LIFESCIENCE: First Statement Gerfried Stocker

[lifescience-owner@aec.at]

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ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL 99
LIFESCIENCE
Linz, Austria, September 04 - 09
http://www.aec.at/lifescience
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Ars Electronica 99
Festival for Art, Technology and Society
LifeScience
September 4-9, 1999


Gerfried Stocker


Statement: 
Net Symposium LifeScience

Life Science

You don't need to consult a trend researcher to find out which issue is
currently dominating the public discussion of progress and the future.
Following the Industrial and Digital Revolutions-from the steam engine to
the atom bomb to the Internet-the Biological Revolution is now being
proclaimed. 
Spurred on by the success stories of information and computer technologies
and the fabulous stock market profits reaped by their promoters, reports
from fields of science, research and technology have achieved headline
status as dispatches from the "world of wonders" and attained a sensational
impact equaling those of natural catastrophes and major sports
events-tantalizing prospects that correspond so very closely to our
high-performance society's dreams of a life that is healthy, beautiful and
long. The internationally prognosticated developments make the option of
doing without these achievements seem a hardly realistic one, and-in light
of hunger and disease-many observers go as far as calling it a moral
imperative to deploy every technological means possible to alleviate these
problems.

And thus it is not without justification that life science-the term which
subsumes modern genetic and biological technologies-has emerged as leading
contender to become the key technology of the coming decades. Molecular
biologists and genetic engineers equipped with the tools of information
technology made available by the Computer Age have opened up doors whose
thresholds have, in many instances, marked the limits and taboos of our
culture, though it is the traversal of precisely these boundaries upon which
our civilization has increasingly pinned its expectations and hopes for
continued prosperity.

Beyond any doubt is the social-political and cultural potential of these
developments. What can well be foreseen are the efforts going beyond those
of scientists and scholars-economic and industrial enterprises on a scale on
which we have heretofore gone about the task of mastering, harnessing and
exploiting our physical environment that will now be concentrated upon life
itself and its constituent elements. The very idea of having the capability
of forming life (including human life) beyond the morphological level of the
body and designing its predispositions and talents makes it incumbent upon
us to assume new perspectives on the limits of this life and its social and
metaphysical constitution.

To an extent unmatched by other sciences, genetics and biology have also
been used as tools of ideology and instruments enhancing claims to political
power, and they bear the historical burdens of the interpretations of their
findings and results. 

Moreover, in the case of biological and genetic technologies, we find
ourselves confronted by a lofty domain in which authoritative experts are
few and far between-a fact which, in light of the lasting consequences of
the social and political decisions looming on the horizon, will also become
a touchstone of the democratic political process. Between the arrogance of
businessmen and the ignorance of politicians, the human being remains alone
to face this dilemma-enticed by the hopes of healing all illnesses and
deeply troubled by the fears of a biological Armageddon (legitimate fears in
the wake of Bhopal, Chernobyl, BSE ...).

This is a situation in which we require a Wissenschaftskultur (the way
science is done and promulgated) and a critique of science that dispense
with the myth of neutral facts and findings. 

The experiences and methods of media art can help us go about this. What we
need are interdisciplinary collaboration in a modern, pluralistic society,
and artistic intervention that gets beyond moralizing political correctness
to actively engage in the social discourse concerning progress and
innovation.

With this year's Festival, Ars Electronica begins to focus on issues in the
field of modern biotechnology. This constitutes a reorientation, as well as
the continuation of a practice with a long history of success: namely,
turning attention to those areas where conflicts develop in the sphere of
tension and interplay at the nexus of technology and society, and bringing
art into play as an interface and catalyst for the interaction involving
science and the general public.

Gerfried Stocker

LIFESCIENCE on the web: http://www.aec.at/lifescience






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