger: I do it
aletheia/truth/unconcealment, revealing)
Source: The Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle 1st c BC) http://www.crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/threeapproaches.htm
http://psychsoma.co.za/learning_in_vivo/2009/09/techne-episteme-poiesis-praxis.html 52

53. de novo Generators Developing Code
of Responsibilities
• Contemplated knowledge-based
action-taking1
– What are we actually doing?
– What are living machines good for?
– What are they in themselves? Artificial ligase enzyme
• Practice standards
– Signing, documenting work
• Goal
– Deliver function, safety, and beauty
Mycoplasma laboratorium
1Source: Boldt J, Living Machines, Metaphors, and Functional Explanations: Towards an Epistemological Foundation
of Synthetic Biology, 2012 http://2012.igem.org/Team:Freiburg/HumanPractices/Philo 53

54. Current Opinion in Chemical Biology
Mechanisms • Aesthetics • Molecular imaging
December 2012
Volume 16
Issues 5–6
Pages 461-622
54

55. Synthetic Aesthetics
How would you design nature?
• Connecting synthetic biology, social
science, and art and design1
– Teams: Bioengineers and Synbio
Designers
• Molecular Design Aesthetics
– When we make new molecules should
they be beautiful? Are naturally
occurring molecules beautiful? What is
an ugly protein?
– Is ‘form follows function’ relevant? Can
function be beautiful?
– What aesthetic criteria to apply?
Aesthetics of chirality
1http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/H01912X/1 and
55
http://www.genomicsnetwork.ac.uk/media/Synthetic%20Aesthetics.pdf

56. Summary: Philosophical Issues
in Natural Aesthetics
• Proliferation of realism categories
• Authenticity in representation persists
– Infoviz: representing the unrepresented
– Synbio: creating the unrepresented
• Trend of one discipline using another’s medium
– Artists -> biology, engineers -> biology, engineers -> art
– Pervasive form and function, technology and aesthetics
• Multiple practitioner audiences and intentions
• Philosophical issues in de novo creation
– Metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, axiology
• Placeness, spatiality, dwelling, and homelessness and
nihilism in new contexts
56

57. Agenda and Upcoming Session
2/12 - Introduction "What is digital art?" and what philosophers say about it.
2/19 - The Design Aesthetics of Meaning-Making: Information Visualization.
2/26 - Democratized Creativity: Performance, Music, Virtual Reality, Gaming.
3/5 - Natural Aesthetics: BioArt, GenArt, SynBio, Biomimicry, CrowdArt.
3/12 - Portable ArtTech: Identity, Fashion, Wearable Electronics, the Future.
"Nietzsche, the Overhuman, and Transhumanism” (Stefan Sorgner, 2009)
"Vitality of Digital Creation” (Timothy Binkley, 1997)
Optional essay questions:
1) Explore the concept of dwelling homelessly in virtual spaces
2) What is post-nihilism?
Comments and Feedback:
m@MelanieSwan.com
57

58. The Bay Lights
• World’s largest LED display, Grand Lighting
Tues 3/5 at 9 pm
http://thebaylights.org/ 58

59. Thank you!
Image: Emese
Szorenyi
Digital Art and Philosophy
Melanie Swan
University of the Commons and the Emerald Tablet Gallery
http://www.MelanieSwan.com/PCA
http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga