Re: LIFESCIENCE: Lifescience is in evolution?

[Eugene Thacker <maldoror@eden.rutgers.edu>]

---------------------------------------------------------
ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL 99
LIFESCIENCE
Linz, Austria, September 04 - 09
http://www.aec.at/lifescience
---------------------------------------------------------
Christian,

It is good to hear a fresh and honest voice from a participant - in
electronic contexts like these one never knows how big or how diverse
the silent majorities are...

I totally agree w/ your frustrations, and, as someone w/ connections to
academia, can relate to all of these detrimental elements of academic
discourse, as I'm sure others on this list can too.

The difficult thing I find is not so much the posturing (which is,
unfortunately, present in _whichever_ context you're dealing in one way
or another), but rather finding that transitional boundary where an
engaged, exciting discussion becomes bickering over theoretical
territories and terminological niceties. If we're going to take
seriously the notion that languages and discourses are not transparent,
then it makes sense to me to try to find clear, concise, and dynamic
languages with which to address the complexities of a given topic such
as the "sciences" or the art-science relationship. Otherwise it seems
that things get reduced to artists vs. science or even assuming there is
something coherent and unified called "science."

But beyond this, I'm interested to hear you talk more about the need to
go into SF and the sciences themselves:

> 1: Aesthetics and art are highly overated and it seems more pertinant to concentrate on the actual scientific data and conceptual developments that the lucid minds of science fiction and
> science actual are dealing with.

Were you thinking of any examples in particular? What kinds of specific
activities would these be? Who is doing the work or from what
perspective are "we" concentrating on the sciences in themselves? What
kinds of distinctions do you make between science and SF?

Eugene

-- 
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
bio_informatics //////////// http://gsa.rutgers.edu/maldoror/index.html
/////////////////////////////////// ftp_formless_anatomy /////
http://www.formless.org
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
[techne] New Media + Digital Art //////////////////
http://www.technenet.org
////////////////////////////////////////////////////// contact
maldoror@eden.rutgers.edu ///////////////////////////
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
You are subscribed to the English language version of LIFESCIENCE
To unsubscribe the English language version send mail to
lifescience-en-request@aec.at (message text 'unsubscribe')
Send contributions to lifescience@aec.at
--------------------------------------------------------------------------