Leonardo
Life as We Know It and/or Life as It Could Be: Epistemology and the Ontology/Ontogeny of
Artificial Life
Author(s): Edward A. Shanken
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Leonardo, Vol. 31, No. 5, Sixth Annual New York Digital Salon (1998), pp. 383-388
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1576602 .
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artificial
Life as We
and/or Life
Artificial
art
Know It
as
It Could Be
Epistemologyand
of
life
the
Ontology/Ontogeny
Life
EdwardA. Shanken
Abstract
Artificiallife researchersassert that theirworkcan
offerinsightinto "lifeas it could be." Theauthor
suggests that it can also shed lighton "lifeas we
knowit." A complexseries of decisionsand
presumptionsprecedes the selection of a given artificial entityas lifelike.Forthe artist, the processes of
selection and representationbringinto questionwhat
has been characterizedby sculptorMichaelGreyas
"therelationshipbetweenontologyand ontogeny,"or
the interconnectednessof being and its formal
embodiment.Theworkof biologistsHumbertoMaturanaand FranciscoVarelasuggest that these two
aspects of life are inseparablecomponentsof
deterautopoiesisand are, moreover,environmentally
minedand determining.If this is the case, then artificial life is notjust a productof researchbut is
structurallycoupledwithothernaturaland artificial
life formsas partof a dynamicautopoieticsystem.
responses," Feyerabend concludes that universal explanations of
nature-in-itselfappear dubious. He proposes that science, which
tends to search for unequivocal, unambiguous answers, could
benefit from the arts, whose subtle understandingand appreciation of paradox and absurdity might complement what he calls
the " 'objective' artifact nature"[2].
Implicit in the comments above is the idea that science is a
hermeneutic rather than teleological endeavor. Artificial life, as
the conjunction of biology and computational science, is likewise
an interpretive discipline, one which-due to the domain of its
inquiry and the nature and extent of its claims-raises many
gnarly epistemological and ontological questions. For what is
accepted as constitutive of life has great bearing on the understanding and experience of being.
Santa Fe Institute researcher Christopher Langton's definitions of artificiallife assert that a-life research can not only offer
insight into life-as-we-know-it but can also afford a glimpse into
life-as-it-could-be [3]. I more than completely agree with Langton. For with regard to the understandingof life-as-we-know-it,
I am concerned not just with his scientific goal of expanding
Natureas described
by oursaentistsis indeedan artifactbuiltin collabora- insight into the physical, chemical, and biological qualities of life,
tionwitha Beingsufficentlycomplexto mockand,perhaps,punishmateri- but with the ways a-life research pushes the boundaries of metato themin a crudely
materialistic
alistsby responding
way.
physics, and in so doing reveals insights into contemporary sys-Paul Feyerabend,Natureas a WorkofArt [1] tems of value. A critical analysis of artificial life research
programs may reveal as much about the epistemological and
ontological biases of a particularculturalmoment as the research
itself does about the morphogenesis of prospective organisms.
eyerabend's point is not that materialists are dim-witted and Nor are the two mutually exclusive, for combining these two
circular and get what they deserve, but that any given scientific levels of insight might create a self-reinforcing system of knowlexplanation will be partial at best. It will function well in certain edge. In other words, a richer understanding of the constraints
domains and poorly in others-where alternative, perhaps of current scientific and artistic methodologies affords more
incommensurable explanations, will do the trick. As a result, he
likens the artwork of science to the constructions of Kurt
Schwitters, such as the German artist's 1925 "merzbild"Mertbau,
Edward Shanken, Dept. of Art & Art History, Box 90764,
which the philosopher characterizes as an ad-hoc cobbling
Duke University, Durham, NC 27708-0764, U.S.A.
together of found objects in an amorphous structure. Noting
Email: [email protected]
that when "approachedin different ways Nature gives different
? 1998 Edward A. Shanken, received 1 February 1998
LEONARDO, Vol. 31, No. 5, pp. 383-388, 1998 383
Cyberneticart of this generationgrows
more intelligent and sensitive, the
Greekobsessionwith "living"sculpture
willtake on an undreamedreality.[5]
reasoned visions of the future, and these
visions enable a subtler understanding of
current constraints, and so on.
who along with Langton, Ray, and Sims
also participated in that same Ars Electronica conference, understands Brooks'
robots as continuous with his own artwork
FromPygmalion
to
and would readilyembrace them as art [8].
