UHP399 Gardens & Machines

After going through all my posts, I realized I never posted this so sorry for messing up the order of the blog!

In the articles of the Eduardo Kac reading, he talks about biotechnology. One of the ideas he mentions is “the possibility that a private company can legally own the international right to genetic sequences with the reader was born.” This confused me because, from my point of view, it sounds like they would be able to actually own people. Right after this human cloning was brought up. So, if possible, a company could own one person, then in theory they could clone that person, and thus own all of their workers. That means not having to pay them anything and in the long run saving a large amount of money because of not having to pay salaries. Another way this could be taken is that a company could build their own army, if they were powerful enough to do so. I know that this is far fetched, but that is what I thought of.

When La Mettrie was mentioned Kac brought up that La Mettrie was the first person to suggest that primates could acquire a human language and proposed how to achieve it. The example that Kac showed was Koko, the gorilla that talks to others through Sign Language. This was significant because Koko expressed a whole range of emotions, human emotions. Kac also stated that this was a novel event because gorillas do not communicate to each other like this in the wild. We get new insight on what gorillas think and get more information about gorillas as a result of this endeavor. However, will this grow into a pet market, a new pet available that communicates with you? I mean there are markets out there for doggy furniture, clothes, and transportation. It would just be a new market in which you can talk to your pets. This could also be brought up with Alba, the GFP bunny, the bunny that glows underneath a black light. At first it was very new and very controversial. However, now there actually is a market for animals that glow underneath a black light. Along with the GFP bunny, there are now fish, pigs, dogs, and mice. The GFP fish even sold in Wal-Marts around the country. The fish are called Glofish and the pigs are called Noels. The fact that this originally started out as an art project; just as Koko started out as a science project, and is now a worldwide market is puzzling because it is so controversial. Even though talking pets do not have a market, largely I believe on the fact that only apes have been able to communicate back and for the most part parents don’t want apes in the house, with time it can become a booming market just like the pets that glow under a black light.

With Eduardo Kac’s project titled Move 36, I was very moved. I thought that it was interesting to mark the event in which the machine beat the man, in the way that he did. The chessboard was made of sand and of dark dirt. The piece that made the final move is a plant. All of the materials used are completely natural and they are describing an event when machine conquered a natural object, man. The plant’s genome was incorporated with a new gene that translates into “I think therefore I am.” I think that this implies that because the machine beat the man, that the machine has proven its worth to everyone. In addition, because the plant was mutated for the installation, it represents the machine’s ability to overcome nature in a different way. This way is changing the plant’s core foundations, like how the machine beat the human’s core foundation, his intellect.

Questions:

1. Will having pets that communicate you people become a market?

2. In the beginning of the second article Kac mentions that art changes the way you look at things, does it?

3. Does making a bunny glow under a black light count as art?

After viewing part of this film in class, I decided to complete this class by watching the rest of the movie and writing my final blog entry on it.

Princess Mononoke is extremely different from most of the topics we studied in class this semester. Namely, it has its origins from Japan. As such, the movie has much more gore and violence that one would typically expect from an animated film. But for anyone who has actually watched the movie, it is clear that the story and content is by no means strictly aimed at children.

The movie starts in a peaceful town with the main character Prince Ashitaka. The action starts immediately when a boar monster attacks and Ashitaka saves the village, but becomes cursed in the process. The rest of the film is spent describing his adventures through the forest and world in order to find the source of his curse and hopefully disarm it before he dies.

It turns out that the reason the boar became a monster was because it was shot by an iron bullet. Ashitaka soon finds the village of iron town, where the leader, Lady Eboshi, is mass producing iron guns used to fight both humans and animals alike. These iron guns were the cause of the boar monster. After some investigation, Ashitaka reasons that the spirit of the forest, along with the animals of the forest, are being threatened by the guns of iron town. Soon, it become apparent that Lady Eboshi and a group of other bandits want to kill the spirit of the forest and take its head. Surprisingly, they were successful in chopping off the spirit’s head and this results in a fast spreading “black death” that kills anyone that it touches. The forest, along with iron town, is completely destroyed and the villagers all fled for their lives. Ashitaka comes to the rescue by returning the spirit’s head, but the day light has already started to shine and the spirit cannot live in its “normal” form in the light. As soon as it gets its head back, it dies to the sunlight. However, upon its death, the forest starts to grow again, the grass turns green and everyone who just witnessed the disaster makes amends to start a new life and a peaceful relationship with nature.

