Biological Agency in Art - Leonardo/ISASTreference to Stella’s work “Die Fahne Hoch.” (1959),...

Vol 16 Issue 2 – 3

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Biological Agency in ArtAllison Nicole Kudla

DXARTS, University of WashingtonSeattle, USA

[email protected]

ABSTRACTThis paper will discuss how the pictorial dilemma guidedtraditional art towards formalism and again guides newmedia art away from the screen and towards the generationof physical, phenomenologically based and often bio-technological artistic systems. This takes art intoexperiential territories, as it is no longer an illusoryrepresentation of an idea but an actual instantiation of itsbeauty and significance. Thus the process of making art i sreinstated as a marker to physically manifest and accentuatean experience that takes the perceivers to their own edges soas to see themselves as open systems within a vast andinterweaving non-linear network.

KeywordsAgency, Semiotics, Biology, Technology, Emulation,Behavioral, Emergent, Earth Art, Systems Art, Bio-Tech Art

1. INTRODUCTION

“The artist is a positive force in perceiving howtechnology can be translated to new environments toserve needs and provide variety and enrichment oflife.” Billy Klüver, Pavilion ([13] p x).

“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammerwith which to shape it.” Bertolt Brecht [2]

When looking at the history of art through the lens of a newmedia artist engaged in several disciplines that interlacefields as varying as biology, algorithmic programming andsignal processing, a fairly recent paradigm for art emergesthat takes artistic practice away from depiction and towardsa more systems based and biologically driven approach.This paradigm emphasizes the representational limitsinherent at times in traditional art and evokes an agendathat desires to present us with concrete experiences withinour conformation that are otherwise outside of operationalawareness, thereby expanding our own boundaries andmodalities. This paper steps through a series of shifts inmy practice, relates them to previously occurring historicalthreads, and then discusses the method and medium wheremy practice is now fully engaged. This transition is frompictorial representation to screen-based behavioralsimulations and currently to biotechnological art forms.

An artistic model based on general systems theory andnetworked media is an important impetus for this trajectory.A popularised medium of systems art can be seen in the

non-linear network that emerged at the end of the twentieth-century in new media art. This was the advent of screen-based art; whether taking the form of Internet art, virtualreality, or simulations based modelling etc., these systemswere often concerned with developing non-linearrepresentations of reality. However this format was notwithout implicit edges due to the nature of the screen andthe limitations of computing; it also presenting finitepossibilities and resolution constraints. Thisdisappointment gives rise to boundary pushing. That inconjunction to an increasing technological accessibility,the possibility for artists to begin engaging with naturaland mechanical materials within a system-based paradigmwas presented.

Throughout modern art’s history, painters and sculptorshad time and again uncovered disenchantment withdepiction and tried to outflank this history by breakinginto uncovered territories. We can see evidence of artiststrying to generate experiences and systems with agency,rather than objects and images, as a way of avoiding therepresentational pitfalls of depiction. Jack Burnham’swritings in Beyond Modern Sculpture [7] very clearlydemarcate this transition from object to system. What thispaper is proposing is to actively take the positives ofsimulative art and its creation of a non-linear, interactiveand engaging environment, but remove the limitations ofrepresentational depiction so often found in simulation-based work. Thus generating the emergence of an artworkthat is occupying a place in reality just as we do. The artowns a communication system that allows transactional andtranscendent sign processing to occur between the art andus.

2. ART HISTORICAL UNDERPINNINGS

“…Man is forever condemned to signification,unable to flee the “prison-house of language,” touse Fredric Jameson’s formulation.” ([15] p 33).

The past centennial of visual art is marked by examples ofartists trying to move away from depiction’s dilemmas. Inmy own fledgling beginnings as a visual artist I often reliedon symbolic imagery to open dialogs with the viewer, makeunusual connections, map out natural and social patterns,tell stories and the like. Functioning as a visual language,these images and installed projections were striving tocreate a work of art that was more than just aestheticallypleasing but could also communicate an idea: a way ofviewing reality, a sublime reverie or a transcendent vision.





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When exploring the history of visual art we see similarhappenings. Metaphorical and hierarchical scaling in theMiddle Ages, depictions of sublime vistas during theRomantic Period, exquisite corpses of the Surrealists, thelist continues. However amidst all of this great history ofvisual representations of ideologies and visions, there is aretrospective trend in the 20th Century and through torecent history to break out of this trajectory and give way toembodied representations, that are more relationally presentthan vernacularly styled images. What I describe is notnecessarily the outcome of the work, but I posit, in referenceto my own examination of this history as a practicing artistand also with the backings of other artists and theorists,that this could perhaps be an outstanding motivation forsuch a shift.

