Shifter Magazine 16 special issue on Pluripotential.
Edited by Sreshta Rit Premnath & Warren Neidich
Contributors: Éric Alliez , Bernard Andrieu, Eric Anglès , Kader Attia, Elena Bajo, Lindsay Benedict , Nicholas Chase, Seth Cluett , Zoe Crosher , Krysten Cunningham, Yevgeniy Fiks , Dan Levenson, Antje Majewski , T. Kelly Mason, Michele Masucci , Daniel Miller, Seth Nehil , Warren Neidich, Susanne Neubauer, Hans Ulrich Obrist , Chloe Piene, Sreshta Rit Premnath, Linda Quinlan, Patricia Reed , Silva Reichwein, Barry Schwabsky, Gemma Sharpe, Amy Sillman , Francesco Spampinato, Tyler Stallings, Laura Stein, Clarissa Tossin , Brindalyn Webster , Lee Welch , Olav Westphalen …
The development of new biology(1) has opened up new possibilities for the question of what defines the nature of humanity(2) and the risk of biopower,(3)
to explore and develop endogenous capacities of the body. With the discovery of embryonic pluripotent stem cells, nanotech(4) and prosthesis
the old definition of the mechanical body was no longer sufficient for describing the plasticity and the reconfiguration of body agency. By body agency, we not only mean a human enhancement(5), but also the activation of the pluripotential body through its biotechnological performance. The matter of the body is the result, as Judith Butler has noted, of …
Part 1.
“…The most extensive modification to take place in human brain evolution – the disproportionate expansion of the cerebral cortex, and specifically of the prefrontal cortex – reflects the evolutionary adaptation to this intensive working memory processing demand imposed by symbol learning. So the very nature of symbolic reference, and its unusual cognitive demands when compared to non-symbolic forms of reference, is a selection force working on those neurological resources most critical to supporting it. In the context of a society heavily dependent on symbol use-as is any conceivable human society, but no nonhuman societies-brains would have been under intense selection to adapt to …
October 31 & November 1, 2008
Delft School of Design: TU Delft
Organized by Deborah Hauptmann and Warren Neidich
Download Conference Outline as PDF (636 kb)
Yann M. Boutang, Charles Wolfe, John Proveti, Keller Easterling, Markus Miessen, Bruce Wexler, Scott Kelso, Jordan Crandall, Andreas Angelidakis, Abdul – Karim Mustapha
The aim of the TRANS_THINKING THE CITY series is to bring together experts and scholars in both the sciences and the humanities to discuss issues of relevance to current architecture and urban practices; issues effecting our cities, polis, ethos, communities. Trans_Thinking is a term employed to indicate a new mode of intellectual activity, …
Good morning everyone, I would like to welcome you to Goldsmith’s College and our conference on Neuroaesthetics. This conference is the last of four conferences held here since January, the others being ‘A Phantom Limb Phenomena: Its Aesthetic, Cultural and Philosophical Implications’, ‘Creative Evolution’, and ‘Creativity and Cognition’. This conference looks at the new and emerging field of Neuroaesthetics—what it is, what it is doing and where it is going. In my opinion, artists have always been implicitly interested in vision, audition, movement, language, perception, cognition, consciousness and now sampling, plasticity, and synchronicity. …
Plasticity is a very broad notion and to explain how plasticity helps us to understand certain aspects of brain function I’m going to briefly discuss with you some clinical examples.
To begin, however, I would like to illustrate how the ways in which a normal individual perceives, understands and remembers the world can become radically altered. In his book “Touching the Rock”, John Hull, an Australian living in England, described how after he became blind in middle age he lost the ability to visualize those with whom he had daily contact, such as members of his family or friends and acquaintances he met after he …
“The impossibility of producing a synthetic image of the city is also connected with the fact that today the perception range of urban spatial quality is much wider. Today we compose different individual perceptual experiences within homogeneous bands: veritable editing’s of perceptual sequences. And these bands even more than single static images, are the elements that construct our identity as erratic citizens of the urbanized territory.”
– Stefano Boeri “Two Paradoxes about Multitude”
Culture is part of an open autopoetic system of heterogeneous relational flows made up of evolving sociologic, psychological, historic, spiritual and economic conditions that define and delineate it in specific temporal and …
“I awoke to consciousness in a hospital-tent. I got hold of my own identity in a moment or two, and was suddenly aware of a sharp cramp in my left leg. I tried to get at it to rub it with my single arm, but, finding myself too weak, hailed an attendant. “Just rub my left calf,” said I, “if you please.”
Calf?” said he. “You ain’t none. It’s took off.”
“I know better,” said I. “I have pain in both legs.”
“Wall, I never!” said he. “You ain’t got nary leg.”
As I did not believe him, he threw off the covers, and, to …