Bio-art?
Does modernism reappear through the aestheticization of biotechnology?
Some behaviors, such as wearing navel rings or composing symphonies, are
rare or "abnormal" (i.e., very different from the average), but not
"unnatural", for human nature is our behavioral norm of reaction,
which includes everything that people do. It makes no sense to judge a behavior
as moral or immoral, ethical or unethical, on the basis of whether or not it
is "natural". Douglas J. Futuyma [1]
FutuymaÕs attempted distinction between naturality
and normality of behaviour may be useful to the introduction and further studying
of a generally common tendency to fail to differentiate art from decorative
tradition- yet, what is of importance is the concept of novelty after postmodernism
and how it is redefined.
In an effort to delineate an aesthetic theory established on mathematical models
and especially on the Second Principle of Thermodynamics, where "novelty
is an improbable inversion of the general tendency toward ever-increasing probability",
the German critic Vilem Flusser [3] defines that "the degree of terror
may be taken as a measure of novelty: the more terrible, the newer." This
consists a critic theory based on the parameter of how we experience art and
in the future it may be established on (the basis of) the Second Principle which,
when applied to a system, indicates the increase of its entropy. According to
this Principle, the energy of a system degenerates as it transforms (i.e. the
kinetic energy turns into heat). The work of art, therefore, is an open thermodynamic
system, which is a state of constant flux till it comes to the state of balance
(where balance is defined as the final state of the receivers' acquaintance).
Yet, some works cannot be consumed in an integral way and this is due to their
complexity. Nevertheless, by the moment they appear, they are inserted into
the process of their one-way transposition in time. So, whether they accepted
or over passed, they enter a stage where they obtain the properties of a closed
system. (closed systems: systems that are able to exchange energy with their
environment, i.e. an artwork exposed in a museum, whereas the open systems can
exchange material as well.)
Modernization has not yet been accomplished and it is exactly this contemporary
transformation from works that constitute self-enclosed, achronic formations,
to systems where biological time is being assimilated to the biological base
of the work, provides the work with the qualities of unpredictable, perpetually
transformed system where many different outcomes are possible to arise.
For Taylor, this is point where theory is inserted: " When artworks are
regarded as precious objects whose value is a matter of speculation, they become
little more than superfluous ornaments. Through a "speculative reversal
that is not dialectical, the struggle to avoid ornament ends by making the art
object itself ornament. "[4] "The struggle to avoid ornament"
is common to most of the revolutionary artists. From a certain point of view,
modernism was considered to be a response to ornamentalisation. Yet in postmodernism
the ornament is at the end being transformed to a strange kind of an antibiotic
against ?personal concernsÓ: art indicates concepts connected to the psychopathology
of the artist...
There are three points to be noted:
-Most of the relevant to the term Postmodernism activities imply the unease
of the artists to originate prototype works.
-From a point of view, the artwork has "disappeared" through the dematerialization
caused by digital information.
-Conceptual and body art have completed the hybrization of the body.
For Futuyma, hybrids are individuals formed by mating between unlike forms.
But there is another term adopted from evolutionary biology that makes sense:
the hybrid zone," A region in which distinct populations come into contact
and produce at least some offspring of mixed ancestry." By this way, not
only complexity increases, but uncertainty as well; this is of primal importance
in art: a zone where there is no certain offspring, where morphological and
physiological strains are the product of a specialised technique, a conceptual
process. Even from the times of the ancient Egypt, the sculptor uses specialised
techniques "of excellence "; for the ancient priesthood art reflected
the cosmic order and perfection, "an incarnation of true beauty".
However, there is a critical point when we pass from a status where information,
up to now served as an extension or empowering of the body, (mediated environments,
networks) inserts the body in order to reform it in an ontogenetic manner (DNA
manipulation).
This occurs at the time when recent artistic proposals present a framework where
DNA and art issues are incorporated and re-disposed; consequently, aesthetics
expands to include animal breeding techniques, in vitro organisms and fabricated
landscapes [i.e. terraforming, the Mars colonization].
Vilem Flusser: "...The world "new" means subjectively any situation
which makes us tremble, because it is unexpected. Thus a cow with a horse's
head (Russel's example) is newer than an ordinary cow, because it makes us tremble
more." In addition, Joe Davis will refer to the lack of any ordinary cow
in nature. He denies" that there is any dualism at all between what we
consider as "nature" and "monstrosity". In this way, he
mentions, all flowers and fruits are considered to be "monstrosities"
by definition. " A common rose is in fact a monster much the same as the
fictional one Shelly described in "Frankenstein", yet the rose is
non-fiction.Ó
Vilem Flusser again: "Why is it that dogs arenÕt yet blue with red spots,
and horses donÕt yet radiate phosphorescent colors over the nocturnal shadows
of the land?"
