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ISSN 2309-0103 www.archidoct.net
Vol. 7 (2) / February 2020
Introduction: new models of (e)co-existence Human, non-human and meta-natural perspectives
Disruptive developments in biotechnology, synthetic biology and computing technology have led to new possibilities to engage and manipulate life in order to demystify the mytholo- gized conception of nature, according to which we can refer to nature only if relating to its primitive “untouched” status.
The design and construction of new biological entities dramat- ically challenge the common understanding of the “natural”. For this reason, we can identify biotechnology as a “third na- ture”, in which life forms are crossed and sometimes genetical- ly manipulated to create new, synthetic and augmented ones.
The “next nature”, as Van Mensvoor labels it, may also be not entirely “green”, because it underlies the intersection with anthropic agents and because it leads to the creation of new synthetic meta-life forms. For this reason, many researchers in media art, science, design, biopolitics and material feminism are currently trying to disentangle some very often misun- derstood and mistakenly linked notions such as naturaleness, aliveness and greenness. For instance, the recent “Un/Green” conference and exhibition at the Latvian National Museum of Art, held last july 2019, aimed to provide a cross-disciplinary platform for discussions and artistic interventions exploring the paradoxical and fetishistic employment of the concept of “green” - symbolically associated with the “natural” – often used in order to metaphorically hyper-compensate its inher- ent ambiguity between alleged naturalness and artificiality1 .
With all the pros and cons, the convergence of bio-technolog- ical dimensions is increasingly strong and some applications may constitute possible and feasible scenarios of experimen- tation for a new ecological co-existence between different species and between man and post-natural elements.
Bioart is one of the first artistic movements assuming this con- vergence as key point for its investigation. In this paper we will try to upack the core of some bioartistic experimentations in order to understood how art, through bio-information, bio- technologies and interactivity, can actually work as interface to trigger a dialogue between environment, technology, hu- man and non-human beings.
At the same time, we will focus on multiple reflections about how a meta-natural perspective could led to serious implica- tions also in the architectural realm. The interest 2 in nature
1. See “Un/Green: Natural- ly Artificial Intelligences” homepage: http://ungreen. rixc.org/ and “RIXC Festival 2019, The 4th Open Fields Conference on Art-Science Research” homepage: http:// festival2019.rixc.org/, last ac- cessed 2019/09/11
2. Abondano D. (2015) “Tran- sition towards a digital ar- chitecture: new conceptions on materiality and nature” in Moras A., Voyatzaki M. (eds) archi-DOCT vol. 2(2)/ Febru- ary 2015: 29-42.
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Architecture in a Petri dish: co-programming Meta-Life in design through biointegration and synthetic biology.
Selenia Marinelli