Category: Androids & Artificial Life

  • Blade Runner 2049: Android Liberation Between Old and New Informatic Power

    Blade Runner 2049 is a brilliant sequel to the original Blade Runner. Thirty years after the events of the narrative of the first film, the police discover evidence of the secret that Rachael, who was a replicant or android, became pregnant and gave birth in a “natural” fertility process to a child. Rachael died while…

  • Towards a Unified Existential Science of Humans and Androids, by Alan N. Shapiro

    I just returned from Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria. This is a comment about the talk about androids given by Hiroshi Ishiguro during the “Science & Art I” conference at the Lentos Kunstmuseum during THE BIG PICTURE symposium. Professor Ishiguro’s talk was very interesting and enjoyable. However, I think that he makes one important conceptual mistake…

  • The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti

    Gianna Maria Gatti’s book The Technological Herbarium (subtitled: “Vegetable Nature and New Technologies in Art Between the Second and Third Millennia”) is a study of “interdisciplinary” works of art that exemplify the increasing importance of science and technology in artistic creation. Her analysis, however, goes beyond that of a journalistic or curatorial survey of artworks.…

  • Data and Baudrillard, by Franco La Polla

    Data and Baudrillard by Franco La Polla translated from the Italian by Alan N. Shapiro This is a translation of one chapter of Franco La Polla’s book Star Trek: Foto di Gruppo con Astronave (Bologna: Editrice Punto Zero, 1996; pp.106-113). La Polla, a distinguished Professor of the History of North American Culture at the University…

  • The Answer to the Question of Artificial Life

    co-author: Alexis Clancy Artificial Life is an emerging movement within computer science which has as its goal to make software that is more “alive” rather than mechanistic. This goal is similar to our goal. However, Artificial Life has overlooked something very important and obvious. It has overlooked that “vitality” already exists in knowledge fields and…