Minimalism is a prominent example of an art movementattempting to do away with depiction and unnecessaryelements and stick to the essentials or formal traits of thematerials that create the art object itself. Examples of thistrajectory can be seen in the paintings of Frank Stellacreated in the late 1950s. As quoted by Marilyn Stokstad inreference to Stella’s work “Die Fahne Hoch.” (1959),

“’Depicted shape,’ the artist claimed was logicallydetermined by the ‘literal shape’ of the canvassupport. Even the 3-inch widths of the stripes weredetermined by the physical object: The canvasstretchers are 3 inches deep. What Stella achievedwas a group of artworks whose features refer not tothe artist or the outside world but to the physicalaspects of the art object itself.” ([28] p 1132).

Donald Judd, a sculptor of the same period rejects Stella’spaintings as being pure form but rather as illusoryrepresentation of shape. His work uses actual physicallyinstantiated rectangular forms, believing a sculpture to bemore real than a painting [28]. Thus emphasizing into themedium of sculpture a formalist vision.

This movement can be recognized as a shift inrepresentation towards a closer manifestation of what thework of art literally is in itself, as opposed to what it i scommunicating figuratively. The theory of formalism is asan intellectually stimulating shift and a prominent part ofthis theoretical thread foremost for the strategy i tdeveloped in making an artwork that is self-reflexive andautonomous. A possibility being that the thing itself -- thework of art, need not be made of traditional materials, whichperhaps lend themselves to and were initially designed forthe purpose of depiction.

2.1 Assemblage and Systems Art

In looking at 3-dimensional assemblage such as Man Ray’s“Object to be Destroyed” (1923) and several other worksassembled from manufactured or machine parts around thistime, we see more ways of the medium being an essentialfactor in defining the work of art. The medium became atool for engaging directly with the culture in which these

parts assembled came from and reference. As stated byBarbara Zabel,

“As a construction – an art assembled from parts –collage can be said to encode machinetechnology” ([36] p xiii).

Some notable works did manage to come extremely close toan autonomous embodiment, and in many ways such workscentered on creating a story or dramatic experience that the‘viewer’ actually took part in. The story was embodied inthe work’s formal existence and therefore existed in part inthe same reality as we do and thus made possible a dialog orinterchange to occur between the human being and the workitself. The poetry was actually embedded in the physicalinstantiation and behavioral manifestation of the work, andis completed by its existential presence in our reality. Thestory is lived, and the poetry is material. The outcome anddescription of the work is continually changing andengaging depending on external circumstances and theinternal logic of the system’s response to thosecircumstances.

A favorite example of this indication in a work i sTinguely’s “Homage to New York”, (1960). Tinguely was apart of a group of artists from Paris known as the “NouveauRéalistes” (New Realists). Tinguely had managed to amassan outdoor kinetic sculpture for the Museum of Modern Artin New York, consisting of haphazardly assembledmechanical and industrial materials like motors and babycarriages as well as entropic chemicals all poised to self-destruct as soon as the work was powered on [28]. Thisaction of self-destruction and the embodiment of entropy i sa useful example of an emerging phenomenon in art: theattempt to make works of arts that carry a physical orbiological agency or have some specific action or behaviorthat animates them and guides their existence within thehuman frame of reference. Another quality of suchassembled works is the idea that the work is made of a sumof parts and only when all the parts come together does thework become whole, and transcend to create an artistic andpoetic experience. Tinguely’s “Homage to New York” mayhave contained unessential, latent or loose elements withinthe parts that made it up, however, it is an assortment ofpieces that happened upon a one-way behavior ofdestruction. To the spectator, the self-destructing evidentialbehavior of the work, which happened as a very real event,came across loud and clear. The work even evoked a team ofcivil fire-fighters to come and put the fire out, which itsexistence and pursuit of destruction had managed to ignite.

This idea of a work of art that is an existing physical systemresonated with many artists in the 1960s and 70s. Risingalongside the systems art shift was also a move towardsinterdisciplinary practice in the arts. Art had begun to notonly appropriate objects of industry as part of their materialcreations but also began working directly with engineersand architects to create these technological works of art. Atrope of this type of collaboration is “E.A.T” or Experimentsin Art and Technology. This non-profit organization wasfounded in 1966 by engineers Billy Klüver and FredWaldhauer and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert





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Whitman [20]. Two prominent shows of their historyincluded 9 evenings at the Armory in New York in 1966 andthe Pepsi-Pavilion Expo ‘70 in Osaka. Jack Burnham’scuratorial work “Software” at the Jewish Museum in 1970 i sanother relevant example of artists mixing with engineers.It is likely these collaborations are the instigations of theuse of functioning, integrated and organized technology inart so as to generate not only formally groundedrepresentations but also exploratory real-time behavioralrepresentations. It also links object and system and re-imagines the audience as more than simply a spectator butas an actively engaged participant. To quote JackBurnham,

“All of these interests [referring to the movementaway from art objects] deal with art which i stransactional; they deal with the underlyingstructures of communication or energy exchangeinstead of abstract appearances.” ([6] p 10).

