Eduardo Kac: Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond (2007)

Bio art is a new art form that has emerged from the cultural impact and increasing accessibility of contemporary biotechnology. Signs of Life is the first book to focus exclusively on art that uses biotechnology as its medium, defining and discussing the theoretical and historical implications of bio art and offering examples of work by prominent artists.

Bio art manipulates the processes of life; in its most radical form, it invents or transforms living organisms. It is not representational; bio art is in vivo. (A celebrated example is Eduardo Kac’s own GFP Bunny, centered on “Alba,” the transgenic fluorescent green rabbit.) The creations of bio art become a part of evolution and, provided they are capable of reproduction, can last as long as life exists on earth. Thus, bio art raises unprecedented questions about the future of life, evolution, society, and art.

The contributors to Signs of Life articulate the critical theory of bio art and document its fundamental works. The writers—who include such prominent scholars as Barbara Stafford, Eugene Thacker, and Dorothy Nelkin—consider the culture and aesthetics of biotechnology, the ethical and philosophical aspects of bio art, and biology in art history. The section devoted to artworks and artists includes George Gessert’s Why I Breed Plants, Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr’s Semi-Living Art, Marc Quinn’s Genomic Portrait, and Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey’s Chlorophyll.

Published by MIT Press, 2007
Leonardo Books series
ISBN 0262112930, 9780262112932
420 pages

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PDF (updated on 2012-7-30)

Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore: The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (1967–) [EN, ES, PT]

“Marshall McLuhan is the man who predicted the all­-pervasive rise of the modern mass media. Blending text, image and photography, his 1960s classic The Medium is the Massage illustrates how the growth of tech no logy utterly reshapes society, personal lives and sensory perceptions, so that we are effectively shaped by the means we use to communicate. This concept, and his ideas such as rolling, up-to-the-minute news broadcasts and the media ‘global village’, have proved decades ahead of their time.” (from the back cover)

Originally published in 1967 by Bantam Books
Produced by Jerome Agel
Publisher Penguin, 2008
ISBN 9780141035826
159 pages

Wikipedia

The Medium is the Massage (English, 1967/2008, 10 MB, updated on 2017-4-24)
El medio es el masaje (Spanish, trans. León Mirlas, 1969, 10 MB, added on 2015-1-8)
O meio são as massa-gens (Portuguese, trans. Ivan Pedro de Martins, 1969, 16 MB, added on 2015-1-8)

Alexander R. Galloway: Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization (2004)

“Is the Internet a vast arena of unrestricted communication and freely exchanged information or a regulated, highly structured virtual bureaucracy? In Protocol, Alexander Galloway argues that the founding principle of the Net is control, not freedom, and that the controlling power lies in the technical protocols that make network connections (and disconnections) possible. He does this by treating the computer as a textual medium that is based on a technological language, code. Code, he argues, can be subject to the same kind of cultural and literary analysis as any natural language; computer languages have their own syntax, grammar, communities, and cultures. Instead of relying on established theoretical approaches, Galloway finds a new way to write about digital media, drawing on his backgrounds in computer programming and critical theory. “Discipline-hopping is a necessity when it comes to complicated socio-technical topics like protocol,” he writes in the preface.

Galloway begins by examining the types of protocols that exist, including TCP/IP, DNS, and HTML. He then looks at examples of resistance and subversion—hackers, viruses, cyberfeminism, Internet art—which he views as emblematic of the larger transformations now taking place within digital culture. Written for a nontechnical audience, Protocol serves as a necessary counterpoint to the wildly utopian visions of the Net that were so widespread in earlier days.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2004
ISBN 0262072475, 9780262072472
260 pages

Review: Jason Lesko (RCCS, 2005).

PDF (updated 2021-12-16)