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Poetter Hall was purchased by the SCAD founders in March 1979. Classes began in September of that year.  
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Class in the Spotlight

Science, art, technology crux of art history class



By Monique Bos
Published: Friday, February 16, 2007
 
The intersection of science and art via technology provides the starting point for a special topics course conceived and developed by Edward Shanken, Ph.D., an art history professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Shanken’s course, Cybernetics, Telematics and the Posthuman in Art and Culture, engages recent explorations of life, reality and interactivity by artists, scientists and those who cross between the disciplines.

Shanken usually begins class sessions with a lecture, in which he incorporates quotes from philosophers, artists and scientists, as well as images and explanations of artistic and scientific models that illustrate the concepts he is discussing. Then he leads students in a conversation about specific artists whose images and videos students have posted to the course’s Web site, located through MySCAD. The students share information about each piece and how it fits within the context of their readings, lectures and discussions.

The focus of class Feb. 12 was on artificial life. Shanken began his lecture by responding to a student’s question about the distinction between artificial intelligence and Alife, as it’s often called.

“A.I. attempts to replicate human intelligence, whereas Alife attempts to emulate he behavior of organic life systems,” he explained. “Alife may or may not be intelligent.”

At the root of the debate about Alife is the question of how life is defined. Shanken explained that in his lecture, titled “Life as We Know It and/or Life as It Could Be: The Ontology/Ontogeny of Artificial Life,” he would argue that life hasn’t been artificially replicated but that the attempts serve a more metaphorical function.

Although the title of Shanken’s talk may sound intimidating, he defined the terms clearly: epistemology speaks to “ways of knowing,” ontology to “ways of being” and ontogeny to “ways of coming into being.” He discussed an idea posited by researcher Christopher Landon at the Santa Fe Institute that Alife could shed insight into life as it could be, as well as life as it is.

“Alife research reveals epistemological and cultural biases,” Shanken said. “However, the two elements — a critical analysis of biases of the cultural moment and morphogenesis [becoming] of biological organisms — are not mutually exclusive.”

He tied these concepts into Jack Burnham’s book “Beyond Modern Sculpture,” which examines how sculpture uses non-living matter to replicate the human form. He showed images and video of projects by Karl Sims, Tom Ray, Scott Draves, Michael Joaquin Grey and Rodney Brooks, among others, to illustrate ways both artists and scientists have used technology to engage the idea of what life is. He also talked about whether and how art- and science-based research differs and how it connects, likening the results to a collage “cobbled together” from disparate pieces to form a cohesive whole. For example, Ray is a zoologist who collaborated with artists and computer scientists to produce his “Tierra” series. In his “Jellyfish” series, Grey used algorithms to generate numerous forms using 36 cells and identified some as resembling jellyfish.

Shanken returned to the question of how life can be defined and measured.

“How is Alife living or not living?” he asked. “How do we determine the quality and status of being?”

Possible criteria include the abilities to replicate and evolve, but Shanken pointed out that philosopher Elliot Sober argues that these qualities haven’t been proven to belong only to living beings. Others, however, believe current definitions of life are too restrictive and that “life themselves” might be a more fitting, comprehensive term than “life itself.”

“Alife research claims to seek an expanded understanding of life,” Shanken said. “The experiments are conducted not on life but on theories about life … Are [Alife forms] alive? Do they emulate biological organisms? Do they emulate biological theories? What do they say about the underlying epistemological theories of the world?”

He talked about the need to discover what’s at stake in this research and possible ramifications — such as the formation of “robots’ rights” groups.

His own conclusion, he said, is that “Artificial results are informed by and emulate life, but aren’t life itself.”

After the break, Shanken showed work posted online by students, such as “Life Writer” and “Nano-Scape 1” by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, Jane Prophet’s “Technosphere” and “Staining Space,” and Sims’ “Panspermia.”

Starting at the end of February, students also will prepare PowerPoint presentations about the research they’re conducting for their final papers. How they incorporate feedback from Shanken and their peers will be part of the final grade, he said.

The interrelationship between technology and art has long been an interest of Shanken’s. He wrote his dissertation about “Art in the Information Age: Cybernetics, Software, Telematics, and the Conceptual Contributions of Art and Technology to Art History and Aesthetic Theory.” After receiving his Ph.D. from Duke University, he served as executive director of their information science and information studies program before joining the SCAD art history department in 2004.

 

 
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