In the same citation Burnham later states: “Our bodies arehardware, our behavior software”([6] p 11). Returning tothe original theme on the shift from the vernacularly basedtowards the formal, and then a stray within the formaliststructure towards content; the “system” or mingling ofhardware and software/body and behavior, becomes a wayfor the work to communicate with the world it resideswithin thereby giving us a tangibly grounded referencepoint without having to rely on depiction and illusoryimagery. The work has a motivated and self-referential formand structure, but also a behavior or logic system thatguides its animation and existence in time and space.

2.2 Smithson’s Dialog

“That’s a work [Spiral Jetty] that’s very muchinvolved with the processes of nature insofar as i tgoes through all different kinds of climates, dates,and seasonal states. It’s involved with a kind ofongoing process. It’s very much in the actuallandscape. Well, getting back to Duchamp again,he’s involved more with the notion of manufactureof objects so that he can have his valise full ofsouvenirs. I’m not really interested in that kind ofmodel-making – the reiteration of readymades.”Smithson ([31] p 86)

In an interview by Moira Roth with Smithson on Duchampin 1973, he discusses a clear difference between his workand the work of Duchamp. He refers to the work of Duchampas being “mechanistic” and “Cartesian”[31]. He emphasizesthat Duchamp seems to be focusing on the spirituality ofmanufactured objects, whereas Smithson is keenlygrounded in the changeable aesthetics of nature, and hemakes work that comes in contact with the same forces ofnature as our reality. He emphasizes the effects of time onhis art, and when he critiques Duchamp’s “valise full ofsouvenirs” he is pointing to a contrast in its long-termvitality. His work portents a time scalar, it willundoubtedly manage to outlive the manufactured object, ashis art is open to change and the “ongoing process” of time.Smithson claims his work to be dialectical, and in many

ways it becomes clear that in works like “Spiral Jetty”(1970), he is engaging in a dialog with the Cartesian viewof reality. So as to say that the manufactured and man-madeevidence is no more to be exalted then the entropicqualities of natural materials. By creating this dialog, atransfer of meaning occurs between the industrial objectand nature. In this action, Smithson is leveling the valuefield in assembled art between the manufactured and thenatural and blurring some distinctions between the two.Additionally he is invigorating a sense of wonder of natureand man’s operation of it. Thereby positioning itself incontrast to the contrived framing of the manufacturedobject, which to an extent created a false depiction of it, aswas common of the work of many artists near his timeperiod. Smithson was claiming nature to be all pervading,while simultaneously arranging, manipulating and makingart with its substances and properties. In a sense he i sopening up collage to include the usurping of nature andthe environment as well. Though here it is only in earlystages, this references the process of the use of nature andbiology as agency within a work of art. AlthoughSmithson’s work is essentially a point of contact ratherthan a system for discovering thorough and sharedcommunication, it does point towards an artwork that is in adialog with time and to an extent the physical properties ofthe natural elements it is actively incorporating. It is animportant paradigm to the work that I pursue, and can beseen as an extension of Assemblage, a common element inSystems Art and Conceptual Art, an essential motivator ofEarth Art, as well as a common property of an emerging areaknown as Emulation Art.

2.3 The Screen

In many ways a data driven computer screen or projectedmoving image is more often associated with “new mediaart” than most other technologically engaged mediums.The screen seems to have become a definitive scaffolding toaid artists in presenting their ideas. Though the screen i sused in many varying ways, the focus here will be onscreen-based simulations or data visualizations,specifically graphical programming.

