Ewelina Twardoch-Raś

The article investigates various kinds of the strategies of technosensation in artistic project based on bio-parametrisation’s techniques. The category of technosensation is in the article referred to the considerations of Luciana Parisi and Marie-Luise Angerer to define the relationship between body affectivity and computational systems (primarily in relation to automated decision-making systems and machine learning processes). The context for these considerations is the reflection on “technological redlining” as a strategy for racial, gender, and (dis)ability profiling of computational systems, which generate social exclusion, inequalities and oppressiveness. In the article, the author considers (with reference to the considerations of Parisi, Bernard Stiegler, Yuk Hui and Gabbrielle M. Johnson) to what extent the algorithmic biases are the result of automation, and to what extent they result from the absorption of uncertainty, randomness and technodiversity. Technosensation strategies are considered in relation to the artistic practices of Zach Blas, Maja Smrekar, Marija Griniuk and others, pointing to subversive, critical and affirmative variants of technological functionality and agency. The presented projects prove that the functionality of computational technologies is not bipolar, but it is developing as a spectrum of nuanced mechanisms, both in the area of oppressive-exclusionary systems and emancipatory strategies

Review:  Sandra Frydrysiak, Taniec w sprzężeniu nauk i technologii. Nowe perspektywy w badaniach tańca, Wydawnictwo Przypis, Łódź 2017, ss. 422.

Recenzja:

Ryszard W. Kluszczyński, Sztuka interaktywna. Od dzieła-instrumentu do interaktywnego spektaklu, Wydawnictwa Akademickie i Profesjonalne, Warszawa 2010, ss. 344

Networked Memory’s Places or How the Symbols of the Past Are Becoming an Area of Network Users’ Activity
The main aim of the study is to attempt an reinterpretation of the category of “lieux de mémoire” (Pierre Nora) in the context of digitalization process and the functions of the new media in the modern culture. The paper argues that symbolic and historical meaning of “lieux de mémoire” is changing today as a consequence of the strong development of the Internet. According to that fact the “places of memory” really often become a part of Internet, they are “networked”. The article focuses on the analysis of the selected examples of the “networked places of memory” (especially virtual cemeteries and virtual museums). The author discusses the differences between the classical “lieux de mémoire” and the networked ones and tries to show the main distinguishing marks of the new kind of the “places of memory”. The paper refers to the thesis of Andrzej Szpociński, Jan Assmann, Paul Connerton, Mizuko Ito and others.

The article is an introduction that examines certain perspectives of new-materialist research on the ontological status of alternative universes in bio art projects with reference to the narratological concepts of possible worlds and the storyworld. In this context, it introduces the concept of “strongly possible worlds”, which is a complementary concept to the Jan Alber’s theory of impossible worlds. This methodological proposal is also presented in the article in reference to the latest study by Francesca Ferrando, in which the idea of “posthuman multiverse” was presented. 

The author also considers the role of non-human actors in the process of constructing such “in the world stories” (Bruno Latour). As non-human actors bacteria and living cells are understood, which have their own intentionality (goal-oriented behavior) and which are responsible for causal changes to the project; moreover, non-human actors are considered to be a force that aff ects the physical shape of storyworlds—with reference to Timothy Morton’s category of hyperobjects.

The article presents two types of experiments involving the process of creation of possible worlds in bio art. The fi rst one is conducted by the artists working with living materials, mostly tissues and cells, as the duo Tissue Culture and Art Project, Alicia King and Guy Ben-Ary and Kirsten Hudson; the other one is so called bacterial art with Sonja Bäumel’s “Expanded body”, Pinar Yoldas “Speculative biologies” and “Ecosystem of Excess”, as well as Anna Dumitriu’s artistic vision “The Romantic Disease: An Artistic Investigation of Tuberculosis” and “ArchaeaBot: A Post Climate Change, Post Singularity Life-form” as special case studies.