In this original Digital Art and Philosophy class, we will become familiar with different forms of digital art and related philosophical issues. Digital art is anything related to computers and art such as using a computer to create art or an art display that is digitized. Philosophical aspects arise regarding art, identity, performance, interactivity, and the process of creation. Students may respond to the material in essay, performance, or digital art work (optional). Instructor: Melanie Swan. Syllabus: www.MelanieSwan.com/PCA

1. Image: Emese
Szorenyi
Digital Art and Philosophy #5
Portable ArtTech: Wearable Electronics, Identity, the Future.
Melanie Swan
University of the Commons and the Emerald Tablet Gallery
Syllabus: http://www.MelanieSwan.com/PCA

2. Digital Art is anything involving
computers and art
2

3. Sub-categories of Digital Art
Information Visualization Play, Performance, Virtual Reality
Natural Aesthetics: BioArt, Generative Art Identity, the Future 3

4. Review: Philosophy of Digital Art
1. Introduction: Interactivity gives more
direct access to perception
2. Information Visualization:
representing the unrepresented
3. Play, Performance & Virtual Reality:
existence of virtual reality artworks
4. Natural Aesthetics:
– Hard to tell what kind of ‘real’
– Interdisciplinarity: artists -> biology,
engineers -> biology, programmers -> art
– Placeness, spatiality, dwelling;
homelessness and nihilism in new
contexts virtually
– Dwelling – extending ourselves
meaningfully, rechecking group values
4

5. Agenda and Topic Clusters
Portable ArtTech: Wearable Electronics, Identity, the Future
Wearable Electronics Synthetic Biology (de novo creation)
Exosenses Philosophy of Technology
Cyborg Culture and CrowdArt
Transhumanism Philosophy of Creativity
5

6. Sensor Mania! Wearable Electronics
Smart Gadgetry Creates Continuous
Personal Information Climate
Smartphone, Fitbit, Smartwatch (Pebble), Electronic T-shirt (Carre)
Smartring (ElectricFoxy), Electronic tattoos (mc10), $1 blood
API (Sano Intelligence), Continuous Monitors (Medtronic)
Source: Swan, M. Sensor Mania! The Internet of Things, Objective Metrics, and the Quantified Self 2.0.
J Sens Actuator Netw 2012. 6

7. Electronic and Chemical
BioSensor Aesthetics
“Hi-Tech Tattoos: When Artists and
Engineers Work Together”
• Wearable explosive detection devices
disguised by temporary transfer
tattoos
• Electrochemical sensors applied
directly to skin or sewn into clothing
• Detect vapors (external)
– Chemical constituents of explosives
Electronic
– Environmental toxins
• Detect vital signs (internal)
http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/pulse/winter2013/page3.shtml#tattoos 7

8. Augmenting the Brain
24/7 Consumer EEG, Eye-tracking, Emotion-Mapping, Augmented Reality Glasses
Consumer EEG Rigs Augmented Reality Glasses
1.0
2.0
Source: Swan, M. Sensor Mania! The Internet of Things, Objective Metrics, and the Quantified Self 2.0.
J Sens Actuator Netw 2012. 8

9. Building Exosenses
Extending our senses in new ways to perceive data as sensation
Magnetic Sense: Finger and Arm Magnets
Eric Boyd – Heart Spark Nancy Dougherty – Serendipitous Joy
http://sensebridge.net/projects/heart-spark/ Smile-triggered EMG muscle sensor with
The North Paw- A Haptic Compass Anklet an LED headband display
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4shfNufqSg 9

10. World of Smart Matter
The Internet of Things
• Internet of Things: making
objects readable,
recognizable, locatable,
addressable, and controllable
wirelessly via the Internet1
• Usual gadgetry (e.g.;
smartphones, tablets) and
everyday objects: cars, food,
clothing, appliances,
materials, parts, buildings,
roads
• 5% of human-constructed
objects have embedded
microprocessors (2012)2
1U.S.
1991
National Intelligence Council. The “Internet of Things,” 2008. http://www.fas.org/irp/nic/disruptive.pdf
2Vinge, V. Who’s Afraid of First Movers? The Singularity Summit 2012. http://singularitysummit.com/schedule/
10

11. Continuous Information Climate
Fourth-person Perspective
• Immersed in infinite data flow: We give off bits of
information that are sent to the data flow, the
data flow responds by sending information to us
11

12. Data as Artistic Medium
Data as Culture
(Stanza 2012)
Data as a raw
material for artists
12
http://www.stanza.co.uk/emergentcity/?p=1322

