[Synapse elist] About vitalism and "bioart"

[Pier Luigi Capucci]

Dear All,

thank you for this very interesting discussion, with many key topics  
and suggestions. I'll try to get along with some considerations.

As to the recurring concept of vitalism (in Oron, Monika, Roger...),  
maybe it is a consequence to the fact that biology (and all the bio -  
area disciplines and popular derivatives) has a key and pervasive role  
in our culture today, although without an answer - or with uncertain  
answers - to many basic topics. For instance: how (and why) organic  
life sprung out? How (and why) organic life evolved? Why life tends to  
emerge and growth in a sort of a restless and apparently unavoidable  
process? Why life tends to generate life? Why life is in search of  
life? Is life a matter of lenght-scale (from metres to nanometres)  
(and why)? Is life only existing on Earth (and why) or it has a  
"universal" distribution? Is life only carbon based, organic (and  
why)? How (and why) the symbolic ability was acquired by our ancestors  
and seems to be stick to the organic matter so that we are not able to  
have it reproduced in the machines we create?... So maybe vitalism  
appears a reasonable and popular answer to what we can't explain (yet).

Jens pointed out some key ideas and posed an intriguing question: "Is  
art merely reflecting and anticipating the consequences of far- 
reaching biomedical developments? Or does it play a more active role,  
providing the aesthetic framework which paves the way for the very  
coming-into-being of these liminal lives?"
I think both, but the second question is more interesting for me  
because it tends to enlarge the way life should be intended. And  
(although I couldn't see it yet) it seems that the sk-interfaces  
exhibition he curated in Liverpool goes this direction.
This perspective of life expansion I think exceeds the idea of life as  
only intended as organic based.

I have to thank very much George Gessert for the compliments about the  
diagram I made for the italian edition of Jens Hauser (ed.), "L'Art  
biotech", Filigranes Editions (I wrote the presentation together with  
Franco Torriani and curated the italian edition, http://www.noemalab.org/mediaversi/ 
  ).
That diagram is available here: http://www.noemalab.org/download/Bioart_to.pdf 
  , and I was inspired by a post sent by George Gessert to the mailing  
list Yasmin (on 25 march 2006, http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin/ ) in a  
discussion on exhibiting bioart.

As to exhibiting bioart, I think traditional museums and galleries may  
not be well suited to match the key topics of bioart and the required  
technical/logistic issues (as Jens points out too). Something similar,  
although at the beginning and maybe in a minor way, happened with the  
interactive artworks' exhibitions, where the most suited places  
appeared to be inside the social, in the public spaces, where - unlike  
the museums - the interactions have higher chances to take place.

Finally, it appears that in some interventions emerges a sort of  
juxtaposition/opposition between mankind and nature. Why? Man is  
Nature... Juxtaposing man and nature means to get back to that  
anthropocentric position that we are trying to put in discussion.

Thank you and best wishes,

Pier Luigi Capucci
http://www.noemalab.org/plc/plc.html

University of Bologna
University of Urbino
Director of NoemaLab ( http://www.noemalab.org )


--
Pier Luigi Capucci
e-mail: plc at noemalab.org
web: http://www.noemalab.org/plc/plc.html


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