Bioart, art that uses either living materials (such as bacteria or
transgenic organisms) or more traditional materials to comment on,
or even transform, biotechnological practice, now receives enormous
media attention. Yet despite this attention, bioart is frequently
misunderstood. Bioart and the Vitality of Media is the first
comprehensive theoretical account of the art form, situating it in
the contexts of art history, laboratory practice, and media
theory.--Mitchell begins by sketching a brief history of bioart in
the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, describing the artistic,
scientific, and social preconditions that made it conceptually and
technologically possible. He illustrates how bioartists employ
technologies and practices from the medical and life sciences in an
effort to transform relationships among science, medicine,
corporate interests, and the public. By illustrating the ways in
which bioart links a biological understanding of media-that is,
"media" understood as the elements of an environment that
facilitate the growth and development of living entities-with
communicational media, Bioart and the Vitality of Media
demonstrates how art and biotechnology together change our
conceptions and practices of mediation. Reading bioart through a
range of resources-from Immanuel Kant's discussion of disgust to
Gilles Deleuze's theory of affect to Gilbert Simondon's concept of
"individuation"-provides readers with a new theoretical approach
for understanding bioart and its relationships to both new media
and scientific institutions.--Bioart and the Vitality of Media is a
precise and rigorous exploration of the conceptual underpinnings of
an art form that has at times been both troubling and
controversial. It will appeal to art historians, artists, media
theorists, and readers interested in new media, the cultural study
of biology, and the philosophy of technology.--Robert Mitchell is
associate professor English at Duke University. He is the author,
with Catherine Waldby, of Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs, and Cell
Lines in Late Capitalism and, with Phillip Thurtle, Data Made
Flesh: Embodying Information and Semiotic Flesh: Information and
the Human Body.--"A sustained meditation on bioart as an art
practice that stitches together concepts of life and concepts of
affect, concepts of vitalism, and concepts of mediation." -Eugene
Thacker, author of After Life--"Well-written, lucid, unpretentious,
and admirably concise in format and presentation, this book is an
original and innovative contribution to the fields of comparative
media studies and science and culture studies." -Cary Wolfe, Rice
University-
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