[Yasmin_discussions] Narcissism and Anthropocentrism

Amos

I would like to pick on your comment about the three ways that one
'self-references'

"I think it could be useful to approach the topic of the "anthropos"
in three ways,
according to what has been stated by Morin ( La méthode . L'Humanité
de l'humanité, l'identité humaine , 2001):

Anthropos as 1. human being, 2. individual, 3. part of the society.

First the reference to the work of Edgar Morin is very relevant and it
would be interesting
to unpack how his ideas are relevant to the art/science/discussion
particularly because
it brings in the issue of systems theory and cybernetics. With a
systems or network theory,
the individual is not the locus of action but the network structure,
and it is impossible to
consider the individual independent of the network it is part of. Can
networks be narcissistic?

The definition of an individual is a difficult concept, because we associate
the individual with personhood and identity. There was an interesting
panel at the
recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science which
a paper by philosopher Thomas White which had the provocative title "
Dolphins as non-human persons"/
That wording in itself is a great example of anthropocentric narcissism !!

http://aaas.confex.com/aaas/2010/webprogram/Session1526.html

Diana Weisse presented a paper on self awareness in Dolphins and Lori
White discussed the various ways that the neurobiology of dolphins differs
from human neurobiology.

Tied to the concept of individuals is the idea that individuals are different
from each other, and reflecting their personal history.It doesnt make
a lot of sense
to talk about cells as individuals or even galaxies.

The speakers at the AAAS panel pointed out that Dolphins "pass' many of the
tests that we associated with "individual personhood":
=They are alive
=Aware of their environment
=Have emotions
=have personalitites
=exhibit self control
=treat others appropriately, even ethically
=recognise themselves in a mirror
= pass the theory of mind test and interpret what others are thinking

For what its worth dolphin minds are bigger (1600 grams) than human
brains( 1300 grams)
=
There is a lot of interest in the art/science artworld these days on
developing artistic
practice with other life forms in various kinds of ways. And artmaking
is not restricted
to humans but is also engaged by other species

see for instance the work of Hollis Taylor

Hollis TAYLOR
Violoniste, compositrice et ornithologue américaine/australienne.
Music has long been situated between nature and technology but has
been expanding in both directions. Its edges are now blurred and
contested as never before. When sonographic analysis of birdsong
recordings became possible, biologists apprehended the subject. My
dissertation, Towards a Species Songbook: Illuminating the Song of the
Australian Pied Butcherbird (Cracticus nigrogularis), links a
musician's trained ear and traditional notation with the latest
developments in neuroscience, ornithology, field recording, and
sonography. The research also addresses another ongoing problem within
the discipline: definitions of music and culture often assume a
strictly human agency.
www.HollisTaylor.com

or Rachel Mayeri who has been working in the area of Primate Cinema:
http://www.soft-science.org/mayeri.html

Primate Cinema:
How to Act like An Animal
Sign up for a free workshop at Interspecies at A Foundation London on
3 October 2009
Single Channel Splitscreen, Mini-DV, 6 minutes, 2008
How to Act like an Animal

Superhuman strength, superhuman smell, hunting, nesting, snacking all
day, not having to clean up after yourself, swinging through the air
on branches, being grabby, not having to form sentences, screeching,
barking, hooting, whimpering, shit-flinging, public nudity, sex,
grooming, being groomed, wrestling, eating with your hands, eating
without hands, biting others, suckling.

Acting like an animal seems like a lot of fun. But we know from nature
documentaries that it is rough out there (it's a jungle). There are
other animals who want to kill us. There's no guarantee of finding
enough food in a day. There are struggles for power within our own
family. There's no semblance of a justice system or shelter from the
cold or heat. No one will have a barbeque, because animals are
notoriously bad planners nor can they grill.

Both Holls Taylor and Rachel Mayeri work with "individual" animals -
who presembaly are as narcissistic
and species-centric as we are !!

there are artists working i art science practice in each of the three
levels that Amos gives:

Anthropos as 1. human being, 2. individual, 3. part of the society.

roger

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Amos Bianchi <amos.bianchi@naba.it>
Date: Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 4:07 PM
Subject: Re: [Yasmin_discussions] Narcissism and Anthropocentrism
To: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS <yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>

Dear Francesco,

here below my post.

Amos

At the opening of yout thread, the narcissism seems to be related to
humankind but, in a following step, it suddenly becomes part of the
essence of the individual. I think it could be useful to approach the
topic of the "anthropos" in three ways, according to what has been
stated by Morin ( La méthode . L'Humanité de l'humanité, l'identité
humaine , 2001): anthropos as 1. human being, 2. individual, 3. part
of the society. By this complex approach the risk to shift from a
concept of the anthropos to another one (i.e., from humankind to
individual), because all the concepts, and the derived reciprocal
feedbacks, must be taken in consideration at the same time. Moreover,
even if the language seems to be just a property of the anthropos (see
Maturana and Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition , 1991) differentiating
it from other living beings, the biblical domination of the man on the
nature is passed over, in order to get a new relation with the other
that assumes at least three different meanings: other from me, other
from my culture, other from my species, each of these definitions
including (and not excluding) the other ones.

