A Humanist in the World of Bio-Techno-Logy

BARBARA KITA A Humanist in the World of Bio-Techno-Logy (book review)

Source of Image: http://www.zawojski.com

CyberEmpathy - Visual Communication Studies ISSN 2299-906X ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12) The Archetypes of Cyberspace www.CyberEmpathy.com

Barbara Kita A Humanist in the World of Bio-Techno-Logy (book review) Abstract:

The fifth edition of the digital_ia festival resulted in a set of as many as 16 scientific texts (including Introduction) edited and collected by Piotr Zawojski in the volume entitled Biotechno-logiczny świat (Bio-techno-logical world. Bio Art and Technoscience Art in the Time of Posthumanism and Transhumanism). The book edited by Zawojski destroys our confidence in not being influenced by semi-digital world surrounding us by proving that what is located in the area between users and technological entities affects us and, most importantly, more and more often becomes a subject of transdisciplinary reflection. Diversity of topics and the range of reflection presented in the book suggests (or even requires) creating next texts of such a type, a whole series with Bio-techno-logical World as its opening. Piotr Zawojski, the editor of the volume, is fully aware of this and he emphasises an initiatory nature of the presented reflections.

Tags: Technoculture, Art, Technoscience Art, Posthumanism, Transhumanism;

BARBARA KITA Barbara Kita: Ph.D., Assistant Professor at the Department of Film & Media Studies, The University of Silesia, Katowice. She is author of wide range books and manuscripts.

Her research interests are focused on film and media theory, and the issue of space.

CyberEmpathy - Visual Communication Studies ISSN 2299-906X ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12) The Archetypes of Cyberspace www.CyberEmpathy.com

The need to integrate artistic activities and scientific reflection is recognized by Piotr Zawojski, the volume editor, already in the book Digital touch (2010) where cyberculture is defined as “a new technocultural formation based on cooperation of art, science and technology” (p.5). It seems that the next volume encompasses such integrated reflection as it collects thoughts coming from different fields of (post)(trans)humanist science represented by numerous authors of diverse scientific and artistic background, who are theoreticians or practitioners (although nowadays the distinctions are hardly recognizable).

The fifth edition of the digital_ia festival resulted in a set of as many as 16 scientific texts (including Introduction) edited and collected by Piotr Zawojski in the volume entitled Bio-techno-logiczny świat 1 (Bio-techno-logical world. Bio Art and Technoscience Art in the Time of Posthumanism and Transhumanism). To say that the publication is a very original one (especially in the Polish context) is surely not enough and, in a sense, untrue. It is untrue due to its seemingly unprecedented character - initiatives related to the festival in Szczecin already have their own tradition and their themes revolve around the issues of art, reality and digitality as well as artistic practices and theoretical concerns expressed by a group of professionals selected on the basis of their interests, experience and practice. And their interests are usually concentrated on the diagnosis of multiple transformations emerging at the junction of technology, human being, art and philosophy. The selection of authors is not accidental, they do not include people who would, “on request”, adopt a position on “a given matter” - this time defined around the category (sic!?) of bio-techno-logy (as the volume editor names the complexity of issues in the Introduction). They are authors well known for their activity, who once Piotr Zawojski – Author’s Official Website: http://www.zawojski.com/wpcontent/uploads/2006/04/Bio_techno_ostateczne.pdf 1

CyberEmpathy - Visual Communication Studies ISSN 2299-906X ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12) The Archetypes of Cyberspace www.CyberEmpathy.com

again prove their ongoing and continuously deepened interests - Marcin Składanek, Sidey Myoo and Piotr Zawojski. Names known from previous digital_ia festivals and other works addressing similar issues also appear in this volume, including, among others, Piotr Celiński, Ewa Wójtowicz, Anna Nacher and Aleksandra Hirszfeld.

As interface, media and multimedia technologies users we often tend to get an (unfortunately) wrong impression that particular aspects of life which has become semi-digital do not apply to us. The book edited by Zawojski destroys our confidence in this respect by proving that what is located in the area between users and technological entities affects us and, most importantly, more and more often becomes a subject of transdisciplinary reflection. In fact, this would not be possible otherwise as the very subject of reflection of the Authors of the texts eludes terminological univocity and is of hybrid and indeterminate character. Zawojski indicates these changes in the introduction by writing: "The issues of telepresence, bionic body, network philosophy and networking are often areas where phenomena of the postbiological field manifest themselves and postbiology is reciprocally related to new media issues which treat technology and technoscience as a kind of matrix, a natural environment" (p. 4., Introduction. Bio-techno-logy, or logos in the world of biology and technology).