It should be brutally clear to most adult audiences that Miyazaki wanted to stress the importance of man’s connection and dependence upon nature. Furthermore, man cannot hope to live peacefully by fighting, overcoming, or destroying nature. All of these ideas are obviously present in Princess Mononoke through the boar monster, the forest spirit, Ashitaki’s curse, and Princess Mononoke herself. The other main idea of Miyazaki’s film is the embrace of technology (in this case by iron town) and how it affects the mentality of humans. Although Lady Eboshi wanted to destroy the forest animals and spirit, she actually did not have evil intentions. She merely wanted iron town to be a safer, richer, and better place to live. However, she and her followers were blinded by the advancement of technology, thinking that iron and guns could replace the natural things in this world. After she successfully shoots off the forest spirit’s head, she realizes that nature is something much more powerful than she had thought or imagined.

Some viewers may describe Lady Eboshi and iron town to be stupid or self absorbed people that deserve what they got. But really, the people in the movie are not much different than us. Everyday, I come home and take technology for granted. Thinking that a faster computer or a thinner laptop will make my life easier, better, and more efficient. Some of this is true, but much of it ignores the exact things that iron town ignored in Princess Mononoke.

I won’t leave any questions to think about this time as there are no more class discussion left, but I will say that this movie has certainly made me think about a lot of the things I do in my daily life. But then again, so as many of the things in this class. Lastly, I’d like to say that I enjoyed this semester in Gardens and hopefully will see you guys around sometime on campus.

In  A Rough Guide to Climate Change, Robert Henson gives a brief yet fairly complete summary of the history of climate change and the various opinions/reactions that people have about climate change. He mentions the great concern with climate change in the 1970s and 80s, which died out before entering the 90s. But it seems that the root of the problem has surface again and we are finding it harder than ever to ignore. Henson also describes several views of those who don’t believe in global warming, but it is reasonable to assume from his tone that he himself is a firm believer.

The Field Notes From a Catastrophe by Kolbert takes a much more hard stance on global warming and embraces that global warming is happening and will lead to a catastrophe should it stay unsolved. Kolbert shows her argument on why global warming comes from human activities. She states that she doesn’t want to make the issue too simplistic while much of the hardcore science is left out.

Chapters two and three were full of anecdotal evidence as well as some history of global warming. She mentions first hand experiences in Greenland, Iceland, and the Arctic to support her observations. Much of her views are verry personal and thus easy to relate to. Also included are some interviews with politicians who are aware and actively working on the problem in climate change. In terms of historical content, Kolbert cites Arrhenius and Keeling and enlighten us with the fact that we have been aware of global warming since the 1850s. While this wasn’t a complete shock, it is almost amuzing that people just decided to ignore this aspect of science for so long.

Chapters seven and eight were focused on how we can push to solve global warming through a variety of sources, mainly public or government policy. One such solution is by Rober Socolow, who invented a series of wedges that can prevent billions of tons of CO2 in the next 50 years for each wedge implemented correctly. A lot of attention is also focused on how society views the problem of global warming. Kolbert states that we go about our “business as usual” as if nothing is being threatened. She is obviously appalled by our ability to sit there and live life as normal while waiting for a solution to magically appear.

From other responses I’ve read so far, many people seem to have throughly enjoyed these articles while gaining quite a bit of new knowledge on climate change. I feel the same way. However, I feel much less personal connection to this topic than some. To me, global warming is a purely scientific field of study. Whether or not global warming is a huge problem or one that we can brush off should be made on scientific evidence alone. It does not matter whether we have hypothesized it for 10 years or 150 years. The fact remains that one must show strong scientific support to back up these claims. This is not to say that I don’t believe in global warming, but rather that I honestly didn’t get much out of these articles that would help me make more informed decisions in the topic of global warming. Perhaps it was not the author’s goal to provide this type of information, but since both of these authors were clearly believers in global warming, it’s only natural to assume that they wrote this stuff to convince others on certain issues. In this regard, they did not succeed with me.

