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218 Colloquium Presentations T H E A E S T H E T I C S O F T E C H N O L O G I C A L A R T ogy. This revelation of new aspects of humanness and human sensibility represents an extension of one of the great projects of modernity: the alteration of the human. Human programming has replaced the social and political engagements of the artists of earlier avant-gardes. The automaton and the clone are two extremes in an enterprise that has inspired artists to fashion amazing creations—some promising and some disturbing. The Totemic Function of Art In electronic and digital museums, artists have found other sources of inspiration that have taken art into uncharted territory. Human reprogramming, the great challenge of the media arts, posits an attempt to remodel biological, psychological and sociological material. It is no longer as it was in the past—a matter of conquering spaces and having power over the environment but, more modestly, of learning to live on the one planet we have, a no less challenging task. References and Notes 1. Fred Forest is a French artist who was involved in sociological art in the early 1970s. He is one of the pioneers of network art in France and wrote an extensive text on what he called “the aesthetic of communication” in “Manifeste pour une Esthétique de la communication” (1985). In 1995, Forest said he would rather talk about the aesthetic of relationships, focusing on putting people together rather than on the apparatus of communication . Forest was interviewed on Les arts branchés (TV Ontario, TÉLUQ et UQAM, 1995). 2. Roy Ascott developed this new definition of the role of the artist in Roy Ascott, “Back to Nature 11,” Kulture und Technik im 21 Jahrhundert (Dusseldorf: Wissenschaftszentrum Nordrhein-Wesfalen); published in French in Esthétique des arts médiatiques, Vol. 2 (Ste-Foy: PUQ, 1995) pp. 437–452. 3. Michael Serres is a French philosopher of sciences who developed a systemic approach to cultural and political phenomena. Serres is the intellectual director of the Les Treilles Foundation. I am quoting from an interview conducted by Stephane Bureau for the series Tête chercheuse for Radio-Québec. 4. The work of Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz are discussed in Gene Youngblood, “The Electronic Café,” Esthétique des arts médiatiques, Vol. 1 (Ste-Foy: PUQ, 1995) pp. 385–409; and in Richard Loveless, ed., The Simulated Presence: A Critical Response to Electronic Imaging (Institute for Studies in the Arts, Arizona State Univ., 1993). 5. Philippe Perrot is a Swiss sociologist who worked on the effects of society and technology on women’s bodies, mainly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. See Philippe Perrot, Le Travail des apparences (Paris: Seuil, 1984). BIOTELEMATICS Eduardo Kac, Art and Technology Department , School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 112 S. Michigan Avenue, Room 414, Chicago, IL 60603, U.S.A. Email : . Teleporting an Unknown State (Fig. 1), my biotelematic installation, creates the experience of the Internet as a life-supporting system. I coined the term “biotelematics” to designate situations in which a biological process is intrinsically connected to computer-based telecommunications work. This piece has been presented twice so far: first, at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans (4 August–9 August 1996), linking the gallery to the Internet via live videoconferencing as part of “The Bridge,” the SIGGRAPH ’96 Art Show [1], and as a solo exhibition at Kibla Multimedia CenFig . 1. Eduardo Kac, Teleporting an Unknown State, Web-based installation, 1998. This picture shows the 9-image grid that formed the Web interface of the piece. When participants clicked on an image, light from the sky over Vancouver; Chicago; Cabo San Lucas, Mexico; Paris; Mawson Station, Antarctica; Moscow, Tokyo; and Sydney, Australia, was captured by Webcams at the remote sites and was projected onto a plant in a dark room in Slovenia. In this piece, photosynthesis depended on collective Web agency and responsibility. Colloquium Presentations 219 T H E A E S T H E T I C S O F T E C H N O L O G I C A...

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