The Impossible Clone
Gerry Coulter

Cloning, the mastery of code, is however a far cry from the mastery of development. Just as globalization is not guaranteed to win out so too it is very unlikely that cloning will ever work. There remains for cloning the problem of the social, of learning, influence, education, and individual thought. Think of the presence of the neo-clones in our culture prior to advanced genetics – what we have long known as twins. Twins can be two identical beings, raised by the same parents, in the same house, yet who often turn out to be remarkably different in preferences and actions. The problem for cloning, and it is a problem for the posthuman generally, is that the clone child will experience the billions of intrusions and interventions into its life that the twin has long experienced. These will help the clones each become a different being – even those who experience immersion in systems which contain a good deal of cultural cloning.

Interview à propos de "sk-interfaces"
Ivana Mulatero (reviewed by Franco Torriani)

The Life Sciences, increasingly convergent technologies, and art practices today continuously get blended, as many artists realize their productions with materials and techniques related to the manipulation of living matter. After having curated the seminal Art Biotech exhibition in France, in 2003, which has almost become the very manifesto of Biotech Art, five years later, the curator and media theorician Jens Hauser has proposed sk-interfaces, another impressive and cutting-edge exhibition "exploding borders in art, technology and society". First staged in Liverpool (the publication sk-interfaces, edited by Jens Hauser, was published by the Liverpool University Press, in 2008), this exhibition has been further enlarged to be shown at Casino – Forum d’Art Contemporain in the City of Luxembourg (2009-2010). Participating artists were Art Orienté objet, Maurice Benayoun, Zane Berzina, Critical Art Ensamble, Wim Delvoye, Olivier Goulet, Eduardo Kac, Antal Lakner, Yann Marussich, Kira O'Reilly, Zbigniew Oksiuta, ORLAN, Philippe Rahm, Julia Reodica, Stelarc, Jun Takita, The Office of Experiments, The Tissue Culture and Art Project, Sissel Tolaas, Paul Vanouse. Publisher: Casino Luxembourg-Forum d'art contemporaine, 2009).

MathEcoDesign. Il Design e la Matematica al Tempo dell’Informazione
Ignazio Licata

La matematica, intesa come attività cognitiva umana e non luogo ideale di perfezioni logiche astratte calate da qualche iperuranio platonico, permette di muoversi tra il certo e l’incerto alla ricerca del possibile e del plausibile.Nella sua natura più profonda, essa rispecchia l’attitudine umana alla ricerca di configurazioni,di pattern ricorrenti, di analogie in sistemi anche assai diversi tra loro, tutte cose da cui dipende il nostro retaggio evolutivo. In questo senso, un approccio epistemologico alla matematica ed al “pensare matematico” è alla base della formazione moderna del progettista e del designer. L’attività del Designer è l’incontro tra un insieme di precise condizioni “al contorno” formalizzabili e quantificabili ( materiali, vincoli fisici e temporali, scopo prefissato, fattori economici ed aziendali) ed un’istanza creativa che deve implementarsi. “Fare design”, trasformare un problema in un progetto, significa non soltanto “ottimizzare” tutti i fattori in gioco e scegliere la via più efficace, ma ottimizzare con eleganza, dando alla soluzione finale un carattere di necessità logica, di semplicità essenziale, coniugando fantasia e ragionamento e realizzando una forma autenticamente “bella”. L’eleganza matematica di P.A. M. Dirac e quella letteraria di Italo Calvino convergono nell’ indicare l’universalità come primo e fondamentale segno della bellezza efficace, quella che lascia traccia nel mondo.

Stories of competition and collaboration
Rob van Kranenburg

Collaboration is difficult. Usman Haque used the Prisoners Dilemma to show that voting selfishly always gives you more gain. It is only when you can start to consider making points or making meaning for the group as a whole that you can actually see to your small sacrifice in collaborating creates benefit for the group as a whole and consequently for you. But this takes trust in the people in your immediate neighbourhood. Once that is established however, there is nothing the group as such cannot tackle. So what are the reason that there are so few examples of successful efforts of working together locally in a meaningful ( read food, shelter, infrastructure) way? There are two reasons. The first is that many examples can not be seen as meaningful by the dominant paradigm. Stories of collaboration and sharing have been moved into a literary mode: tales of wonder. Albert Nolan writes: "the best example of Jesus’ attempts to educate the people to share what they had, was the miracle of the loaves and fishes. This incident was interpreted by the early Church and by all the evangelists as a miracle of multiplication - although this is never explicitly said by any of them... The second reason has to do with numbers and human nature.

Arte e interattività
Claudio Cerritelli intervista Pier Luigi Capucci

Ma l’interattività è una caratteristica generale che viene ben prima delle tecnologie. Non è un’eccezione, piuttosto è la regola. [...] Nel campo della comunicazione umana l’eccezione non è l’interattività ma la non interattività: la comunicazione interattiva esiste fin da quando esiste la nostra specie, quella non interattiva è molto più recente, risale alla realizzazione delle prime immagini, forse 40 mila anni fa, quando abbiamo iniziato a porre al di fuori del corpo una parte della conoscenza. La comunicazione interattiva è di gran lunga più fondamentale e naturale di quella non interattiva. Non solo l’interattività esiste fin dagli albori dell’umanità, ma va addirittura al di là dell’umano, dato che qualsiasi organismo vivente interagisce con l’ambiente in cui si trova e con i suoi simili. Quando i mass-media parlano di interattività intendono in realtà l’interattività tecnologica. La novità sta nel fatto che, grazie alle tecnologie, siamo riusciti a riportare nell’alveo della comunicazione interattiva forme e media che prima non lo erano (per esempio le immagini, la scrittura, la comunicazione mediata, quella remota...).

Towards a Unified Existential Science of Humans and Androids
Alan N. Shapiro

Presented with the reality, which is at the same time still half-fictional, of bringing robots or androids into our social world, I believe that we are being offered the precious gift of an opportunity for humanity to grow and develop, to untangle the complex knots binding us to our current stagnation, to take real control of our destiny and improve our lives. To have living or semi-living beings in our midst who both resemble humans and are different from humans, who are created with technologies (including bio-technologies), rather than coming to life through human sexual reproduction, is an event of great scale in human history, an opportunity to change ourselves. The human condition - looked at from the viewpoint of philosophy, theology, cosmology, or even cybernetic communications theory - is inherently difficult and disorienting because we are not getting any feedback from anyone or anywhere. Not even a simple OK, a confirmation, a yes or no response to our speech and our actions. Thumbs up or thumbs down. Our situation is a cosmic mystery.