ArtificialLife
A quarter century later, we may be in Ray, to his credit, collaborateswith artists
As a segue into grappling with these a better position to reflect on what has and has drawn parallels between art and
ideas in the realm of art, Jack Burnham's actually come to pass with regard to this evolution, noting in particular Sims'
BeyondModem Sculptureof 1968 offers a prospective account of the future of art researchon aesthetic selection [9].
useful history of the human infatuation and its relationship to artificial forms of
I raise these questions rhetorically,for
with the creation of lifelike forms from life and intelligence. Do the works of there are no simple answers. And the
nonliving matter [4]. The art historian contemporary scientists and artists exper- ramifications, more than the answers
begins a chapter entitled "Sculpture and imenting with artificial life possess the themselves, are of primary importance. I
Automata" with Ovid's myth of Pyg- "undreamed reality" Burnham imagined? shall address these issues by first examinmalion and works his way through the In Ovid's words, to what degree do ing what I call the ontology of artificial
clockwork mechanisms of the Middle these latter-day Galateas "redden at the life and then discussing the relationship
Ages and the Renaissance to the now leg- kiss" or "return a kiss unripe"? Will they of ontogeny and ontology in the work of
endary automata that Jacques Vaucanson prove to be "an embarrassment"for our artist-inventor Michael Grey. Finally, I
time, as art histori- shall inquire into the implications of conPoSt: 76o
i.
an BarbaraStafford temporary narratives of artificial life, in
claims Vaucanson's order to suggest what that might tell us
"sleight-of-hand in about the epistemological and ontological
ru?
671
a
the name of exper- state of our own culture and future.
70 ?. 76 ) .,24.
!
iment...[was] to the
"II'll l
OX01
. 7801
_______
4w4nt
s 84
01
TheShoe/FlyFallacy
Age of Reason"
What I mean by the ontology of artifi[6]? In what ways
are the a-life images cial life is its quality and status of being.
77
le22 7
6i1
7&,,,
and artworks of Strong a-life positions, such as those held
Karl Sims, Michael by Langton and Ray, claim that artificial
Grey, or Ken Rinal- life research either already does, or is
do compellingly
capable of, creating entities that are really
I
I
lifelike? What of alive, in the sense that they self-replicate
the famous a-life
and evolve in an open-ended manner [lo].
models like Thomas Elliot Sober's Shoe/Fly Fallacy offers a
Ray's "Tierra"(Fig. critical perspective that reveals the poten1.
A
screen
shot
of
the
MacTierra
artificial
life
which
Fig.
1; see Color Plate tially faulty logic of this position:
program,
runs on a Macintoshcomputer.Originally,Tierrawas conceived and B)
and
Craig
writtenby a-life researcherTom Ray;MacTierra(the Macintosh
Flies are alive.
Reynolds' "Boids"
or Rodney Brooks'
Flies are describedby law L.
implementationof Tierra)was programmedby Simon Fraser.
Shoes
are describedby law L.
massively parallel,
created in the 18th century. These precur- situated-AI robots? [7] What, if anything
Hence,shoes are alive.
sors set the stage for a section on "The (beside funding) is the difference
Sober's point is not that it is impossiSociology of Modern Automata" and a between artificial life research done by
later discussion of the fascination with artists and that done by scientists? In ble for artificial life forms to be synthemachines and automata shared by artists this regard, it is interesting to note that sized, but that the method of creating
before World War II, including
Brooks, whose scientific research at them by virtue of their correspondence
Archipenko, Oskar Schlemmer, and Mar- MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab has con- with the laws that describe acknowledged
cel Duchamp. Burnham concluded his sistently been funded by the US military, living entities is not a sufficient criterion
book with the following prophecy:
for judging their vitality, but rather perparticipated in the Ars Electronica
Genetic Art-Artificial Life symposium mits for "an overly liberal conception of
In retrospect, we may look upon the
in 1993. But he recognizes little in com- life" [11].
mon between his work and art. In conIn response to philosophers like Sober,
long traditionof figure sculpture and
the brief interludeof formalismas an
an
artist
who
in
a-life
researchers like Langton and Ray
teaches
trast, Rinaldo,
extended psychic dress rehearsalfor
the science and mathematics department argue that restricting the definition of
the intelligent automata.... As the
at Columbia College in Chicago, and "life itself' to carbon-chain phenomena
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EdwardA. Shanken,Life as We Know It and/or Life as It Could Be
on Earth-a sample size of one-results
in an overly conservative conception of
life, a form of cosmic "parochialism"(to
use Ray's term). They take issue with the
notion of "life itself' and posit the possibility of a pluralism of life phenomena
developing along different evolutionary
chains, what might be called "life themselves" [12]. They claim that their studies
on artificial life expand understanding of
how life might come into being and
evolve in extraterrestrialconditions (life as
it could be) not limited to the characteristics of life particular to the environment
of the fourth rock from the sun (life as
we know it.). Ray has recently stated that
he prefers to avoid the semantic question
"Is it alive?" Instead, he is more concerned with the degree to which an artificial system manifests a "'genuine' instance
of some property that is a signature of
living systems (e.g., self-replication,evolution, flocking, consciousness)" [13].
The working method of artificial life
research,in contrast to that of the life sciences, is also a source of ontological confusion that is emblematized in the field's
self-proclaimed and semanticallyimprecise
title. In general, science has historically
taken understanding natural phenomena
as its goal. To do so it develops propositional theories and undertakes experiments to determine the extent to which
nature corresponds to those theories. So,
for example, biology takes expanding the
understanding of life as the general goal
of its inquiry.