Plato speaks about the imitating of models instead of the production of true
artworks; thus the artwork resembles to the ideal ["ôï éäåáôüí"].
All artworks are resemblances of truth as far as they are resemblances of the
appearance of things. Art represents a decline of perfection. Could we being
artists produce an artwork that lies beyond our interests, beyond our abilities
that have been in a way donated attributed to us?
Transgenic art-a term examined later- on the other hand, in a reverse way than
the platonic thought, "improves upon nature" by the same way that
a Greek sculptor used sequential reductions over the natural model. The problem
of artistic manipulations upon nature, of course, is not so simple. For the
first time, artefacts [ôå÷íÞìáôá] (prosthetic or genetically artificiated),
can be fabricated not only as a result of our social system planning (in the
scientific lab), but also as a result of an artistic imaginative process.
Art reinvents the artwork in an ?analogueÓ way.
Fig.1. "GFP Bunny", Eduardo Kac 2000. Photos Courtesy Julia Friedman
Gallery, Chicago
Eduardo Kac presented in Ars Electronica 99 the
first thoughts about transgenic art, " a new art form based on the use
of genetic engineering to transfer natural or synthetic genes to an organism,
to create unique living beingsÓ. In the festivalÕs symposium, the analysis concerned
to the production of a GFP-K9 dog that would carry the fluorescent protein of
medusa "Aequorea
Victoria. The project was finally realised on a laboratory albino bunny GFP
Bunny that was presented in Avinion, France. GFP Bunny" has to be considered
as an animal that has not been produced through a manipulation process based
on human values by means of usefulness -essentially we may argue that, in every
respect, is a "uselessÓ animal.
Let's return to the definition of novelty. If we introduce the action of the
animal's construction as an artwork in the FlusserÕs argument,
- at first, the artwork is beyond the limits of any kind of habit, beyond common
familiarity.
- it waives its aesthetic quality only the moment it enters the production and
becomes commercialized.
This happens because a technique or a specialised technology like the one that
produced the artwork is not publicly available. By the time a transgenic animal
will be inserted to a system of commercialised distribution, its artistic "values"
decrease, and it is conceptually reshaped from a ?monstrosityÓ to an expendable,
vulnerable object. On the other hand, lab animals do not retain their aesthetical
qualities. (Fig.2) [6].
Fig.2. Advertisement for transgenic mice on Science magazine, 7 April 2000.
By theoriticizing the organism, we move from the images to the concept of life,
realising that transcendal dialectics lead to a transcendal space. The artistic
material (i.e. an animal line) leads to possible, alternative structures where
reality is ?stretchedÓ; more than the animal itself, the concept of a
fluorescent bunny is not a second nature, but nature itself.
What is next? Perhaps if we were at the place where the new is produced, it
would never exist...
References
1. Douglas J. Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology, third edition, Sinauer Associates,
Massachusetts, 1998, page 743.
2. Kounellis Yiannis: ?The tradition of art is not a decorative oneÓ it has
its own ethical and ideological discussion with Francesca Pasini, page 210,
Ëéìíáßá Oäýóóåéá, editions Agra, 1990.
3. Arti magazine, volume 17, Athens 1993.
4. Mark Taylor, "HIDING", Chicago Press, 1997, page 107.
5. Eric Alliez and Michel Feher, Reflections of a Soul, Fragments for the history
of the human body, Zone Press
6. Does novelty in art appears out of the pop tradition; see Kounellis Yiannis,
Ëéìíáßá Oäýóóåéá, editions Agra , 1990. Also, about the concept of 'shock' as
a for the novelty of an artwork, see Yiannis Xenakis, Texts about music and
Architecture, editions Øõ÷ïãéüò, Athens 2001,pages 166-168
Athens, August 01
Melanitis Yiannis is an artist (MA on DigitalArt) working on interactive performances
and has presented works in Europe, N.York and Mexico City. He writes for Futura
magazine and artzine-journal.com.
URL: www.oocities.org/melanitis2001, e-mail: melanitis@hotmail.com.