Questions:

1. Is global warming REALLY a problem? No this is not rhetorical. If so, please provide a scientific argument.

2. Why do some people still not believe in the global warming phenomenon?

3. Is global warming caused by humanities actions?

As preparation for the visit I would like them to watch a few of the videos
that we produced in our HORT301 Plant Physiology course. They are all short
just a few minutes and I would like to refer to the production and effect of
this work to your students.
They can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHfA8peTZBc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF2B4A-z474

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMKN9Q5FJh4

http://www.scivee.tv/node/11151

http://www.scivee.tv/node/11148

http://www.scivee.tv/node/11147

In the excerpts from Eduardo Kac’s book Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond, the subject of biotechnology and its overlapping with the art realm is introduced in (what I perceive as) an innovative manner that is breaking boundaries for modern artists. Kac begins his discussion with an assertion about “biopower” versus “biopolitics,” claiming that society controls individuals through ideology (“cognitively,” as he states) and through their actual bodies (“physically”). Through these perspectives, the idea of how biotechnology impacts individuals and social relations can be better addressed and interpreted. Kac delves deep into the theories and beliefs of multiple individuals in order to provide a wide range of viewpoints which support his assertions regarding biotechnology and art. First, La Mettrie was a pioneer for the idea that there were parallels to be drawn between living and nonliving entities. Sometimes criticized for his work because of his alleged lowering of the status of humans, contrarily La Mettrie actually “elevated the status of nonhumans” in order to draw comparisons and analogies. Saint-Hilaire supported that organisms are all ruled by a common organic law, while Edward Steichen was the first modern artist to create brand new organisms through traditional and artificial methods. Kac’s focus then shifts towards the notion of “bio art” which is claimed to manipulate processes of life at the genetic level.

In the second excerpt from Kac, the focus revolves around transgenic artwork, a type of art which finds itself bound between “humans, animals, and robots.” Transgenic art is described as being primarily based in genetic engineering in order to create new unique living organisms. Kac presents a few of his personal pieces of transgenic art as a case for analysis, such as the “Genesis” project, the “GFP Bunny,” and “The Eighth Day.” Of the three, I found the process of creating Genesis to be the most interesting; a quote from the Book of Genesis in The Bible was selected and translated into Morse Code; the Morse Code was then translated into DNA base pairs as determined by Kac’s personal method. However, when the DNA base pairs underwent the reverse process back into English, the translation was not exactly the same, lending itself to the idea that “new meanings emerge as we seek to change [the phrase].”

After reading Kac’s descriptions of bioart and transgenic art, I believe that this is probably the most original manifestation of artwork that I have ever been exposed to. As I continue in this class, I find my mind being further and further expanded into considering processes and forms of art that I would never have encountered otherwise. Although a bit heavy at times for someone unfamiliar with the complexities of biochemistry and genetics, I was intrigued by the process of taking essentially amino acids (or their representative form) and from that producing art. Referring back to Kac’s Genesis project, as he broke down a biblical quote into an utterly foundational form – the most basic form in which humans are constructed – and then reconstructed it, the result was an altered form of the verse which to me seems representative of the fact that sometimes our initial interpretations or opinions can always be changed due to a new vantage point. That’s essentially what artists try to convey – a new way of looking at something ordinary so that one’s mind can be expanded, influenced, and broadened. When thinking further about the concept of transgenic art, I am strongly reminded of locative art and how it also presents the viewer with an inventive way of viewing something. While locative art provides a sound experiential to the everyday visual process via GPS systems, transgenic art creates new organisms which allow people to realize relationships between themselves and “nonhumans.”

