Nam June Paik: Family of Robot (1986)

The catalogue published for the exhibition of Family of Robot: Mother, Family of Robot: Father, and Connection at the Carl Solway Gallery, Booth 6-125, Chicago International Art Exposition, May 8-13, 1986, Navy Pier, Chicago.

Publisher Carl Solway Gallery, Cincinnati, OH, 1986
via heavyindustries.com

PDF

Peter H. Kahn, Jr: Technological Nature: Adaptation and the Future of Human Life (2011)

Our forebears may have had a close connection with the natural world, but increasingly we experience technological nature. Children come of age watching digital nature programs on television. They inhabit virtual lands in digital games. And they play with robotic animals, purchased at big box stores. Until a few years ago, hunters could “telehunt”—shoot and kill animals in Texas from a computer anywhere in the world via a Web interface. Does it matter that much of our experience with nature is mediated and augmented by technology? In Technological Nature, Peter Kahn argues that it does, and shows how it affects our well-being.

Kahn describes his investigations of children’s and adults’ experiences of cutting-edge technological nature.He and his team installed “technological nature windows” (50-inch plasma screens showing high-definition broadcasts of real-time local nature views) in offices on his university campus and assessed the physiological and psychological effects on viewers. He studied children’s and adults’ relationships with the robotic dog AIBO (including possible benefits for children with autism). And he studied online “telegardening” (a pastoral alternative to “telehunting”).

Kahn’s studies show that in terms of human well-being technological nature is better than no nature, but not as good as actual nature. We should develop and use technological nature as a bonus to life, not as its substitute, and reenvision what is beautiful and fulfilling and often essentially wild in our relationship with the natural world.

Publisher MIT Press, 2011
ISBN 0262113228, 9780262113229
230 pages

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-8-1)

nØ1se exhibition catalogue (2000)

Catalogue for the multi-site multimedia exhibition in Cambridge and London (January-May 2000), devised by artist, Adam Lowe, and, historian of science, Simon Schaffer, and organised around three key themes in “digitality”:

Universal Language
Pattern Recognition
Data Synæsthetics

nØ1se is not limited to electronic media, but traces the digital imagination from such myths as Noah’s Ark, through the early modern experiments of Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine and Morse’s Telegraph, up to today’s charge coupled devices (CCDs), robotics and beyond.. It highlights digitality in history, technology, art and science, drawing upon a wide range of objects and images from artists and scientists around the globe — everything from 3000BC artefacts to the latest state-of-the-art pictures of the surface of atoms.

Catalogue contributors: Tabatha Andrews, William Armstrong, Art and Language, Charles Babbage, Stephen Baker, Joe Banks, Richard Barbrook, William Bateson, Evgen Bavcar, Robin Boast, Patrick Blackett, Jerry Brotton, Soraya de Chadarevian, Adrian Cussins, Su Dalgleish, John Dee, Umberto Eco, Richard Feynman, Manuel Franquelo, Peter Galison, Joy Garnett, Merrill Garnett, Joseph Grigely, Roger Guillemin, Sebastian Guillié, Mercurius Van Helmont, Lynn Hershman, Jeff Hughes, Margaret Watts Hughes, Lisa Jardine, Bill Jones, Athanasius Kircher, Bruno Latour, Malcom Longair, Mike Lynch, Paul D Miller (aka DJ Spooky), Iwan Morus, Gracie Ngale Morton, Sven Nebel, Joseph Nechvatal, Ben Neill, Pictic Balls, Roy Porter, Marc Quinn, Jonathan Ree, Michael Rees, Giles Revell, Kathleen Rogers, Romandson, Brian Rotman, Stan Vanderbeek, Tom Van Sant, Ludwig Von Siegen, Julian Simmons, Nicola Schwartz, Lillian Schwartz, Robert Shannon, Bessie Nakamarra Sims, Paddy Japaljarri Sims, Brian Cantwell Smith, Luc Steels, Bruce Sterling, Jozue Tanaka, John Tchalenko, Dave Tovee, John Tresch, Burhan Tufail, John Tresch, Catherine Wagner, Piers Wardle, Peter Weibel, CTR Wilson, John Wilkins, John Woodward, Charles Wynn-Williams.

Edited by Alfred Birnbaum
Conceived of and designed by Adam Lowe
Published by Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge UK, 2000
ISBN: 0907074782, 978-0907074786
118 pages

exhibition website

View online (Section 1; HTML articles)
View online (Section 2; HTML articles)
View online (Section 3; HTML articles)