13. Fashion
13

14. Fashion as Practical Commentary
Consumer Strikes Back
• Drone-proof anti-surveillance
Burqas from Stealth Wear
– Response to surveillance
drones in domestic airspace
– Wearers invisible to infrared
surveillance cameras
• Neural Data Privacy Rights
– Personal Faraday cage
• Behavioral conventions
– ‘Off-Glass’ conversations
Burqa: http://www.salon.com/2013/03/07/drone_proof_burqas_the_latest_fashion_trend_partner/ 14

15. What is Transhumanism?
• Transhumanism (H+) (Wikipedia)
– Social movement that affirms the
possibility and desirability of
fundamentally transforming the http://humanityplus.org/
human condition
– by developing and making widely
available technologies
– to greatly enhance human
intellectual, physical, and
psychological capacities
• Transhuman (transitionary human),
a greatly enhanced human on the
way to the Posthuman, a radically
different being, enhanced to the
moment of speciation
15

16. Transhumanist Values
• Transhumanism is a dynamic philosophy
– Intended to evolve as new information becomes available
– A questioning attitude and a willingness to revise beliefs
and assumptions
• Transhumanism’s objective is to be inclusive
– Emphasis on individual freedom and individual choice in
the area of enhancement technologies
– Right to choose
• Live longer and healthier lives
• Enhance memory and other intellectual faculties
• Refine emotional experiences and subjective sense of well-being
• Achieve a greater degree of control over life
Source: Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University 16

17. Roots of Transhumanism: Cybernetics
• Cybernetics: The science of communications
and automatic control systems in both
machines and living things
• Notion of feedback loops (Cybernetics, Norbert
Wiener 1948)
• “I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess”
(A Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway 1985)
• Human beings are observed and observing
systems (We Have Never Been Modern, Bruno Latour 1997)
• 10% already cyborgs (Andy Clark, Natural-born Cyborgs
2003, Supersizing the Mind 2008)
17

18. Reading: Nietzsche, the Overhuman, and
Transhumanism (Stefan Sorgner, 2009)
Nietzsche as grounds for transhumanism
1. Concept: Übermensch (overman; overhuman)
– Nietzsche: Overman overcomes the herd mentality
and is capable of creating a new perspective
– Bostrom: Transhuman (transitionary human) with
extended capabilities, and speciated Posthuman
2. Support of science and enhancement
– Nietzsche: the future age will be governed by a
scientific spirit; human beings grow stronger
(through education) and have developed a scientific
spirit (e.g.; obtained objective information)
– Bostrom: Wide availability of intellectual, physical,
and psychological enhancement technologies
18

19. Reading: Nietzsche, the Overhuman, and
Transhumanism (Stefan Sorgner, 2009)
3. Dynamic nature and evolution in
human nature and values; human
nature as a work-in-progress
– Nietzsche: Concept of overcoming:
constantly refining ourselves and
broadening our intellectual horizons to
become the overman
– Bostrom: Notion of cultivating a
questioning and analytical attitude to
enhancement adoption/non-adoption
– Counter to Plato’s immutable forms
19

20. Nietzsche gets a Modem: Transhumanism and the
Technological Sublime (Elaine Graham, 2002)
• Tradition of philosophic contemplation of the
posthuman condition (Lyotard, etc.)
– Malleable boundaries between humans,
animals, and machines
– Humans are a mix of machine and organism
• Nietzsche already had a modem
– Transhumanism is fatally flawed
– Still has the ‘religion of humanity’
– Must dissolve current notions of value, hope,
and meaning
• Posthuman Representational Accuracy
– Representing what does not yet exist to create it
– Incorrect: normative visions of humanism, fears
and fantasies of technoscience
20

21. Existential Risk:
Threats to Humanity’s Survival
• Existential Risk: risk that threatens the entire future of
humanity (difficult to assess; high stakes)
• Existential Risk Institutes
– Oxford Future of Humanity Institute, http://www.existential-risk.org/
– Cambridge Project for Existential Risk, http://cser.org/
Bostrom N. Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards. 2002. 21

22. Risk Extinction Estimates (2008)
Existential Risk At least 1 At least 1 Human
mn dead bn dead extinction
Molecular nanotechnology weapons 25% 10% 5%
Superintelligent AI 10% 5% 5%
All wars (including civil wars) 98% 30% 4%
Single biggest engineered pandemic 30% 10% 2%
All nuclear wars 30% 10% 1%
Single biggest nanotechnology accident 5% 1% 0.5%
Single biggest natural pandemic 60% 5% 0.05%
All acts of nuclear terrorism 15% 1% 0.03%
Overall risk of extinction prior to 2100 n/a n/a 19%
Bostrom N and Sandberg A. Global Catastrophic Risks Survey. 2008.
http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/3854/global-catastrophic-risks-report.pdf 22

