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The Posthuman Condition
"Where humanists saw themselves as distinct beings in an antagonistic relationship with their surroundings, posthumans regard their own being as embodied in an extended technological world." Synthetic creativity, organic computers, genetic modification, intelligent machines--such ideas are deeply challenging to many of our traditional assumptions about human uniqueness and superiority. But, ironically, it is our very capacity for technological invention that has secured us so dominant a position in the world which may lead ultimately to (as some have put it) 'The End of Man'. If we are really capable of creating entities that exceed our own skills and intellect then the consequences for huma...
The Postdigital Membrane
Pepperell (an artist and author of The post-human condition) and Punt (a filmmaker who has previously researched 19th century technology) believe the "digital age" paradigm being applied to the new century has too many intellectual restrictions in its reductionist, on-off logic. Instead, they propose the metaphor of a living "postdigital" membrane to describe the dynamic and unpredictable flow between art, computing, philosophy, and science. "The power of the membrane metaphor," they write, "is its dual and contradictory function: like a transparent wall, it both connects and divides." They employ the metaphor here to explore how our understandings of imagination, technology, and human desire are changing in whatever one chooses to call this new era. Distributed by ISBS. c. Book News Inc.
Screen Consciousness
This collection of essays is driven by the question of how we know what we know, and in particular how we can be certain about something even when we know it is an illusion. The contention of the book is that this age-old question has acquired a new urgency as certain trends in science, technology and ideas have taken the discussion of consciousness out of the philosophy department and deposited it in the world at large. As a consequence, a body of literature from many fields has produced its own sets of concerns and methods under the rubric of Consciousness Studies. Each contribution in this collection deals with issues and questions that lots of people have been thinking about for many yea...
Brain and Art
Could we understand, in biological terms, the unique and fantastic capabilities of the human brain to both create and enjoy art? In the past decade neuroscience has made a huge leap in developing experimental techniques as well as theoretical frameworks for studying emergent properties following the activity of large neuronal networks. These methods, including MEG, fMRI, sophisticated data analysis approaches and behavioral methods, are increasingly being used in many labs worldwide, with the goal to explore brain mechanisms corresponding to the artistic experience. The 37 articles composing this unique Frontiers Research Topic bring together experimental and theoretical research, linking st...
Kinetic Architectures and Geotextile Installations
This book documents architectural installations developed by Beesley and collaborators from 1995 through 2007. The collection includes architectural sculptures located in natural sites and works integrating kinetic components and interactive systems. Projects in the past several years have focused on immersive digitally fabricated lightweight ‘textile’ structures, and the most recent generations of his work feature responsive systems that use dense arrays of microprocessor, sensors and actuator systems. With contributions by Jean Gagnon, Eric Haldenby, Christine Macy, Andrew Payne, Robert Pepperell, Michael Stacey and Charles Stankievech.
Art, Aesthetics, and the Brain
Humans have engaged in artistic and aesthetic activities since the appearance of our species. Our ancestors have decorated their bodies, tools, and utensils for over 100,000 years. The expression of meaning using color, line, sound, rhythm, or movement, among other means, constitutes a fundamental aspect of our species' biological and cultural heritage. Art and aesthetics, therefore, contribute to our species identity and distinguish it from its living and extinct relatives. Science is faced with the challenge of explaining the natural foundations of such a unique trait, and the way cultural processes nurture it into magnificent expressions, historically and ethnically unique. How does the h...
Framing the Apocalypse
The apocalypse’s triumph is witnessed in the arts, literature, music, film, TV, and digital media thereby enabling us to view the very essence of Apocalypse as a cultural phenomenon.
War on the Human
The essays in this collection explore the question of the human, both as a contested concept and as it relates to, and functions within, the wider global conjuncture. The authors explore the theoretical underpinnings of the term “human,” inviting the reader to reflect upon the contemporary human condition, to identify opportunities and threats in the changes ahead, and to determine what aspects of our species we should abandon or strive to maintain. The volume approaches these ideas from a myriad of perspectives, but the authors are united in their abstention from rejecting humanism outright or, indeed, fully endorsing posthumanism‘s teleological narrative of accelerated progress and p...
Down the Fairway
Golf memoir BIO & Instructional by & about Bobby Jones.
Situated Aesthetics
This book focuses on externalist approaches to art. It is the first fruit of a workshop held in Milan in September 2009, where leading scholars in the emerging field of psychology of art compared their different approaches using a neutral language and discussing freely their goals. The event threw up common grounds for future research activities. First, there is a considerable interest in using cognitive and neural inspired techniques to help art historians, museum curators, art archiving, art preservation. Secondly, cognitive scientists and neuroscientists are rather open to using art as a special way of accessing the structures of the mind. Third, there are artists who explicitly draw inspiration out of current research on various aspects of the mind. Fourth, during the workshop, a converging methodological paradigm emerged around which more specific efforts could be encouraged.