The dilemmas faced by the Authors are visible in the very titles which are more often than not at least metaphorical in nature. There are in fact: "the uncanny valleys" in Ewa Wójtowicz’s paper which is abundant in questions about a shift in understanding of telepresence/telematics or about genetic surveillance.

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Owing to Aleksandra Hirszfeld’s text about new media art we will find out what kind of monologues are conducted by organs and tissues. The essay is, however, rather a set of descriptions of phenomena, art works, performances which only ascertains their corporeal-technological effect and lacks an attempt of interpretation. Anna Nacher convinces us that "trees speak" when she presents examples of experimental actions aiming at communication with plants. Thus we become convinced that it is not groundless to speak to plants which surround us and that this type of stimulation exists and is effective on a certain level (a similar thread is addressed by Michał Brzeziński). Nacher combines the spheres of botany and acoustics, and suggests to examine the type of communication in the world of nature which occurs without any involvement of a human factor, yet, by means of technology, it is carried out in wireless communication.

Within the frame of almost classical discourses (if one can put it in this way in the context of digital narratives) - Piotr Celiński’s redefinition of the concept of medium seems particularly interesting with respect to the innovative character of the issues discussed in the book. Celiński emphasises the existence of a new kind of imaginarium which was entered by biomediations owing to artistic, creative and scientific practices. On the other hand, Sidey Myoo suggests a reflection on already historical questions within the bimodality of reality ontology which always accompanies new situations of reception and participation. The author - basing on his own experiences with creating Academia Electronica - argues that “Continual participation in an environment like Second Life can turn into an authentic existence”. A peculiar continuation of the thought and an answer to ontological dilemmas at the junction of the

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virtual and the real, deepened with ethical conditioning of the proposals presented in the volume which concern: biological and anthropological reevaluation under the influence of technology, art, science and creation is gained from the conversation with Joanna Żylińska, the author of the book Bioethics in the Age of New Media (2009). The philosopher postulates to considerably broaden the understanding of the category of “the Other” and proposes a type of “posthumanist” bioethics which more closely reflects current needs of the era of digitisation, hybridisation and scientific progress enabling communication with “the Others” and exploration of the areas so far “invisible” for the human being.

The invariable subject of this type of publication is the question about identity which can also be found here although it is not articulated directly (as what type of identity, which identity, whose identity are we to ask about?). The authors clearly want to underline the breakthrough moment of the change of the paradigm - a rather risky, it would seem, way of thinking about art, culture and technology – thinking not only from the point of view of a human being.

One of the important assets of the project, which sensitises human subjects to a different understanding of the world, is going beyond the anthropocentric conditions towards postanthropologic reflections or even posthumanist visions. Bio art certainly does not provide answers to this type of dilemmas, however it raises important questions about art in the era of a hydra with many heads, a personified hybrid of a man with technology in science, the world of nature with media, technology with the body or a living creature. Here a vast perspective stretches from human + equipped with a bionic mind and body to microbial painting. Human + is the subject of interest of Bartosz Kłoda-

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Staniecko who directly writes about blurring the line between bios and techne so that homo cyberneticus seems less a fictional character from the cinema of the 1980s than an ever-relevant configuration which defines subjectivity.

Microbial painting, being the result of a vision-centric explosion of Western culture, is meticulously reconstructed by Wojciech Sitek. From the vision machine to creative (artistic) act, from scientific act to the effect in art, from evolutionary art to generative art (the art of code), as the emergence of a digital order into an artistic domain - as expressed by Marcin Składanek in one of the most interesting, and most complete in terms of vision, articles in this volume.

Składanek focuses on presenting transgression from the formula of art of artificial life (shaped analogously to the natural one) to generative design which does not require a biological superstructure. “Constant balancing between the artist’s intention and recipient’s responsibility for the shape of interactive realisation and autonomy of a generative mechanism marks progressiveness of the practices, both in terms of technology and concept” this is how areas of research into art itself are (should be) demarcated, concludes the Author.