23. Existential Risk Mitigation
• Friendly superintelligence
– Singularity Institute: design ‘friendly’ utility functions
– Hall (Beyond AI 2007): AI likely to be more humane
• Nanofactory restrictions (grey goo)
• Surveillance/sousveillance balance
• Alternative habitats (‘backup’)
– Space habitats
– Ocean habitats (seasteading)
– Mine shaft habitats
– Antarctic habitats
http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2006/09/a-comprehensive-list-of-existential-risks/
23

24. • Text
24

25. Need for Posthuman Philosophies
Eras of Philosophy
Ancient Modern Posthuman
• Need for prescriptive support about future possibilities
(visionary), not descriptive philosophy (documenting)
• Potential difference in nearly all topics of philosophy
– The nature of Reality
– Subject/object, subjective/objective experience
– The self, individual/society
– Instancing, copies, self, other, alterity
– Language, signifier, label, trace
– Death, time, spatiality, contingency
– Meaning-making, aesthetics, ethics
25

26. Contemporary Innovation in Biology
1. Regenerative Medicine: Tissue Engineering, Stem Cell
Therapies, 3D BioPrinting (Focus: replacement)
2. Synthetic Biology (Focus: enhancement & de novo genesis)
3. Genetic Engineering: RNAi, Zinc Finger Nucleases,
histone remodeling
4. Nanomedicine, Targeted Nanoparticles
5. Era of Big Health Data: Omics
6. Personalized Medicine and Crowdsourced health
7. Biomolecular Interface: organic/inorganic hybrids
26

27. Philosophical Issues related to
Innovation in Biology
• Is it okay to interfere with natural processes?
– Have always been manipulating (e.g.; plant and
animal breeding), this is just a better way
– Nodes: crop-breeding, GMO1, SynBio
– What constitutes a qualitative change? Is a
qualitative change relevant? How should we think
about ‘order of magnitude’ change?
• Is there a different set of concerns with de
novo generation?
1Genetically-modified organism
27

28. Synthetic Biology
“This century’s transistor”
• Definition: Synthetic biology (synbio) is
– Design and construction of new biological entities such as
enzymes, genetic circuits, and cells,
– Redesign of existing biological systems
• Biology as an engineering medium
– Engineering principles applied to harness the fundamental
components of biology
• Main approaches
– Metabolic engineering (bacteria produce diesel)
– Extending E. coli capacity (yeast produces medicine)
– Biomimicry (replicate biological function in synthetic systems)
– de novo Synthesis (create new functionality)
Source: Swan, M. Synbio Revolution: Biology is the Engineering Medium, 6/26/11
http://futurememes.blogspot.com/2011/06/synbio-revolution-biology-is.html 28

29. Philosophical Issues related to
Synthetic Biology (Metaphysics)
• Nature of reality and existence
– Definition of ‘What is life?’
– How much DNA change is required for a sub-species or
‘different’ organism? Constellations of related organisms
– What are living machines, synbio products in themselves?
• Ontological classifications
– Organizing, naming, classifying modified and de novo plants
and organisms
– Develop an ontology of the products of synthetic biology
using philosophy of language (e.g. theory of conceptual
metaphors)
– Redefining existing ontologies structured around outdated
paradigms: living/non-living, organic/non-organic
Source: Philosophy and Synthetic Biology: Philosophical Problems and Concerns in Working With
Living Organisms http://gcat.davidson.edu 29

30. Philosophical Issues related to
Synthetic Biology (Other)
• Ethics
– Safety, accountability, responsibilities, unintended
consequences, right to do this work (playing God?),
dual-use debate
– Standard risk models appropriate?
• Epistemology
– How do I know that my methods are safe, etc.?
– Limits on knowledge-seeking and dissemination?
• Axiology (values, valorisation)
– Synthetic biology product ownership, patenting
Source: Philosophy and Synthetic Biology: Philosophical Problems and Concerns in Working With
Living Organisms http://gcat.davidson.edu 30

31. Aristotle:
Approaches to Knowledge
I know how
• Epistêmê: Scientific knowledge, theory. to do it
Universal, invariable, context-independent theoretically
• Technê: Craft art, practice, technique. I know how
Pragmatic, variable, context-dependent, to do it
oriented toward production, doing practically
• Phronesis: Ethics. Deliberation about
I know when
values with reference to praxis (the to do it
appropriate application of a skill)
• Poiesis Taking Action. To make, transform,
do, produce, bring-forth (Heidegger: I do it
aletheia/truth/unconcealment, revealing)
Source: The Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle 1st c BC) http://www.crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/threeapproaches.htm
http://psychsoma.co.za/learning_in_vivo/2009/09/techne-episteme-poiesis-praxis.html 31