The desire to unravel the formulas of nature by modelingreality connects simulative spaces with the physical world.From the perspective of my own artistic trajectory, theprogramming of behaviors onto graphical representationsof objects, forms or computer rendered organisms, creates aclear step towards the current direction in my work. Oneexample being sound waves causing pixel based computer-driven wallpaper to ripple in a sine wave (“that’s nice”(2002)). The attempt was to use computational technologyto manifest or make visible seemingly “unknown” aspectsof our universe, by using actual existing forces of naturethat lay just outside of our operational awareness to guidethe animation. Thinking of the celebrated “MilkdropCornonet” (1957) of Edgerton and the influential actionsequences of Muybridge, this artistic research shares acommonality; all interested in the pursuit of developing ascientific or technological apparatus for uncovering realitythat was otherwise indiscernible by our physiology. In my





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work, the graphics served the purpose of embodying theagency, behaviors or operations of these invisible orunderlying properties. The presence of a virtualenvironment allows us to reexamine the reality of ourcurrent environment, thus invigorating new media towardsa domain that picks up on the formalist sensibilities so welllaid out by art historians and theorists in the past.

To see new media as a display technology for example,would only reinstate the pictorial dilemma, as artists wouldthen be dealing with a predetermined system with whichthey are creating content for, thereby creating a lesssatisfactory artistic result. Simon Penny elucidates theimportance of the connection between formalism anddigital media in an article titled “Systems Aestehtics andCyborg Art: The Legacy of Jack Burnham”,

“Many of the experiments in digital media are formalexplorations in which the manipulation of mediacomponents are the work. In a manner analogous tominimal sculpture, the modalities of the technologybecome [7] not a vehicle but a substance to bemodelled, manipulated and juxtasposed with theviewer in various ways. And if the technologicalcombination is the work, then its ability to carrynarrative "content" is a secondary issue andsomewhat superfluous.” [24]

2.4 Away from the Screen

“The paradigm shift that emulation art suggests i sthe inevitable result of hybrid art research praxis atthe intersection of scientific discovery, informaticsand aesthetics, as we seek to understand theuniverse as an operating system in which weperpetually engage on both a microcosmic andmacrocosmic level.” [4]

This quotation comes from a formative paper written byShawn Brixey and James Coupe. This paper addresses theshift away from simulation and towards emulation. Asstated in the quotation above, the work is not residing andoperating on the confines of the computer’s operatingsystem but rather viewing the work as running on theoperating system of the Universe itself. Thus enabling theartist to push the limits of their own work to referencepoints outside of animated depictions coming from acomputer screen and towards an experience of “fullyinhabit[ing] the vast continuum which humans haveinherited”[4].

This theory is perhaps the most adequate realization for thetrajectory I described earlier, and the type of work I havebeen developing in recent years. These ideas have beengiven the name of “Emulation Art” by Shawn Brixey, the co-founder of DXARTS (the Center for Digital Arts andExperimental Media at the University of Washington, USA),the program where I am currently (2007) working to attain aPh.D. The commonalities resonating with my owndirectives as an artist reside in the communication of aninvisible reality outside of our operational awareness, yet

still fully embedded with motivation within the reality weinhabit. And in my recent work, the communion is seen inthe use of biological and physical knowledge to generatethese directed relationships through artistic experiences. As much of the rest of this paper founds on this principle Iwill segue into the next portion of the paper, which focusesspecifically on the signification and aesthetic language ofbiology, its motivations, and the use of engineeredinformation and artificially intelligent systems to embedknowledge. Succinctly phrased, “…the transfer andadoption of coded information between living and non-living things”. This definition comes from the word“metagenics”, first coined by Shawn Brixey in relation tohis emulative practice, specifically the work “Alchymeia”(1998), in which human hormones are used to alter thegrowth of ice crystals, thereby creating a new entity througha synthetic intervention [5].

3. BIOSEMIOTICS

“In a way, the embryo is just a microcosm of thecognitive world that we inhabit, the world ofsignals that insistently urge us to travel to onedestination rather than another, eschew some goalsin favor of others, hold some things to be true andothers false; in short, that moulds us into what weare.” ([22] p 42)

Biosemiotics is the study of biology from the perspectiveof semiotics. Semiotics is the study of signs, beingunderstood as “essentially all of the ways in whichinformation can be processed into a codified format andcommunicated as a message”[33]. Here I prefer to considerthe word “information” to include intuitive, spiritual, andemotional knowledge, despite that in our recent colloquialdefinition of the word this seems to have been lost infavour to more mechanistic inclinations. However that i snot to say that a mechanistic viewpoint could not beexpanded or altered to include the increasingly codifiedunderstanding of such vitalistic forces. Experimental artcould be considered seeking to connect gaps anddisparities just like those, thereby giving way for newperspectives to occur. Thus, much of the next section i spointing towards and relating directly back to theinterconnecting discipline of systems theory being used asa guide for contemporary artistic creation, and therebybuilding and creating relationships that impact ourknowledge of ourselves and our umwelts.