There is also a multitude of voices directly related to bio art, both practical (Hirszfeld, Brzeziński) and analytical, Małgorzata Dancewicz or Magdalena Worłowska. The proposals mainly attempt to describe and interprete various examples (Stelarc, Kaca, Sellars, Strumiłło, or the whole gallery of characters of Polish artists presented by Worłowska: Malik, Mańczak, Wierzbicka, Kowalska) often embarking on an experimental path of activities in art which can be described as ecological (from land art to ecological criticism), providing examples on the verge of corporeal autonomy mutated by the Other with the

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use of the latest technology and genetics or bio art as continuation of performative activities. Affectiveness appears to be a kind of extended aesthetics in the time of trans-species interaction and mutation, which is postulated in Brzeziński’s text. The author convinces us that the affect “bridges the gap between humanities - mind and body and natural sciences”.

A thoroughly different phenomena is Zbigniew Oksiuta’s essay entitled I, the chamber dweller. A vision to have one’s own and self-sufficient chamber apartment - house may be (for some people is) attractive. The place is not so intelligent (in the sense of a digital-technological system controlling the house and our needs), it is a biological autopoietic cell, a system, a type of dwelling whose core is the user. “A living habitat - a biological cell, a personal biosphere can become a new mediator between nature and culture” - as the author puts it.

Bio-techno-logical World. Bio Art and Technoscience Art in the Time of Posthumanism and Transhumanism is the book which presents a very attractive and, at the same time, actually hardly recognised (particularly in Poland) area of research/creativity/activities located at the junction of art, technology, media, humans (or rather posthuman subjects) and science.

Diversity of topics and the range of reflection presented in the book suggests (or even requires) creating next texts of such a type, a whole series with Biotechno-logical World as its opening. Piotr Zawojski, the editor of the volume, is fully aware of this and he emphasises an initiatory nature of the presented reflections. Zawojski is also the author of the last article about dilemmas of art in the time of post- and transhumanism (maybe it would be worth to revise the

CyberEmpathy - Visual Communication Studies ISSN 2299-906X ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12) The Archetypes of Cyberspace www.CyberEmpathy.com

order of the essays). His text to a large extent organises the way of thinking about issues indicated in the title and, at the same time, defines the notions from the title explaining their new/reassessed meanings (a notable example is the question of understanding posthumanism and transhumanism which are not the end of humanity but which need to be defined anew in the context of the new Other. It is a basic question for understanding the essays included in the volume). Zawojski also writes: "Reflection on the practical consequences of the biotechnological revolution is a real challenge for people for whom the future of art, technology, posthumanism and transhumanism is not just a linguistic game. Research perspective which allows to integrate life sciences [...] and computer sciences [...] in a way that meets the requirements of our epoch is a kind of epistemological imperative. " This strong statement of research attitude seems to be present in most of the proposals of the authors of this volume, which, either in a clearer or more subtle way, take possession of potential readers’ imagination making them reflect on matters broader than bio art which, to a large extent, is the protagonist of this publication. Yet, while introducing us into much broader areas, the authors are fully aware of the complexity of the discourses which ceased to exist separately and function in multidimensional correlates at the junction of technology, biology and science instead.

It is also a book that inscribes itself in very modern areas of thinking about art and puts forward for further consideration the issues of artist's obligations not only towards art, but also towards the artistic material - human body or other (animal) body. Posthumanist and transhumanist discourses presented in the book most often become the starting point for discussions taking place within

CyberEmpathy - Visual Communication Studies ISSN 2299-906X ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12) The Archetypes of Cyberspace www.CyberEmpathy.com

dynamically developing (also in Poland) animal studies. Such opening to a slightly different problematics seems to be a natural consequence of the resignation from anthropocentric approach in favour of obscuring the boundaries between “humans, animals and machines� (p.281). It triggers or even forces an attitude of continuous reinterpretation of dynamic phenomena occurring at the intersection of these areas. Such a shift of perspective brings a really surprising reflection that will not leave the reader indifferent.

Barbara Kita A Humanist in the World of Bio-technology (book review) CyberEmpathy - Visual Communication Studies Journal ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12). The Archetypes of Cyberspace.

ISSN 2299-906X. Marika Wato.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web: www.CyberEmpathy.com

CyberEmpathy - Visual Communication Studies ISSN 2299-906X ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12) The Archetypes of Cyberspace www.CyberEmpathy.com