the slow flowering of a Narcissus Poeticus becomes the subject of a New
Media Art installation hosted in an unusual exhibition space: a video Tv
channel. The video tv channel was delivered by streamit.it, a little young
italian internet Tv company, and the installation was hosted by the PAV,
Parco d'Arte Vivente in Turin, Italy from the 4 of february to the 11 of
april. The project aims to active collaboration between different voices
from the artistic culture, artist itself, philosophers, media critics, ecc
ecc by producing texts that explore the concept of Human Cultural
Narcissism, a concept that has yet to be properly theorised.
The text produced during the installation are the texts of Karin Andersen
(Artista), Marta de Menezes (Bioart), Pier Luigi Capucci (Media Theory),
Roy Ascott (Technoetic Arts), Jens Hauser (Bioart & Media Theory), Nicola
Verlato (artist), Wu Ming 2 (Novelist), Maurizio Bortolotti (Art Curator),
Alessandro Bertante (Novelist), Giuseppe O. Longo (Cybernetic), Cristina
Trivellin (Art Curator), Amos Bianchi (philosopher & Media Theorist), Orio
Vergani (Gallerist), Elif Ayter (Artist), Natasha Vita-More (Artist),
Alessio Chierico (Media Artist).....
The set of images and writing done during the time of flowering will become
credible artistic – and perhaps even historical – forms because they will
embody and allude t shared experiences of meaning, as well as contribute to
the representation and definition of a new post-humanity. The texts and
images of the flowering, along with the interpretative cooperation by
various authors and participants, will be gathered and published in a
limited-edition book – replete with its own ISDN - that will represent the
real and final artwork. At the same time, a version will be made available
through on-demand digital publishing for all artists, scholars and other
people who are interested. The final work will be presented and displayed at
the Nowhere Gallery in Milan in June 2010.
It is an online televised (in Internet) experiment, an artwork born at the
end of the television era, an artwork that in itself is a communication act
that harnesses an exploration of one of the central ideas of the coming
contemporary era - the necessary redefinition of anthropocentrism.
The formal project belongs to the work insofar as it determines its purpose
and is effective in promoting the analysis and criticism of some of its
contents in a given linguistic and cultural context. The art in this work
begins where mere material existence ends – art is the process and exists as
a generative idea. Ultimately art recovers a material dimension as a work in
the form of the book, the critical machine par excellence. In short, what I
am doing is making the process of understanding become the substance of the
art.
We'll see if something will arose from this art experiment, some datas will
be collected!!!
In order to look forward for some interesting studies on a new vision that
goes beyond anthropocentrism, I think that is very relevant the new interest
around the very common *T. gondii* parasites infections
as we can read: Toxoplasma Gondii have the ability to change the behavior of
rats and mice, making them drawn to rather than fearful of the scent of
cats. This effect is advantageous to the parasite, which will be able to
sexually reproduce if its host is eaten by a
cat.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#cite_note-10>The
infection is highly precise, as it does not affect a rat's other fears such
as the fear of open spaces or of unfamiliar smelling food.
Studies have also shown behavioral changes in humans, including slower
reaction times and a sixfold increased risk of traffic accidents among
infected males <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#cite_note-11>,
as well as links to schizophrenia including hallucinations and reckless
behavior <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#cite_note-12>.
Additionally, studies of students and conscript soldiers in the Czech
Republic <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Republic> in the mid-1990s
highlighted the fact that infected people showed different personality
traits to uninfected people—and that the differences depended on sex.
Infected women were more likely to become more outgoing and showed signs of
higher intelligence, while men became aggressive, jealous and
suspicious.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#cite_note-13>
If a very common parasite, linked to social animals as cats and mices (if we
can define mices social yet!!) can affect human behaviour we have to
carefully reconsider the idea of anthropocentrism, with new vision on
regards of a sort of "collaborative centrism" between different living
beings...
francesco
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#cite_note-13>
2010/4/19 roger malina <rmalina@alum.mit.edu>
> Francesco
>
> I look forward to the narcissism/anthropocentrism discussion in YASMIN
> and will be interested in seeing how this becomes part of the exhibition
> concept you are all organising !!
>
>
> I found this story very relevant, part of a discussion on Human/Non Human
> going on at IMERA at the moment
>
> for medical research, scientists make extensive use of 'animal models' to
> try and understand diseases and treat them= and of course the animal
> is only interesting if it has the same kinds of diseases as humans ( we
> are very much less interested if the animal isnt a good model for humanss)-
> a good example of anthropocentrism and how it affects scientific research
>
> there was an interesting story this week
> http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100316/full/464332b.html
>
> it turns out that in medical studies using mice, almost 80% or more
> of the mice used in reseach are male mice not female mice
>
> here is what the researchers say:
>
> Back at the bench, lab animals are still predominantly male, even in
> studies of diseases that disproportionately affect women.