32. de novo Generators Developing Code
of Responsibilities
• Contemplated knowledge-based
action-taking1
– What are we actually doing?
– What are living machines good for?
– What are they in themselves? Artificial ligase enzyme
• Practice standards
– Signing, documenting work
• Goal
– Deliver function, safety, and beauty
Mycoplasma laboratorium
1Source: Boldt J, Living Machines, Metaphors, and Functional Explanations: Towards an Epistemological Foundation
of Synthetic Biology, 2012 http://2012.igem.org/Team:Freiburg/HumanPractices/Philo 32

33. Current Opinion in Chemical Biology
Mechanisms • Aesthetics • Molecular imaging
December 2012
Volume 16
Issues 5–6
Pages 461-622
33

34. Synthetic Aesthetics
How would you design nature?
• Connecting synthetic biology, social
science, and art and design1
– Teams: Bioengineers and Synbio
Designers
• Molecular Design Aesthetics
– When we make new molecules should
they be beautiful? Are naturally
occurring molecules beautiful? What is
an ugly protein?
– Is ‘form follows function’ relevant? Can
function be beautiful?
– What aesthetic criteria to apply?
Aesthetics of chirality
1http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/H01912X/1 and
34
http://www.genomicsnetwork.ac.uk/media/Synthetic%20Aesthetics.pdf

35. What is Technology?
• Technology: the making, modification, usage, and
knowledge of tools, machines, and techniques in order
to solve a problem or achieve a goal (Wikipedia)
• Technological Eras
– Is there anything fundamentally different about the current
era of technology?
– How do we know?
– What would constitute a fundamental change in
technology?
35

36. History of the
Philosophy of Technology
• Greeks on technology
– Democritus: technology learns from or
imitates nature “house-building and
weaving were first invented by
imitating swallows and spiders building
their nests and nets” (D154)
– Aristotle: “generally art in some cases
completes what nature cannot bring to
a finish, and in others imitates nature”
(Physics II.8, 199a15)
36

37. Narrowband Approaches
to Thinking about Technology
• Similar to Ethical Models progression
– Act-based -> Actor-based -> Situation-based
• Binary Model: tech-positivist or tech-negativist
– Technology is dehumanizing or emancipating
• Adopt/Non-Adopt Model
– Luddite (categorical non-adopt)
– Fatalist (categorical must adopt)
– Impossibility of conceiving it (can’t intelligently adopt)
• Vinge: Greater than human level artificial intelligence
(technological singularity)
• Graham, Bostrom (posthuman)
• Wolfram (computer programs)
• Yudkowsky (possibility space of all intelligence)
37

38. Heidegger: The Right
Relation to Technology
• Two Ways to See Technology: Means (enslaving) and
Enablement (freeing)
– “Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology,
whether we passionately affirm or deny it. Technology is a
means to an end [enslaving].
– But technology is no mere means [there is a right
relationship]. There is an aspect of bringing-forth which
brings out of concealment into unconcealment. Technology is
a way of revealing truth.
– It is as revealing, not as manufacturing, that technology is a
bringing-forth *freeing+.”
• Summary
– Technology [and art] are a way of revealing (truth)
– If we use our questioning way and see technology as an
enabler and not as a means to an end, then we will maintain
a free relationship with technology
38

39. Digital Art and Culture
• The enabling relationship with
technology and art is both
individual and societal
• Worldwide cultural impact of
digital art
• Binkley reading connects digital
art to culture more broadly
– Production of culture
– Broadening of participation
– Future of creativity
39

40. Reading: Vitality of Digital Creation
(Timothy Binkley, 1997)
• “Digital images are at first glance improbable players
in the drama of culture since numbers (abstract
concept) and pictures (visible objects) are diametric
opposites”
• “The consequences of digitizing our discourses
encompass not only expanded creative phenomena,
but also extended interconnections between art and
the rest of culture as we interact more frequently
and more fully with each other across geographic,
political, and cultural boundaries”
• “Visual data are paramount in shaping the interface
as well as supplying the content for this network”
• Conclusion: Network fabric continually being created
for global connectivity and creativity including
interfaces for participatory digital art
40

41. CrowdArt
Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir 3, 'Water Night' (2012)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3rRaL-Czxw
41

42. CrowdArt
Virtual Choir - 'Lux Aurumque' (Eric Whitacre 2010)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7o7BrlbaDs 42