--

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[Yasmin_discussions] Narcissism and Anthropocentrism

hello,

sorry Francesco, Roger and all for joining this discussion late. It is indeed a very intriguing topic, and, as Natasha noted, a multidimensional one.

Indeed the idea of "anthropocentrism" as some kind of ideology which puts humankind at the center of the known world has been historically put in discussion in a long path. 2009 was both the 400 anniversary of the telescope's invention by Galileo and the 150 anniversary of the publication of Darwin's "Origin of the Species" (and the 200centenary of his birth). [BTW 2009 was the centenary anniversary of the Futurism avantgarde too, with the central position their time's technologies had in their poetics, but we'd go too far]

With his invention Galileo gave an extraordinary push to the sky's observation, to the diffusion of the heliocentric system and of Copernicus' theories, also through the "scientific method" (which is often called "Galilean method"). Copernicus dethroned the humankind from his central position in the Universe, but, although dislocated in a remote zone the humankind remained the chosen creature, the first one, the highest among the living beings on the Earth. Darwin dethroned the humankind from his privileged position. Like all the living beings, humankind is the result of an extremely long process, of a "design without a designer". All the living beings, humankind included, were not created as they are and are not steady and unchangeable, but evolved starting about 3,8 billion years ago from a remote group of primeval common organisms.

Hence all the living organisms are related, and each individual, whatever species it belongs, is unique but it is pervaded by the matter and the processes which compose all the other living beings. The fundamental processes and the control mechanisms are essentially the same in all species; in our genes we have the genes of many other species, even of viruses. And the difficulties and discussions in the science domain on the definition of "species" and on the methodology to set the differences among the species emphasize this "unitarity".

It seems today the humankind is reaching another topic point in this relativization path, since he has the chance to use sciences and technologies to hugely modify some issues which deeply define the "human essence", which becomes basically uncertain. But does this all imply that anthropocentrism is fading out? Or, better, does it imply it will/can disappear?

More after.

Pier Luigi

--
Pier Luigi Capucci
e-mail: plc@noemalab.org
web: http://www.noemalab.org/plc/plc.html
skype: plcapucci

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Re: [Yasmin_discussions] Narcissism and Anthropocentrism

Dear Francesco,

here below my post.

Amos

At the opening of yout thread, the narcissism seems to be related to humankind but, in a following step, it suddenly becomes part of the essence of the individual. I think it could be useful to approach the topic of the "anthropos" in three ways, according to what has been stated by Morin ( La méthode . L'Humanité de l'humanité, l'identité humaine , 2001): anthropos as 1. human being, 2. individual, 3. part of the society. By this complex approach the risk to shift from a concept of the anthropos to another one (i.e., from humankind to individual), because all the concepts, and the derived reciprocal feedbacks, must be taken in consideration at the same time. Moreover, even if the language seems to be just a property of the anthropos (see Maturana and Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition , 1991) differentiating it from other living beings, the biblical domination of the man on the nature is passed over, in order to get a new relation with the other that assumes at least three different meanings: other from me, other from my culture, other from my species, each of these definitions including (and not excluding) the other ones.

----- Messaggio originale -----
Da: "roger malina" <rmalina@alum.mit.edu>
A: "YASMIN DISCUSSIONS" <Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>
Inviato: Mercoledì, 21 aprile 2010 11:05:50
Oggetto: [Yasmin_discussions] Narcissism and Anthropocentrism

Francesco

Your example about Toxoplasma Gondii is about the importance of parasitic
protozoa and I think is one good place to re think about
anthropocentrism as most
of the life forms on this planet are not primates or in close systems
interaction
with primates. Yet we are obsessed by primates as part of the cultural
narcissism
you describe.

Ramon Guardans, in his essay " On Plant Physics: the silent power of waiting"
argues that we should look at plants and their functioning as a useful
way of re-thinking

http://www.imera.fr/images/stories/PDF/ramon_guardans.pdf

This paper is based on a remarkable book by Karl J. Niklas : Plant Allometry.
The Scaling of Form and Process (U Chicago Press 1994)
and introduces some of it to the reader. This paper argues that it
would be useful to pay
more theoretical, artistic, and scientific
attention to the way plants grow and reproduce, use resources and
dispose of waste over space,
time and scale. We shal
l argue that many aspects of our social behaviour are closer to plant
strategies over
the long range rather than shaped by
urgencies of ambitious predators , these exist but are just a part of
how change
in living lineages come about. Other forms
of interaction are relevant too.
Summarising and commenting on Niklas's work, we draw attention to some
distinctive
aspects of the physics and biology
of plants, regretting implicitly that not more of this work is in
progress and accessible
when considering long - term life processes
The consideration of these issues is also applied to comment on the praise
Charles Darwin deserves and how the poor man
has been abused.