Umwelt was coined and defined by Jakob. V. Uexküll, afounder of biosemiotics and theoretical biology, to be an“appearance world”([32] p 70) or a “subjectiveuniverse”[34]. Or more verbosely defined as: “biologicalfoundations that lie at the very epicenter of the study ofboth communication and signification in the human [andnon-human] animal”[11]. Biosemiotics is a hybriddiscipline, integrating both the theoretical and theempirical. The physical characteristics of the biologicalorganism are said to be the grounding factor in theformation and expression of the agenda of the being. Thelimits or the boundary conditions of the organism compose





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the initial founding rules or the internal logic guiding thesystem’s existence. Through this perspective our bodiesare not only instruments, but open systems as well. Opensystems can be understood as holistic or autonomoussystems that are open to change of boundary conditionsthrough the organisms own awareness of its subjectiveuniverse. Tangentially one might imagine each being to beconsidered the nucleus of one’s own environment, and onlywhen we unlock the potential of what we have inherited canwe begin to incorporate and function operationally inspaces we have in the past felt incapable of entering. Iprefer to include such language in this paper because i taptly suits a resonating philosophical perspective thatguides my artistic process. Additionally, suchphilosophies could potentially unite the literal with themetaphorical and break down dualistic separations betweenthe mechanistic and the vitalistic, the vernacular and theformal.

3.1 Assembling the Organic with theInorganic

“In his Novum organum of 1620 Bacon begins byclassifying natural history: that which ‘deals eitherwith the Freedom of nature or with the Errors ofnature or with the Bonds of nature; so that a gooddivision we might make would be a history ofBirths, a history of Prodigious Births, and a historyof the Arts; the last of which we have also oftencalled the Mechanical and the Experimental Art’. Inother words, natural history can be divided into thestudy of normal nature, aberrant nature, and naturemanipulated by man.” ([22] p 10)

The first two statements in Bacon’s quotation correspondwell with the idea of the study of natural history beinggrounded in fortuitous and unplanned or accidentalcreations of forms -- specifically organisms, and thus onlythrough the lengthy process of natural selection do we havethe organisms that exist in our current realities. Howeverthe third element in Bacon’s hypothesis seems the mostintriguing, implying a potentially teleological approach tothe creation of nature, brought on by the organization of“man”. More specifically he equates “Mechanical andExperimental Art” with this particular approach.

Not surprisingly there are already vast numbers of works ofart dealing with biological agency altered by the hand ofthe human, as well as art where biological systems arecommunicating with machine and informationtechnologies. The poetic metaphors found in theexpression of biological behaviors provide fertile groundfor artistic pursuits. One example of an early attempt at themetaphorical relationships found in biology is HansHaacke’s “Chickens Hatching” (1969).

“Here, freshly laid chicken eggs were collected froma brooder, transferred to an adjacent hatchery anddistributed among a grid of eight small incubators.The hatching process was controlled artificially, via

a simple feedback system of lamps and thermostat.”[27]

He is assembling machine technology, data processing andbiological phenomena, aesthetically, and then presenting i tin an artistic space as a way of exalting such a synthesisbetween machine and birth. Another example of machineand computer technology being used with biologicalagency in an artwork comes from the “Software” show of1970, curated by systems art theorist Jack Burnham. In thecatalog for the exhibition this work is referred to as “Life ina Computerized Environment”, and titled “Seek” (1969-70)[6]. The Architecture Machine Group of M.I.T. whileunder direction of Nicholas Negroponte and Leon B.Groisser created this project, which was very aptlyrecognized by Edward Shanken, as being “an early exampleof ‘intelligent architecture,’ a growing concern of thedesign community internationally.”[26]. In “Seek”, gerbilsare placed inside of a 5’ x 8’ glass box with several cubes orblocks that make up the gerbils’ environment. There is acomputer driven mechanical arm that has a mental map orvisualization of the set-up of the blocks, and it goes aboutmaking sure the blocks remain in the position of theirorigin. It is unknown to the mechanical system that thegerbils are knocking over and shifting these blocks, and sothe machine is in a continuous feedback loop with thegerbils replacing and reacting to these alterations in itsmental understanding of the space it is monitoring. Thedesigners of the project state,

“Today machines are poor at handling suddenchanges in context or environment. This lack ofadaptability is the problem Seek confronts indiminutive. “ ([6] p 23)

If we take the notion that adaptability and entropy areessentially physical and natural qualities of which themachine has little exposure or inherited understanding of,such early systems are “metagenic” in their desire totransfer information from the living to the non-living,although in this system it is unclear whether or not thisinformation is actually being remembered and learned bythe system. Regardless, the presentation of gerbilsknocking over blocks in this computer-monitoredenvironment is an elegant framing of natural drives.Similarly it reminds me of the framing of “unconsciousdrives” that Smithson finds in his photographic slide work“Hotel Palenque” (1969)[10]. Though Smithson is nottransferring information to a non-living system, he i sanalyzing and exalting an unconscious and entropicfacility of the human being that lies in contrast to our drivefor teleological creation. In this case, found in theunfinished construction of a hotel in Mexico, which leavesbehind material evidence of the unconscious drives of thebuilders themselves.