43. CrowdArt
• Art created by groups of people
participating simultaneously
• Crowd collaboration - 'exquisite
corpse' model of the surrealists
• Crowdsourced art (user-contributed
sites Flickr, Photobucket)
• Art mobs
– Community-created art
– Art produced en masse
– Art quality voted up/down
43

44. Pervasiveness of Crowd Models
• Crowdsourcing: coordination of large numbers of
individuals (the crowd) through an open call on the
Internet in the conduct of some sort of activity
– Economics: crowdsourced labor marketplaces,
crowdfunding, grouppurchasing, rhythm-based service
economy (Easter in Spain vizualization)
– Politics: flashmobs, online organizing, opinion-shifting,
data-mining
– Social: blogs, social networks, meetup, online dating
– Art & Entertainment: virtual reality, multiplayer games
– Education: MOOCs (massively open online courses)
– Health: health social networks, digital health
experimentation communities, quantified self
– Digital public goods: Wikipedia, online health databanks,
data commons resources, crowdscience competitions
44

45. The Crowd as a Collective Intelligence
Computing Network
• Crowd computation network as a new
flavor of artificial intelligence
– Crowd as a computing model: Collective
intelligence community computing
– The computing community is a living organism
of individual nodes and mass collaboration
• Humans and groups are computation nodes
– Involuntary (shedding data, online sociality)
– Voluntary (create, analyze, comment, upload)
• Each node adds data to the network and
conducts computation on existing flows to
make them more meaningful
Swan, M. DIYgenomics citizen science health research studies: personal wellness and preventive medicine through
collective intelligence. AAAI Symposium on Self-Tracking and Collective Intelligence for Personal Wellness 2012 45

46. Philosophical Issues in Crowd Models
Massive Access to Creative Production
Scribe Printing Press Blogger, Twitter, Flickr
Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest
Orchestra Midi Keyboard Garage Band, Soundcloud
Animation Computer-generated Spore
Imagery (CGI) Creature Creator 46

47. What is Creativity?
• Creativity: The ability to make or bring
something new into existence (Webster)
• Growing field of multi-disciplinary study
– Biology: natural selection, genomics, neurology
– Psychology: how the imagination works,
cognitive processes employed in creativity
47

48. 5 Steps in the Creative Process
1. Preparation: Becoming
immersed in the area
2. Incubation: Allowing the ideas
to turn around unconsciously
3. Insight: the “Aha!” moment
when things start to make sense
4. Evaluation: Deciding whether to
pursue the insight
5. Elaboration: Translating the
insight into its final form
Csikszentmihalyi , Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, 1996
48

49. Philosophy of Creativity
• Metaphysics, Ontology (existence)
– Pervasive, important, praise
• Philosophy of mind
– Consciousness and Intentionality 2010
• Ethics
– Is creativity valuable for its own sake apart
from what it produces?
– Is creativity a virtue?
• Aesthetics
– The work is evaluated
– The reaction to the work is evaluated
– (New) The process of the producer’s
production of the work is evaluated
49

50. Book: The Creation of Art : New Essays in
Philosophical Aesthetics (Berys Gaut 2003)
• Creativity is associated with art, but yet is
pervasive in all settings
• Creativity as a form of problem-solving (a
task that presents difficulty)
– Art-making is the problem of expression
– Creative actions may have some goal or
directionality
• Resistance from artists and philosophers
– Creativity as pure spontaneity
50

51. What are the next media for art?
• Any prominent societal ‘currency’ is taken
up by artists (and technologists and
engineers) as an experimental medium
• Technology, biology, data, ??
• What are upcoming societal currencies?
– 3D printing feedstock
– Pink goo: more flavors of synbio
– Personal Analytics and the Quantified Self
– Health
51

52. Summary of Philosophical Issues in Wearable
Electronics, Identity, the Future
• Portable ArtTech changing perspectives of
reality and blurring subject/object distinctions
– Wearable computing, IOT sensors, exosenses
– Continuous information climate
• Transhumanist as enhanced transitionary
human on the way to the speciated Posthuman
• Representation accuracy and authenticity
– InfoViz: representing the unrepresented
– Creating the unrepresented which does not exist
• SynBio de novo creation
• Posthuman (Nietzsche already had a modem;
eliminate normative notions of humanity)
• Enablement relationship to technology and art
• ‘Orders of magnitude’ change
• Democratized access to the tools of creativity 52

53. Feedback:
Thank you! m@MelanieSwan.com
Image: Emese
Szorenyi
Digital Art and Philosophy
Melanie Swan
University of the Commons and the Emerald Tablet Gallery
http://www.MelanieSwan.com/PCA
http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga