Alan N. Shapiro, Hypermodernism, Hyperreality, Posthumanism

Blog and project archive about media theory, science fiction theory, and creative coding

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On the trail of Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Žižek in the American Desert

June 30th, 2011 in the categories: Jean Baudrillard, Slavoj Žižek

In Baudrillard’s "America", the secret heart of reversibility is captured in the imaginary of the desert. The desert is The Other America, the quintessential strange attractor, the counterpoint to the system.
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General Patton Memorial Museum

June 30th, 2011 in the categories: Museum of the Future, War & Peace

I felt that the General Patton Memorial Museum, and especially the "Ed Hastey Military Vehicle Park" next to it, has some elements embodying the basic principle of the "Museum of the Future" as I conceive it.
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Authentic Existence in Heidegger’s “Being and Time”

June 23rd, 2011 in the categories: Martin Heidegger

In his essay on "Being and Time", my nephew James Shapiro argues (among other things) that Heidegger gives little content to or explanation of what he means by authentic being. My own reading of "Being and Time" is that Heidegger does indeed explain a lot what he means by authentic being or existence.
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On Heidegger’s “Being and Time”, by James Shapiro

June 23rd, 2011 in the categories: Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger’s "Being and Time" is a work primarily concerned with the explication and understanding of the specific brand of existence and consciousness that is unique to man—or perhaps stated more succinctly, what it means to be a human being. This unique human existence Heidegger calls Dasein.
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Where am I? In The Village

June 18th, 2011 in the categories: New American Studies, The Prisoner

In Phoenix, we ate dinner at an instance of The Village Inn restaurant chain. The interior décor, the atmosphere, and the "language semiotics" (the signs, the typography) of The Village Inn reminded me of one of my favorite TV shows of all time: "The Prisoner", starring and co-created by Patrick McGoohan.
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Pietro Mussini: A habitat of an interlocked nature, by Franco Torriani

June 18th, 2011 in the categories: The Illusion Beyond Art

How far can an artistic practice really produce, and place in a given space and time, place-unrelated objects (in respect to a given place), it’s an underlaying matter that enlivens most of Pietro Mussini’s creative path.
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From the Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Giardino Cablato (Cabled Garden) by Pietro Mussini (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

June 18th, 2011 in the categories: The Technological Herbarium

The digital images of flowers, fields, and gardens created by Pietro Mussini do not constitute the work in itself, but rather a moment of passage, useful for re-elaborating nature, studying forms and expressive combinations of nature's sounds and colors, constructing graphically what will be concretized in sculpture.
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Cactus League Baseball: San Francisco Giants vs. Oakland Athletics

June 10th, 2011 in the categories: Baseball

It was early March on planet Earth. In any of the other places where I have hung out during my apparently long yet in fact rather brief life so far as coder and Richard Daystrom wannabe – Frankfurt, Berlin, New York, Boston, Ithaca, Bologna, Zurich – it would be freezing cold in the middle of winter.
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Eduardo Kac: Living Works, by Claudio Cravero

June 3rd, 2011 in the categories: Arts & Genomics, The Illusion Beyond Art

The first exhibition in Italy dedicated to the controversial figure of Eduardo Kac (Rio de Janeiro, 1962; he lives in Chicago). His research explores the frontiers between man, animal and robot, culminating in Transgenic Art, through which living beings become a single entity with the technological.