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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

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Digital Art is anything involving
computers and art
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Sub-categories of Digital Art
Information Visualization Play, Performance, Virtual Reality
Natural Aesthetics: BioArt, Generative Art Identity, the Future 3

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

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

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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

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Aesthetics in Fluorescent-staining
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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

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

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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
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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

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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

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Feeling at home, dwelling,
belonging, placeness
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Natural Dwelling
Living Treehouses (Fab Tree Hab) - Mitchell Joachim, Terreform (2003)
Tree Circus
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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

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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
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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
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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

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The City
• Over 50% people living in cities (2008);
estimated 5 billion in 2030
http://www.unfpa.org/pds/urbanization.htm
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The City
Cities of the
Future
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Masdar
Energy City of the Future
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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
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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
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Reconfiguration of Space: Vertical Farms
http://www.evolo.us/architecture/vertical-farm-in-san-diego/, http://www.verticalfarm.com/ 32

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Reconfiguration of Space: Transportation
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Reconfiguration of Space: Seasteading
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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?
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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
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Biomimicry at the Micro Scale
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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
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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

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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
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Artificial Life (A-Life) - Art
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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)
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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
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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
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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

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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
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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
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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?
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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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

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

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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