> Investigators tend to prefer male animals because it is thought that
> females might introduce variability through factors such as their
> oestrous cycles. But Mogil has reported that in common tests used to
> measure responses to pain, data from female mice are no more variable
> than those from males (J. S. Mogil and M. L. Chanda Pain 117, 1–5;
> 2005).
>
> The problem is particularly acute in neuroscience, in which the ratio
> of male- to female-only studies is 5.5 to 1. But under-representation
> of females occurs in most fields of basic research, according to an
> unpublished analysis by Zucker and postdoctoral researcher Annaliese
> Beery. They investigated the use of female and male animals in
> research published during 2009 in 10 fields across 42 journals. They
> found that studies in eight of the fields used only male animals more
> often than only females, and that the data were often not analysed by
> sex. In two journals that the researchers investigated back to 1909,
> the proportion of animal studies using only males had actually grown
> since the early twentieth century. The authors speculate that this is
> because oestrous cycles in guinea pigs, rats and mice were first
> clearly characterized only in the 1920s."""
>
> not only is anthropocentrism very deep it is sexist
>
> roger
>
>
> Discussion: The newconcept of Humankind Cultural Narcissism
>
> A-non-existing-concept: Humankind Cultural Narcissism, a re-discussion
> of anthropocentrism,
>
> The 'narcisistic' artwork is done in order to explore possibilities to
> generate a new cultural concept throughout an exhibit process and
> having the Yasmin discussion result as material for the same concept;
>
> A concept that has yet to be properly theorised. The term Narcissism
> derives from clinical description (Nacke, 1899). Anthropocentrism - is
> the tendency to consider the human being as the centre of the
> universe. Cultura, in Latin, means cultivation, referred to a person,
> it means education and manners, it means civility and refinement.
> Humankind culture in this light seems to be a kind of Narcissistic
> neurosis in which the individual has little wiggle room and no way to
> escape. The individual is obliged to assume a model of the humankind
> ideal Ego as the goal of love itself. This Ego is anthropocentric, and
> love, when not aimed at the discovery of the other(s), risks becoming
> a suicidal weapon against self and society itself. Human, then, seems
> to be a kind of cultural 'primate' who suffers from the deep malaise
> that spreads beyond the individual sphere and ends up marking, through
> the death of communication between species and types of humanity, one
> of the limits of our current society. see:
>
> http://technoeticnarcissus.blogspot.com/2010/01/is-there-love-in-technoetic-narcissus.html
>
> - This new concepts would be create also around my 'narcisistic'
> artwork, as artist;
> - This artwork was done in order to explore possibilities to generate
> a new cultural concept throughout the exhibit process;
> - This artwork was exhibited aiming the Yasmin discussion result as
> material for the same new concept;
>
> as art process Is There Love in Technoetic Narcissus? was just exposed
> in Turin at Pav in the exhibit Diverse Forms Most Beautiful , from the
> 4 of February to the 15 of April,
> http://www.parcoartevivente.it/pav/index.php?lingua_sito=2 , after
> this dates the concept introduced and explored by the artwork would be
> elaborated in this discussion on Yasmine, shifting from video to texts
> and then too a book, the book will will be exposed in a new exhibit in
> Nowhere Gallery in Milan in June.
>
>
> Francesco Monico: both a technoetic researcher and artist, today
> mainly engaged in directing the Media Design & New Media Art
> Department at the NABA, in Milan, Italy. He's teaching Theory and
> Method of Mass Media at the same institution, as well play as director
> of the Planetary Collegium PhD M-Node [www.m-node.org]. His modus
> operandi is based on a combination of science, art, philosophy, and
> esoteric knowledge in which the artist recognises the paradoxical
> nature of knowledge and the contradictions inherent in formal
> epistemologies, and in his deep speculation his dealing with an
> hermeneutical approach. His methodology is a syncretic mixing critical
> theory and a pragmatic art approach. Among his artworks are The Artist
> Formerly Known as Vanda (i.e. Tafkav - 2007/10) [3] and Is There Love
> in The Technoetic Narcissus? (2008/10) [4],
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Monico
>
> Discussant:
> Pier Luigi Capucci: <plc@noemalab.org> the provost of Italian studies
> on technologies and new media;
> Amos Bianchi: <amos.bianchi@naba.it> a critical thinker, philosopher
> with a dynamic experience on higher education on art;
>
> Natasha Vita-More: <nvitamore@austin.rr.com> a media artist/designer
> and theorist known for designing "Primo Posthuman.
> Roberto Marchesini: <qbioetic@tin.it>, philosopher and biologist,
> author of the zooantropology manifesto.
>
>
>
> Francesco Monico
> 19.04.10 milano
>
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nec metuas nec optas
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