The Tympanic Eclipse (www.tympaniceclipse.org)

How do different fields try to get at the nitty gritty of what living systems require in order to fit the definition of “alive”? How have researchers from the areas of artificial life and synthetic biology assumed certain ontologies of life, or, ways of being that life must adhere to, in their research programs? What is top down versus bottom up creation of life? What are protocells? What on earth are emergent properties? And how do these questions depend on if the world a closed or open-ended system? Tune into this episode to find out about some compelling musings on these questions.

Dr. Mark Bedau a professor of Philosophy at Reed College in Portland Oregon as well as the editor of the Journal of Artificial Life.

He is also the:

Co-Founder of the European Center for Living Technology (ECLT)

Partner in the EU-funded Programmable Artificial Cell Evolution (PACE) program

Co-organizer of the Eleventh International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems (Artificial Life XI)

Visiting Professor, Ph.D. Program in Life Sciences: Foundations and Ethics, European School of Molecular Medicine

Rebecca Wilbanks is a PhD candidate in the program on Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University. Originally trained as a biologist, she is now interested in the connections between science and literature, synthetic biology, origins of life research, evolutionary biology, systems theories, post-colonial studies, and 20th century literature.

What do you get when you bring biologists, artists, philosophers and filmmakers out into the Canadian Rocky Mountains on a 2 week research-creation summit? Why, Bioartcamp of course! Created by Dr. Jennifer Willet, the accomplished bioartist and director of Incubator Hybrid Laboratory, working at the intersection of art, science, and ecology, Bioartcamp was an adventurous expedition in art making and social research that took place at the Banff Centre in Alberta, as well as in tents, made for bioart, out in the mountain range at Castle Mountain hostel.

But first, I realize, you might not know what bioart is. In this episode you’ll start to uncover this discipline, hear from many of the people who attended Bioartcamp, as well as learn about some of the sticky situations within the field regarding its definition, practice, and motives.

More on Bioartcamp can be found in this description from its website:

“BioARTCAMP is a two-week residency program at The Banff Centre directed by Dr. Jennifer Willet from The University of Windsor, Canada. BioARTCAMP is a hybrid workshop / conference / performance event where 20 national and international artists, scientists, filmmakers, and university students will work for two weeks to build a portable biology laboratory in Banff National Park. BioARTCAMP will serve as a “field research station” housing a functional biological sciences lab and a variety of art/science projects. BioARTCAMP will open its doors to the general public for a one day “art/science fair” with food, music, and activities for all ages. BioARTCAMP will conclude at The Banff Centre with a two-day conference.

BioARTCAMP is designed to emphasize ecological metaphors for describing biotechnology in public discourse, and to complicate the ‘Great Divide’ between lab and field based research methodologies in the hard sciences. BioARTCAMP will deploy humour and DIY techniques for reimagining biotechnology against the backdrop of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and motifs of back country exploration, mountain ecologies, and the wild west. BioARTCAMP serves the demystification and democratization of biotechnology – within the context of larger ecological considerations with full attention to health and Safety considerations and respect for the delicate ecology of Banff National Park.”

What is capital M Modern science? How have humans cooked it up? What is cybernetics? And how are they different?

Dr. Andy Pickering ties together western traditions of binary thinking with modern science and discusses them in comparison with cybernetics and its complimentary, pluralistic eastern philosophies that he argues allow for a more true account of what the world is really like. Cybernetics reveals the world as it changes through time rather than fits it to a formula that humans make for it, which Andy explains has political implications that defy concepts like imperialism and scientific determinism. It’s kinda like the counter culture of science, where Modern science is the mainstream.

A longer version of this episode aired on RADEQ radio in London, July 21, 2012.

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Andrew Pickering is internationally known as a leader in the field of science and technology studies. Pickering has held fellowships at MIT, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Princeton University, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and, most recently, Institutes for Advanced Study at the Universities of Durham and Konstanz. He teaches now at the University of Exeter.

He has written on topics as diverse as post-World War II particle physics; mathematics, science and industry in the 19th-century; and science, technology and warfare in and since WWII. His most recent work has focussed on the history of cybernetics in Britain, and his latest book, ‘The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future’ was published in 2010. The book analyses cybernetics as a distinctive form of life spanning brain science, psychiatry, robotics, the theory of complex systems, management, politics, the arts, education, spirituality and the 1960s counterculture, and argues that cybernetics offers a promising alternative to currently hegemonic cultural formations.

