Sarah Kember: Cyberfeminism and Artificial Life (2003)

Cyberfeminism and Artificial Life examines construction, manipulation and re-definition of life in contemporary technoscientific culture. It takes a critical political view of the concept of life as information, tracing this through the new biology and the changing discipline of artificial life and its manifestation in art, language, literature, commerce and entertainment. From cloning to computer games, and incorporating an analysis of hardware, software and ‘wetware’, Sarah Kember demonstrates how this relatively marginal field connects with, and connects up global networks of information systems.

As well as offering suggestions for the evolution of [cyber]feminism in Alife environments, the author identifies the emergence of posthumanism; an ethics of the posthuman subject mobilized in the tension between cold war and post-cold war politics, psychological and biological machines, centralized and de-centralized control, top-down and bottom-up processing, autonomous and autopoietic organisms, cloning and transgenesis, species-self and other species. Ultimately, this book aims to re-focus concern on the ethics rather than on the ‘nature’ of life-as-it-could-be.

Publisher Routledge, 2003
ISBN 0415240263, 9780415240260
257 pages

Keywords and phrases
evolutionary psychology, epistemology, ALife, sociobiology, autopoiesis, posthuman, cyberfeminism, norns, Steve Grand, science wars, SimLife, feminism, ontology, SimEarth, Risan, natural selection, cyborg, connectionism, feminist, autonomous agents

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2013-3-16)

Christopher M. Kelty: Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software (2008–) [EN, ES]

“In Two Bits, Christopher M. Kelty investigates the history and cultural significance of Free Software, revealing the people and practices that have transformed not only software, but also music, film, science, and education. Free Software is a set of practices devoted to the collaborative creation of software source code that is made openly and freely available through an unconventional use of copyright law. Kelty shows how these specific practices have reoriented the relations of power around the creation, dissemination, and authorization of all kinds of knowledge after the arrival of the Internet.

Two Bits also makes an important contribution to discussions of public spheres and social imaginaries by demonstrating how Free Software is a “recursive public”-a public organized around the ability to build, modify, and maintain the very infrastructure that gives it life in the first place.Drawing on ethnographic research that took him from an Internet healthcare start-up company in Boston to media labs in Berlin to young entrepreneurs in Bangalore, Kelty describes the technologies and the moral vision that binds together hackers, geeks, lawyers, and other Free Software advocates. In each case, he shows how their practices and way of life include not only the sharing of software source code but also ways of conceptualizing openness, writing copyright licenses, coordinating collaboration, and proselytizing for the movement. By exploring in detail how these practices came together as the Free Software movement from the 1970s to the 1990s, Kelty also shows how it is possible to understand the new movements that are emerging out of Free Software: projects such as Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that creates copyright licenses, and Connexions, a project to create an online scholarly textbook commons.”

Publisher Duke University Press, 2008
ISBN 0822342642, 9780822342649
xvi+378 pages

Book website
Publisher (EN)
Publisher (ES)

Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software (English, 2008, 3 MB, HTML (ZIP), updated on 2023-3-14)
Two Bits: la trascendencia cultural del software libre (Spanish, 2019, 8 MB, added on 2023-3-14)

Christoph Klütsch: Computergrafik: Ästhetische Experimente zwischen zwei Kulturen. Die Anfänge der Computerkunst in den 1960er Jahren (2007) [German]

“Computergrafik ist ein innovativer Beitrag zur ungeschriebenen Geschichte der Computergrafik der 60er Jahre. Vor dem Hintergrund C. P. Snows “zwei Kulturen” Diskussion entwickelte sich in der Stuttgarter Schule um Max Bense eine neue Form generativer bzw. algorithmischer Kunst, die die Anfänge der digitalen Computergrafik markieren. Zentrale theoretische und künstlerische Konzepte werden anhand der Werke von Frieder Nake, Georg Nees, A. Michael Noll und Manfred Mohr diskutiert. Pionierleistungen, theoretische Diskussionen und die Bezüge zu zeitgenössischen Kunstbewegungen sind systematisch aufgearbeitet und ermöglichen die Einordnung einer ästhetischen Debatte, wie sie bisher weder im Kontext einer neuen Informationsästhetik noch in der Kunstgeschichte oder in medienwissenschaftlichen Untersuchungen geleistet worden ist. Interviews mit Pionieren der Computergrafik in Deutschland und den USA, die Aufarbeitung schwer zugänglichen Quellenmaterials und eine umfangreiche Bibliographie runden das Werk ab.”

Publisher Springer, 2007
ISBN 3211394095, 9783211394090
288 pages

Key terms: Computerkunst, Frieder Nake, Max Bense, Manfred Mohr, Computergrafik, Informationsästhetik, Bell Labs, Zagreb, Serendipity, Op-Art, C. P. Snow, Informationstheorie, Konkrete Kunst, Semiotik, Kybernetik, Helmar Frank, Computerkünstler, Bridget Riley, Turing test

Review: Mihai Nadin (Image, 2007).

Book website
Publisher

PDF (updated on 2020-11-20)
Academia.edu (from author, added on 2020-11-20)