LIFESCIENCE: Re: LIFESCIENCE

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

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ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL 99
LIFESCIENCE
Linz, Austria, September 04 - 09
http://www.aec.at/lifescience
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like some others on this list, i've also been feeling ambiguous about
the prix ars winners, in part because i was assuming a rather narrow
definition of "life science" - but from another perspective, some of the
choices do make sense, especially in the direction of a-life and
self-organizing/self-evolving applications and/or networks.

however one thing that is a complication is that much of our discussion
seems in part based on relationships of autonomy between the zones of
"art," "science," "commercialism," "entertainment," and so on. i wonder
how we can talk about the difference between the intertwinement of
computer tech, government-supported research, transnational software
corporations, art festival, and the discussions within these
intersections? 

if there has traditionally been some ambivalence towards big-budget,
mainstream projects (mostly in computer graphics) winning the prix, how
innocent or "pure" have other artistic projects been? it seems that
there has always been, in the West, a complex interplay between
aesthetics and politics, and that we should ask how the current
situation is different from, say the Renaissance or the historical avant-gardes...

while in a sense all this seems to be bickering over categorical
details, in another way it is a political issue, because various types
of frames and representational contexts (such as the prix) have alot to
do w/ what will be considered, debated, accepted, and rejected as "art"
or "science"....

eugene


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