Abstract-
Michele Barker
http://hdl.handle.net/10002/454
(FULL PAPER)
From Life to Cognition: Investigating the Role of Biology and Neurology
in New Media Arts Practice
This paper offers a critical analysis of the relationship between new
media arts practice and science occurring at two specific junctures: the
migration of key concepts from the life sciences into digital arts during
the 1990s and, most recently, the engagement with concepts from the cognitive
sciences. I will argue that artists were less critical in deploying metaphors
from the life sciences during the 1990s and often literally conceived
of digital phenomena as processes of growth and forms of life. By being
more self-reflexive and attuned to the implications of scientific images
and metaphors, artists now working with concepts drawn from the cognitive
sciences can critically explore the visual representation of brain functioning
and processes of perception.
An aesthetic framework can be identified for the conjoining of biological
and digital metaphors within the fields of artificial life (a-life) systems,
interactivity and generative art. Throughout this period artists frequently
used concepts drawn from the life sciences – evolution, DNA –
to describe processes and outcomes for their practice, laying claim to
evolutionary growth and/or behaviours. An investigation into the field
of artificial life and its influence over interactivity reveals the emergence
of artistic practice dominated by conflicting and reductivist biological
metaphors – predominantly ’life’ as (digital) information.
This paper will demonstrate the ways in which the convergence between
the life sciences and digital theory influenced digital arts of the 1990s
and problems that arose when artists allowed the literal migration of
life science concepts into the digital realm, neglecting the fact that
the aesthetic value of these concepts as metaphors.
Having evaluated the role of this ‘genetic’ umbrella as the
dominant metaphorical framework for new media art in the 1990s, I will
turn to the emerging role that the cognitive sciences and theories of
perception have begun to play within new media arts. A broader conception
of the relation between neurology and art has become popular, which we
can term neuroaesthetics. This has its origins in the field of neuroscience
where it is used to describe the underlying functioning of the brain in
relation to perception. Outside of the neurosciences, the concept has
been rearticulated in the work of artist Warren Neidich. Neidich’s
critical inquiry and practice in the field has identified that artists
are interested in “strategies of seeing” rather than reducing
vision to neurological function. Through the use of artists working in
the area, I would suggest that neuroaesthetics can describe the conceptual
and visual response of artists to the imaging processes used by the neurosciences.
Neuroaesthetics in new media arts, then, is not a simple migration of
cognitive concepts into artistic practice. Rather, it represents a strategic
investigation into the ways in which the brain and brain functioning can
be visually represented and interpreted. |