Ramon, are you following this discussion ? maybe you would like to comment !!

Roger
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NABA NUOVA ACCADEMIA DI BELLE ARTI MILANO

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[Yasmin_discussions] Narcissism and Anthropocentrism

Yasminers

I was invited by the author, Francesco Monico, to post a response to this thread
http://estia.media.uoa.gr/pipermail/yasmin_discussions/20100421/thread.html

and this is mytext
At the opening of this discussion, the narcissism seems to be related
to humankind but, in a following step, it suddenly becomes part of the
essence of the individual. I think it could be useful to approach the
topic of the "anthropos" in three ways, according to what has been
stated by Morin (La méthode. L'Humanité de l'humanité, l'identité
humaine, 2001): anthropos as 1. human being, 2. individual, 3. part of
the society. By this complex approach the risk to shift from a concept
of the anthropos to another one (i.e., from humankind to individual),
because all the concepts, and the derived reciprocal feedbacks, must
be taken in consideration at the same time. Moreover, even if the
language seems to be just a property of the anthropos (see Maturana
and Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition, 1991) differentiating it from
other living beings, the biblical domination of the man on the nature
is passed over, in order to get a new relation with the other that
assumes at least three different meanings: other from me, other from
my culture, other from my species, each of these definitions including
(and not excluding) the other ones.

Thank you

Amos Bianchi

--
NABA NUOVA ACCADEMIA DI BELLE ARTI MILANO
Amos Bianchi
Coordinamento Istituto Master e Bienni

www.naba.it
Via Darwin 20
20143 Milano, Italy
tel. + 39 02 97372265

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Re: [Yasmin_discussions] The newconcept of Humankind CulturalNarcissism from francesco monico

Thank you Francesco for introducing this topic. There are many angles to
look at and routes to take in setting on a trek through the richness of your
material. I'd like to start with a first post, and more will follow:

In what ways can narcissism and anthropocentrism be applied to a human who
is unleashing biology and engaging a bio-synthetic zone of existence? Human
enhancement projects have a goal and that is to take biology out of its
fixed nature and turn it into a workable palate. Design labs such as H+
Lab, DIYbio and DIYgenomics encourage new theory and practice for those who
want to be at the center of their own evolving bio-synthetic system.

Do-it-yourself human enhancement domain has a certain familiarity. For
example, the theory and practice of second-order cybernetics placed its
formidable authors-Norbert Wiener, Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, as a
type of subjective elitism, in a claim that the observer must be included in
the system in order for the system to exist. If the mind/brain is central,
if not pivotal, to a cybernetic system, would this be the epitome of an
anthropocentric, self-referential human-machine? Further, in that
technology's tools are most often available to those who partake in
highly-financed projects, such as the Biological Computer Laboratory at the
University of Illinois (1958-1975), and the lab is referred to as the
"Nerve" and its founder, Heinz von Foerster as its head, would that not ever
so more characterize this milieu as narcissistic at its best?

Alternatively, designating one's experience of existence at the locus of
one's future experiences makes sense. Who would know how you think and feel
better than you?

Nevertheless, if and when humans diversify further and into a distributed
cognition, what image will ego see when looking into a mirror? This
reflection could frighten us deeply or give us immeasurable psychological
relief.

Natasha Vita-More

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[Yasmin_discussions] Narcissism and Anthropocentrism

Francesco

Your example about Toxoplasma Gondii is about the importance of parasitic
protozoa and I think is one good place to re think about
anthropocentrism as most
of the life forms on this planet are not primates or in close systems
interaction
with primates. Yet we are obsessed by primates as part of the cultural
narcissism
you describe.

Ramon Guardans, in his essay " On Plant Physics: the silent power of waiting"
argues that we should look at plants and their functioning as a useful
way of re-thinking

http://www.imera.fr/images/stories/PDF/ramon_guardans.pdf

This paper is based on a remarkable book by Karl J. Niklas : Plant Allometry.
The Scaling of Form and Process (U Chicago Press 1994)
and introduces some of it to the reader. This paper argues that it
would be useful to pay
more theoretical, artistic, and scientific
attention to the way plants grow and reproduce, use resources and
dispose of waste over space,
time and scale. We shal
l argue that many aspects of our social behaviour are closer to plant
strategies over
the long range rather than shaped by
urgencies of ambitious predators , these exist but are just a part of
how change
in living lineages come about. Other forms
of interaction are relevant too.
Summarising and commenting on Niklas's work, we draw attention to some
distinctive
aspects of the physics and biology
of plants, regretting implicitly that not more of this work is in
progress and accessible
when considering long - term life processes
The consideration of these issues is also applied to comment on the praise
Charles Darwin deserves and how the poor man
has been abused.

Ramon, are you following this discussion ? maybe you would like to comment !!

Roger
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Re: [Yasmin_discussions] The newconcept of Humankind Cultural Narcissism from francesco monico

Dear Yasminer,
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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