A prominent artist deeply involved in the codification ofbiological messages in pursuit of a creation ofrelationships or dialogs between technology and biology i sEduardo Kac. I often place his work in a realm of“Conceptual Art” as his art is not often about the explicitaesthetic presentation which we are witnessing, but rather





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the immaterial networks and dialogs that occur whenassembling his various symbols into a cohesive idea, anintellectual puzzle at times – and in part an extension ofMarcel Duchamp’s readymades. One example of this i s“Move 36” (2002) in which he plots a plant’s DNA sequencethat can be mapped out to contain the words “Cogito ErgoSum”. This plant is then placed on the location on achessboard where the first computer beat a human in thestrategic game of chess. The transfer of the information “Ithink therefore I am” has no impact on the knowledgesystem of the plant itself, it can never be decoded by theorganism, although the encoding of the DNA changes itsphysical form, rendering its leaves slightly curled [18]. Theassembling of the plant on the chessboard is anotherconceptual arrangement, all of these pieces existing to produs to think philosophically and critically about cyberneticsand its implications for Dualism, essentially making thework primarily conversational in its agenda. Similarly,works like “GFP Bunny” (2000), his highly influentialtransgenic bunny, embedded with glow-in-the-dark DNA,usually used in the scientific community for gene marking,shows yet another immaterial relationship existing toignite conversation rather than to poetically embed humanbeauty intentionally into nature. The work is most stronglyengaged with an invisible social and cultural network, as i tintrigued mass media to question this action, whether weever actually verifiably saw the bunny glowing or not.Kac’s earlier bio-technological works deal with attemptingintercommunication between species, where the art seems tolie in the relationships between entities that otherwisewould or could not exist if it were not for the mediation oftechnology.

All of these examples of the formal assembling of organicand inorganic materials into systems of sign exchangepoint to a common relationship developing. Thisrelationship has components of biological phenomena,technological communication systems, and the humanbeing who creates, witnesses and utilizes the experience.The emphasis often lies in the non-linear network thatexists between the two entities, and the transactions thatoccur amongst them. Thereby enabling the human being toenter into dialogs that we were previously incapable ofaccessing, as well as impact areas of our development thatwere otherwise outside of our operational awareness. Thiscould potentially emphasize a communication system thatis not reliant on words, but rather on behavioral, physicaland material properties and the evidence they leave behindfor us to witness and understand. To conclude on thissection, in 1926 Jakob V. Uexküll stated in his bookTheoretical Biology , “If we succeed in getting an animal toproduce a suitable sign-language by means of its organs, wecan converse with it as with human beings” ([32] p 177).Such a proposition is not even remotely theoretical at thispoint in our culture, but it does elegantly put forth thesolution to the boundaries of separateness and thetranslation of information between different species; in ourculture we include synthetic and non-living systems withinthat scope.

3.2 The Arbitrary vs. The Motivated

Minimalist artist Robert Morris has often discussed theneed for work that is motivated, which he describes as “thesearch for the motivated”, and theorist Hal Foster puts forththe notion of the “arbitrary” in counteraction to this term[14]. From my perspective, motivation is analogous to theagenda or vitalistic drive of a system. Thus the distinctionbetween the arbitrary and the motivated has a significancein the artistic decision making process. An arbitraryexpression is usually the result of a message that was notproperly received. Likely in such cases, a commonlanguage was not found, such as the arbitrary curling of theleaves in Kac’s “Move 36”. The plant is unable to interpretthose words, and therefore could not meaningfully expresssuch an intensely philosophical ideology. The artist’smotivation was likely not to transfer usable information tothe plant’s genetics, however the reality stands that he wasembedding human knowledge into a plant’s DNA, thusopening up a possibility for imagining what motivatedcommunication might make possible for our physicalreality if the transfer of information did have a commonsign processing system.