Our university departments are becoming increasingly interdisciplinary where people from different backgrounds come together to keep each other in check while tackling large issues that have a lot at stake. One place this is happening is in synthetic biology, where computer scientists, engineers, biologists, ethicists, sociologists and artists “hold hands” in the lab as they develop new approaches to genetic engineering. Dr. Hilary Rose gets real on the promise of interdisciplinarity, and explains her concerns about what she thinks might be the dulling of criticality through such endeavours. Somehow, amazingly, she also manages to touch on feminism, the radical science movement, and Occupy!

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Dr. Hilary Rose is a prominent British feminist of sociology of science and social policy. Currently she is Visiting Research Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, Professor Emeritus of Social Policy at the University of Bradford and Professor Emeritus of Physick, Gresham College, London. In 1997 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Uppsala for her contribution to the feminist sociology of science and in 2001 her book Love Power and Knowledge: Towards a feminist transformation of the sciences was listed one of the “101 Best Books of the 20th Century” (Mulheres Seculo XX 101 Livros) published by the Portuguese Ministry of Culture.

Smart phones, smart boards, smart homes…. every technology is apparently so darn smart, but how are we keeping up with these gadgets ourselves? Smart technologies are referred to as such because they seem intelligent enough to know about our personal needs, desires, and curiosities and they cater their computational functions to better serve us as individuals. They know us through the data we generate about our lives and appetites, but of course, that means they’re left with a database of info on us, the tasty consumer, to sell to hungry corporations.

Dr. Sarah Kember explains what this looks like today with the emergence of the smart home, where ubiquitous computing is rebranded as ambient intelligence, and sold as an invisible but necessary part of domestic life for the future.

There is some crazy mic hissing in parts of this piece!

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Dr. Sarah Kember is a writer and academic. Her work incorporates new media, photography and feminist cultural approaches to science and technology. She is a Professor in New Technologies of Communication at Goldsmiths, University of London. Kember has recently published her first novel, The Optical Effects of Lightning (Wild Wolf Publishing, 2011) having previously written a short story ‘The Mysterious Case of Mr Charles D. Levy’ (Ether Books, 2010) which was a number two bestseller for Ether Books in the summer of 2010. In the same year, Kember also published an experimental piece called ‘Media, Mars and Metamorphosis’ (Culture Machine, Vol. 11) which she is currently developing as a film and transmedia project with a former student on her MA Digital Media (Sebastian Melo). Kember has recently edited an open access electronic book entitled Astrobiology and the Search for Life on Mars (Open Humanities Press, 2011) which includes the full text of all of Percival Lowell’s writing on Mars as well as H.G. Well’s The War of the Worlds. Kember has co-authored a monograph (with Joanna Zylinska) entitled Life After New Media: Mediation as a Vital Process (MIT Press, forthcoming) which is based on a course she teaches to undergraduates and postgraduates at Goldsmiths. Previous publications include: Virtual Anxiety. Photography, New Technologies and Subjectivity (Manchester University Press, 1998); Cyberfeminism and Artificial Life (Routledge, 2003) and the co-edited volume Inventive Life. Towards the New Vitalism (Sage, 2006).

What would the future be like if there were governmentally appointed people alive today who worked to protect the basic qualities of life for people who have not yet been born? Should the not-yet-existent people of the world be represented across time? Could a group of Guardians of the Future help to reverse some of our dire and dystopian practices that hurt the Earth and its people in the process? Britt digs into the idea on a visit to Norwich, England, where she meets the philosopher and Green Party politician who thought up the idea, Dr. Rupert Read.

Find the report that inspired this episode, Guardians of the Future, at http://www.greenhousethinktank.org/files/greenhouse/home/Guardians_inside_final.pdf, and leave your comments on what you think about this idea. Does it sound utterly naive? Or perhaps at least a bit more just?

A longer version of this episode aired on RADEQ radio in London, July 14, 2012.

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Dr. Rupert Read is an academic and a Green Party politician in England. He is currently Chair of the Green House think tank, East of England Green Part Co-ordinator and a Reader in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia.In his regular appearances in the local and national press, he speaks on sustainable transport, green economics and social justice.