Roy Ascott (ed.): Reframing Consciousness: Art, Mind and Technology (1999)

We are in the middle of a process of complex cultural transformation, but to what extent is this matched by the transformation in the way we see ourselves? This book covers a wide-ranging discussion on the interaction between Art, Science and Technology, and goes on to challenge assumptions about ‘reality’.

Loosely themed around four key elements of Mind, Body, Art and Values, the editor leads the investigation through the familiar territories of interactive media and artificial life, combining them with new and ancient ideas about creativity and personal identity.The contributing authors number over sixty highly respected practitioners and theorists in art and science, bringing to the subject a stimulating diversity of approach and a rich background of knowledge.

Art has long been preoccupied with questions involving the mind and consciousness. But it is fast finding that new technology, creatively applied, brings new possibilities to bear. This volume provides a strong foundation for the debates that are sure to follow in this field.

Publisher Intellect Books, 1999
ISBN 1841500135, 9781841500133
314 pages

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S. Seymour: Fashionable Technology – The Intersection of Design, Fashion, Science and Technology (2008))

The interplay of electronic textiles and wearable technology, wearables for short, and fashion, design and science is a highly promising and topical subject. Offered here is a compact survey of the theory involved and an explanation of the role technology plays in a fabric or article of clothing. The practical application is explained in detail and numerous illustrations serve as clarification. Over 50 well-known designers, research institutes, companies and artists, among them Philips, Burton, MIT Media Lab, XS Labs, New York University, Hussein Chalayan, Cute Circuit or International Fashion Machines are introduced by means of their latest, often still unpublished, project, and a survey of their work to date. Given for the first time is a list of all the relevant information on research institutes, materials, publications etc. A must for all those wishing to know everything about fashionable technology.

Publisher: Springer, 2008
ISBN: 3211744983, 9783211744987
Length: 249 pages

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Bruno Latour: Pandora’s Hope. Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (1999)

A scientist friend asked Bruno Latour point-blank: “Do you believe in reality?” Taken aback by this strange query, Latour offers his meticulous response in Pandora’s Hope. It is a remarkable argument for understanding the reality of science in practical terms.

In this book Latour, identified by Richard Rorty as the new “bête noire of the science worshipers,” gives us his most philosophically informed book since Science in Action. Through case studies of scientists in the Amazon analyzing soil and in Pasteur’s lab studying the fermentation of lactic acid, he shows us the myriad steps by which events in the material world are transformed into items of scientific knowledge. Through many examples in the world of technology, we see how the material and human worlds come together and are reciprocally transformed in this process.

Why, Latour asks, did the idea of an independent reality, free of human interaction, emerge in the first place? His answer to this question, harking back to the debates between Might and Right narrated by Plato, points to the real stakes in the so-called science wars: the perplexed submission of ordinary people before the warring forces of claimants to the ultimate truth.

Publisher: Harvard University Press, June 1999
ISBN: 067465336X, 9780674653368
336 pages

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