4. Current Explorations

The next section will detail my most recently completedwork as well as describe some future avenues for artisticactivity. An endogenous drive within an organic life is thebinding commonality between the current work and futurework I propose. It resonates clearly with the issuespresented by Jack Burnham in Beyond Modern Sculpture [7], in his sections underlying the presence of vitalism andorganicism within modern sculpture. The complexity ofthese concerns historically in scientific, philosophical andartistic realms precludes this paper from going into anysignificant detail on the matter. However it can be brokendown simply to explain that vitalism implies an ‘unknown’life force guiding and motivating an organism andorganicism refers to optimally functioning organizedsystems. The concept of biological agency refers to its lifeforce and similarly the manner in which it, as a system, isorganized. By using this agency as guiding factors withinspecifically a mechanical and algorithmically based work ofart, the connection discussed by Burnham between themechanical-organic continues to develop.

4.1 The Search for Luminosity

“The Search for Luminosity” (2005-7), is a two-part projectconsisting of the same feedback system; the first system iscounter balancing in behavior and the second is self-reinforcing. “The Search for Luminosity (part one)” is ashort video composed of time-lapse footage taken over aspan of about a week. In the system, a phototropic plant,oxalis, is triggering its over head light source to turn off assoon as the plant’s leaves reach their position of fullyawake, and then turning its light source on as soon as itsleaves fully close. This is a counter-balancing loop, causingthe organism to continually be either waking itself up or





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putting itself to sleep, thereby altering its circadian rhythmsand mutating its cycles to shorter and shorter length daysand nights. While making this initial time-lapse video, atone point the mechatronic system failed to recognize whenthe plant fell asleep, and thus it kept its light off. In theprocess of this systemic glitch occurring, the plant actedindependently of its light source and woke itself upregardless. In the last phase of the video we see this actoccur, and it becomes the poetic grounding point for thenext part of the project.

After doing some research into circadian rhythms, I foundthat many life forms contain endogenous rhythms, meaninghere that it is not always the presence of a sun that triggers aplant to lift its leaves in preparation for photosynthesis, butrather a programmed memory of sorts that the plant has of itsprevious day’s routine. It is an organized function of thesystem, and also a poetic example of life force and vitalism.Whether science can explain the happenings of thismovement or not is not the point of the work, rather the factremains that the plant does not need that initial sunlightevery day to wake itself up and therefore it can be interpretedas an agenda of the organism to move its leaves inexpectation of sun. Therefore, in the second iteration of theproject, I decided to make the cycle self-reinforcing. Indarkness, as soon as the sensor recognizes the plant hasbegun to lift its leaves, it provokes its above light to turnon, thereby putting the power of the sun rising in control ofthe movements of the plant. The plant’s dramatic gesture ofwaking and sleeping becomes the signaling observed by thetechnology that mediates the message to the acting sun inthe plant’s universe. Another difference in “The Search forLuminosity (part two)” is the use of multiple plants. In thisinstantiation the final format for viewing is not a video butrather an autonomous biotechnological installation. Byhaving multiple plants the need for time-lapse video is doneaway with, as the viewer instantly sees the plant in severalperiods of its cycle from fully awake to fully asleep. Lastly,this particular iteration contains a custom-built scanner thatdevelops a visualization of the plant’s form, therebyallowing the plant to grow and move within the scanner’sfield of view while still allowing the scanner to track itsposition. This information is then transmitted to a dataprojection [Fig.2] that provokes a sense of satellite imageryand creates a dramatic shifting of scale as we look on at thesefragile plants now able to communicate across a vastlandscape.

Figure 1. The Search for Luminosity (part two)Photography by Neil Lukas, 2007

Figure 2. Still screenshot from data transmission in TheSearch for Luminosity (part two)





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Figure 3. Detail of The Search for Luminosity (part two)Photography by Neil Lukas, 2007

The decisions made in the process of making this work werefocused towards creating a visual and time based artexperience that could show us a verifiable non-linearnetwork outside of operational awareness that woulddirectly affect us on an essentially existential level. Typically light patterns in scientific experiments aredictated in a predictive manner, with little concern for whatthe plant might want or “decide”. Therefore the notion thata plant might attempt to engage in communication with thesun in its environment via the movement of its leaves couldbe seen as a reverie or poetic meandering. The decision tobuild an (x, y, z) imaging system with an ultrasound sensorwas to purposefully draw sharp analogies to the cognitivevisual process that is simply unchallenged through ahuman scaled video camera. We watch the sensor scan anddraw, attempting to make sense of the visual signal, whereasa camera would simply perch and reflect. When the sensorbecomes active, the idea is to see it as being a part of theplant, connecting it to the sun and being animated andlearning in a similar fashion to the natural subject; againcreating philosophical resonance by transferring biologicalinformation to a non-living system. Over time themechanism may begin to mutate its own movement cycles

of its motors as it links itself closer and closer to that whichit is observing, aiding, and becoming. Rather thanaccepting the organism as a closed system, we discover areality where with the aid of technology and the recognitionof its own form and behavior, an organism might be able toexpand its own boundary conditions and regenerate itsphysical expression.

