Abstract
This paper investigates how different artistic practices interpret and represent scientific thought in general and genetics in particular. By revising the artworks of three different artists, here we demonstrate that those pertaining to the artistic practices closely associated with the Art, Science and Technology artworld (AST), with its subgenres such as computer or bio art, not only understand science differently than its artistic peers but also represent it in a very particular and positive way. This, we argue, contrasts with the larger artistic field and is the result of this art world particular historical development. We conclude that AST’s popularity, despite struggling to assert itself in the artistic field, reflects a larger popular trend that can be also seen, for example, in the transhumanist movement.
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Notes
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Also referred to as opportunity spaces or ‘political opportunity’ (Meyer and Minkoff 2004), these exogenous factors are larger historical, social, intellectual and material changes outside the scope of the artistic world in question: it is these that, in the first place, allow for the development of new genres or practices via either new resources and/opportunities. Endogenous factors, differently than exogenous ones, are related with the artistic field own internal rules, disputes and structures. A new artistic genre, in order to be recognized as such, as valid and legitimate, must allow itself to be justified by previously established parameters and conventions. As Becker (2008) remind us, conventions play a significant role in this game. Differently than large-scale productions, restricted symbolic goods, as Bourdieu (1993) reminds us, are not measured by financial return or popularity: in fact the opposite is true. For an overview discussion over the benefits and limits of these concepts applied to the study of artistic worlds, as well as further conceptualization, see Baumann (2007).
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A concept also drawn from the Social Movement literature, collective action frames developed from the work of Goffman (1986) and can be seen as “sets of beliefs and meanings that inspire and legitimate the activities and campaigns of a social movement organization” (Benford and Snow 2000, p. 614). Again, please refer to Baumann (2007) for more information about its application and limits.
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The clearest example of this propensity can be found in the Stuttgart school of Computer Art (Klütsch 2007b) under Max Bense’s tutelage. Their North American counterparts, however, also played with this idea. Michael Noll’s (1966) infamous Mondrian experiment, which attempted to recreated Mondrian’s style only to then question his colleagues whether his work, in contrast with a real Mondrian, was the real Mondrian, is perhaps the best-known example.
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For a valuable resource that provides an understanding of the rationale of late sixties protests against not only computer but also the ‘technocratic’ society, see Roszak (1969).
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We should note that it was not only the public that had turned hostile to these practices. Some of these same pioneers, like Frieder Nake, would also condemn the embryonic AST for its cosy relationship with the military-industrial complex (Nake 1971). For a history of this post WWII optimism in relation to computer art, please refer to (Nunez 2016).
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Kac also justifies his projects ‘artistically’, using both art historical and art theoretical examples that link his practice with previous artistic periods and ideas. In order to maintain a cohesive text, I will not discuss those arguments and instead shall look at his ethical assertions.
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By dissecting the discourses of some notable transhumanists, Hauskeller highlights that they usually “presuppose a normative conception of human nature” where there is “an argument that proceeds from a claim about what some being’s nature is to a conclusion that tell us what this being ought to do” (2009: 10–11). In this conception, the normative behaviour of humans is to enhance and, consequently, from this same understanding of natural human behaviour, Hauskeller’s transhumanists argue for transhumanism as a natural human act.
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Kac, for example, in his Signs of Life (2007c) describes its contributors as not seeing “their role as commentators chronicling or illustrating the burgeoning biotech culture. Rather, their work is engaged in shaping discourse and public policy, and in stimulating wide-ranging debate” (Kac 2007a: 12).
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Nunez, G.A. (2019). Between Utopia and Dystopia: Contemporary Art and Its Conflicting Representations of Scientific Knowledge. In: Görgen, A., Nunez, G.A., Fangerau, H. (eds) Handbook of Popular Culture and Biomedicine. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90677-5_18
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