New Species
/ One of the basic tendencies of contemporary art is to
combine and unite with other areas, such as technologies,
natural sciences, humanities. With new technologies and
scientific findings exciting possibilities open up that
are no longer science fiction: to change the sex, the body,
create a new organism, a cyborg … The future development
of art can greatly depend on micro-biological and medical
researches into the artificial life, biological engineering
and the findings of cognitive psychology, the potential
of improving intellectual capacity, sexual drive, mood,
reproducibility … The possibilities of telecommunications
in combination with computer sciences, which enable greater
flow of information, also create a new structure of space
and the world. They generate new perspectives on the world,
they change the organization of life … An artistic creation
passes from a closed configuration completed in itself to
a process, action and so it often actively includes the
spectator. Today art functions less than some completed
truth and more like an experiment. It means the search for
new possibilities, it denotes different, fresh perspectives.
The field of art widens; by means of questions art tries
to address each individual placed inside the modern society.
In this way not only new forms of expression are produced
but also new creations, new species.
The human community and culture are determined by the so
called bio-politics in its relation to animality. As a possibility
of exceeding modern anthropocentrism one could reflect on
the potentials of an artistic creative act in establishing
alternative life forms. Art can also attempt to achieve
the beauty of organic life through the creation of sophisticated
and complex artificial life forms, as are offered by algorithmic
analogies in connection with computer sciences. What is
the ethnology of new forms of life, of newly created species?
All living organisms, regardless of their size or morphology,
have a tendency towards communication and socialization.
In a society of highly developed communication systems and
with the support of computer technologies we can also trend
towards a development of some sort of a universal language,
which would enable a mutual communication to people, animals,
machines and new species. With the intrusion of high technologies
into our lives there also develop possibilities of the beginnings
of new technological species. What does in the context of
art mean an option of a computer generated artificial life.
Contemporary society and culture are characterized by biotechnologies
because they are present in all areas of the contemporary
way of life (we consume genetically modified products, in
medicine we take advantage of tissue engineering, we encounter
animal cloning and the possibility of human cloning). In
this way we confront the changes in the living environment
in the future: in the possibility of artificial production
of meat products, body organs or even limbs, body alteration,
in the various options of reproduction of our descendants,
as well as in the total control of the society over an individual.
These changes bring up numerous social issues. Art, which
combines with biotechnologies for instance, reflects these
issues and confronts us with the effect of new scientific
findings on our lives.
What does the entering of high technologies and sophisticated
sciences into our culture and everyday life mean? New possibilities
are opening up, the field of art is spreading into other
areas. Art is looking for new paths and is trying to come
to new realizations. Can art in this field overtake science
and offer to society the mirror of long-term consequences?
The eighth international festival Break wishes to stimulate
the creation of those original poetics which deal explicitly
with invention, fabrication, innovations, and in general
with experimentation and the search for new routes. So we
are interested in the production of all kinds of new species
– creations, organisms, creatures, machines, bodies, spaces,
assignments, contents, themes, formats, optics and concepts.
Polona Tratnik, art director of festival Break 2.3 New Species