This work of art is grounded in a common natural agenda inlife: circadian rhythms, with the intent that the work of artcould begin to emerge its own sculptural form and pattern. Here the attempt is to witness a new hybrid form with all ofits own meaning and significance. The aim is to be able toconnect with the organism, as it potentially allows us to seeour system and network in a stripped down anddecompressed version, re-examining the lenses we use to seeourselves, and who we become as a direct result of thatability to cognitively process and subsequently alter ourenvironment. It is my desire to make art that is rather thanalluding to an idea or reverie, an actual instantiation of thatreverie. Here we can see how the plant through themediation of a common signaling process may be able tolocate itself and position its sunlight, and the resultingeffect that has on its sculptural form and its patterns ofwaking and sleeping. Therefore the visual representation ofthe body of the plant will mutate once it is given thisadditional degree of control, thus allowing the innercomplexity of the system as it learns more and more aboutitself to externalize itself by the way in which the form andbehavior of the plant changes over time.

4.2 Future Endeavours

One area of continued fascination is the idea of building aliving work of art that can emerge its own representationthrough the control of its growth and formation. The ideaof an artwork having life force or motivation is of greatsignificance to my own inquiries into artistic creation, andone way to go about generating such a system is by vitallyembedding an organic system in the elements of the work.In doing this, I am attempting to develop open systems, andthrough these systems the formal structure and patterns ofthe work come into existence. In all works of art somepremeditation is necessary, this is how we direct theexperience and create the work. However, it is my desirethat the manipulation of biological forms within a work beopen, so as to increase degrees of freedom and expression asopposed to predetermine them. Potentially allowing acommon sign language to emerge between the human andthe biological phenomena, and allow that common agendato dictate the receiver’s experience of the work. Infollowing along these same objectives, I am working ongrowing undifferentiated plant tissue that i scommunicating with a technological information systemthat guides the development of the plants formalexpression, resulting in a living sculpture that embodiesthe common language embedded between ourselves and it.

5. CONCLUSION





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In conclusion, this paper has stepped through severalpoints in artistic history in the effort of discovering apotential motivation behind a possible trend in the visualarts and in my own work as a practicing artist towards thecreation of biotechnological, hybrid, and experiential artforms. If we see our physical realities as metaphors inthemselves, then we no longer need to remove the metaphoragain by placing it in a vernacularly styled symbolicdepiction, representative of that metaphor. Rather we canengage directly with the materials of our physical existence,to create art works that share the same non-linear realitiesthat we do, and are guided by similar forces that guide us.Thereby enabling an expansion in our own expression ofour agenda within the universe in which we reside.

To this extent the future of new media art lies in the artist’sability to stake claims and inhabit areas of humandevelopment that in the past they have stayed removedfrom or only referenced through symbolic imagery andnarrative depiction.

6. REFERENCES

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[4] Brixey, Shawn and James Coupe. "Simulation toEmulation, Pioneering Telematic Art Forms of the 21stCentury." Chapter excerpt from forthcoming book andpaper presented at the CAA, Boston 2006.

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[10] Coles, Alex and Alexia Defert, eds. The Anxiety ofInterdisciplinarity. De-, Dis-, Ex-. Interdisciplinarity:Art/Architecture/Theory. Vol. 2. London: BACKlessBooks in association with Black Dog Publishing, 1998.

[11] Deely, John. "Umwelt." Semiotica 134(1/4) (2001).

[12] Dunlap, Jay C. et al. Chronobiology: BiologicalTimekeeping. Sunderland: Sinauer Associates, 2004.

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[14] Foster, Hal. "Art Agonistes." New Left Review 8 (2001).

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[16] Greenberg, Clement. Art and Culture: Critical Essays.Boston: Beacon Press, 1971.

[17] Jameson, Frederic. The Prison-House of Language: ACritical Account of Structuralism and RussianFormalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press,1972.

[18] Jones, Debra. "DNA Spirals into Artists' Medium".2004. Ed. Wired News.<http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,62539,00.html?tw=rss.TOP>.

[19] Kac, Eduardo. Telepresence and Bio Art -- NetworkingHumans, Rabbits and Robots. University of MichiganPress, 2005.

[20] Klüver, Billy. Experiments in Art and Technology(E.A.T.): Archive of Published Documents La fondationDaniel Langlois, 2000 [cited 2007]. Available fromhttp://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=306.

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