As a final thought, I found it interesting that new developments can be termed “monstrous” because people do not fully understand them. As Kac so poignantly put it, societies have used “monsters” to illustrate anxieties that reflect major cultural shifts. However, I find it relevant that while transgenic art is sometimes viewed as monstrous by humans, humans have their own inner monstrosities to face.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

1. Does our morality or mortality fuel interests in/ oppositions towards biotechnology?
2. Does the beginning of a new era in art (such as the emergence of bioart) inevitably lead to the termination of the previous era?
3. Why is some transgenic art deemed “monstrous”?

I would like to present on

christina kubisch

http://www.christinakubisch.de/english/klangundlicht_frs.htm

In Nye’s first chapter, he makes many comparisons that challenge how we typically look at technology.  For instance, he begins with the argument that technology doesn’t exist to fill a need, but rather, the new technology creates a need we didn’t previously know we had.  Nye also suggests that technology is more like art than like science, and quotes Aristotle as saying “the business of every art is to bring something into existence.”  This goes against the typical idea that technology is closely related to science.  People generally look at technology as the application of science, meaning that there is a scientific discovery and a need for a practical application that goes along with it.  However, that isn’t actually the case most of the time.  Generally, a technological advancement brings about the questions which then drive scientific research, because we as inquisitive creatures must know why things work the way they do.  Advancements in technology are also blamed in this work for the “marginalization of women” as technology became a more male dominated field.

In the second chapter of Nye’s work, he discusses the idea that technology has an inevitable effect on society.  The rationale here is that people don’t have to choose to embrace new technology, be it modern methods of farming (the Amish people in the Americas today) or guns (the Japanese until the 1850s).  However, Nye clearly feels that much of society is influenced by technology, because the rest of the chapter is spent analyzing exactly how this happens and to what extent.

Nye makes a really good point here that “rather than assuming that technologies are deterministic, it appears more reasonable to assume that cultural choices shape their uses.”  The technology wasn’t needed before society said it was, echoing his idea from the first chapter that technological advances do not always follow from necessity. Similarly, people would be able to live without conveniences like electricity or indoor plumbing, but the building codes enforced by many governments make this illegal.  The effect that technology has on society will also be driven by the culture.  For instance, television in America had a different effect that television in China or the Middle East.  An interesting discussion of Marx’s thoughts on industrialization reveals that he felt it was largely negative, especially when it was tied to capitalism, because it resulted in lower wages and fewer jobs for the working class.  However, he felt that if properly implemented, technology could prove to be “the basis for a better world.”  However, other scholars feel that technology is given too much credit in its impact on culture.  For instance, it often takes multiple inventions to result in some sort of change.  The example given in Nye’s work is women’s suffrage, which was the outcome of things like mass production, improved education, use of the typewriter, and birth control.  Additionally, there is often a large gap between the implementation of the technology and its societal effect.

I found Nye to be quite an enjoyable author to read, and his points were interesting.  I really relate well to the point he made about computers replacing clerical staff, and how it actually led to a reduction of efficiency in many cases, and an increase in only around 40 percent of them.  Having worked in an office where people relied heavily on computers, it’s visible first hand.  For instance, when people’s computers were down so that the software could be updated, many times people didn’t really know what to do with themselves.  Similarly, I wasted lots of time on the internet at my clerical job.  While it’s true I got all the work that I was supposed to do done faster due to technology, I didn’t get any more work to do after that, so there was lots of wasted time.

I feel that Nye’s views on the sociological effects of technology might be slightly exaggerated.  While yes, technology has changed society, so has everything else, whether it be our day to day interactions with people or nature or anything.  Technology has also been effected by culture, as only certain things are attempted or improved upon based on the cultural values of that community.  Too often, technology is viewed as an “evil” or a “good,” instead of what it really is:  a tool to accomplish things.  Nye does a good job of stressing the tool part of this in the beginning, but doesn’t take the argument far enough.

Some things to consider:

1. In what ways has technology been influenced by art?

2. If technology caused both the “marginalization of women” and “women’s liberation,” would you say technology has helped or harmed women as a whole?

3. What technological advancement do you think has had the greatest impact on American culture since you were born?

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