Research on artificiallife proceeds in a
somewhat different fashion. A-life begins
with pre-existing explanations of life and
complex systems from biology and mathematics and seeks to reproduce variations
on those themes. While it may claim to
seek an expanded understandingof life, it
does not perform experiments on living
matter, but rather on theories about life.
This is a crucial distinction. For it follows
then that Ray's Tierra experiment, for
example, takes expanding understanding
of evolutionary biology-and
not, it
be
life
the
itself-as
might
argued,
subject
of its inquiry.In this sense, artificiallife is
a misnomer because the phenomena
being reproduced and studied are not life
phenomena, but scientific theories [14].
In terms of the Shoe/Fly Fallacy,a-life
takes as its base material neither shoes
nor flies, but law L. This reveals an inherent circularity of a-life: take a biological
theory or law L, model it on a computer,
and lo and behold, behavior resembling
that of biological organisms described by
law L emerges. It's a neat trick; however,
it's not necessarily life that is emulated,
but biological theory. A more accurate
appellation for artificial life might be
"synthetic biology," a term used by Ray
and others, though of course, that's not
quite as catchy [15].
Similarly, artists who utilize artificial
life in their work are not creating life but
are creating art that either is informed by,
emulates, or amounts to visual models of
biological theory. Now, I'm not saying
this is a good or a bad thing. Nor do I
believe that it denigrates the accomplishments of artificial life research to understand its product as synthetic biology
rather than life itself. To draw an artistic
parallel, while Burnham criticized the
vitalist sculpture of Jean Arp and Henry
Moore for what he interpreted as its
inevitably doomed dreams, he nonetheless
attributed great value to the work itself;
not as the abstract embodiment of the
essence of life, but as an aestheticallyand
metaphoricallyrich artistic statement [16].
Similarly there may be potentially great
value in art that utilizes artificiallife; but
again, such value cannot be attributed to
the life it purports to embody. My point
is that it is important to be clear-headed
about what artificiallife research does and
does not do, and not to be confused by
ontological misconceptions and misleading terminology.
There is another troubling matter that
has to do with the difference between art
and life. Feyerabend asserts that Nature is
an artifact built by science, but he also
claims that there is such a thing as
"Nature as [it] is in and for [it]self" [17].
With regard to art, however, there is
arguably no such a thing as "Art as it is
in and for itself." What then is the difference between the scientific claim that artificial life forms are alive and the aesthetic
claim that artificiallife forms are art? To
what extent is life a semantic construction, the meaning of which-like art-is
subject to negotiation and reformulation?
TheProduction
of Meaning
Such questions surround the work of
Michael Grey. A complex and self-conscious series of presumptions, decisions,
calculations, and fine-tunings precedes his
creation and identification of a lifelike
artificial entity and its representation in
visual form, as in Jelly Cycle(1994; Fig. 2;
see Color Plate B) [18]. For the artist,
the processes of selection and representation bring into question what he has characterized as "the relationship between
'
Fig.2. A detailof MichaelGrey'sJelly Cycle
(1991-92), a neuralnetworkanimationin
56 cells on eight mixed media panels (8 ft.
x 11 in. each) with Mylar,wax, and
Plexiglas.(Photo:Stephen White;courtesy
of LissonGallery,London)
ontogeny and ontology" or the interconnectedness of the emergence of life and
theories of being [19]. In his research on
artificiallife, he has questioned the transit
between the mathematical codes that
function metaphorically as the genetic
blueprintsfor the formal orderingof digital
information, and the perceptual codes of
observation that enable the interpretation
of the emergent artificial life forms as
scientificallyand/or aestheticallyrelevant.
Grey is especially interested in the
epistemological threshold that attends the
process of recognition; for of the literally
millions of possible morphogenetic chains
that he and his collaborator, Randolph
Huff, produced on a supercomputer from
EdwardA. Shanken,Life as We Know It and/or Life as It Could Be 385
uct of the confluence of a computational cepts and the people who developed
process (which generates the simulated them are structurallycoupled with all the
morphogenesis of forms) and an interpre- other fields and concepts and people who
tive process (which ascribes meaning and developed them- together, as part of a
significance to them from the perspective dynamic system, like the interwoven parts
of a human observer). Are they alive? No. of Schwitters'MerZbau.
Do they emulate biological organisms?
Because of the complex cultural
No. Do they emulate biological theories? valences that surround life, were I to
Yes. Do they question the relationship believe that I, or Thomas Ray, had actualbetween the science of biology, the cre- ly created life in a computer, I might
ation of artistic form, and the systems of think of myself, my human community,
meaning and significance that constitute and our relationship to the cosmos somethose fields of endeavor?Most definitely.
what differently than I actually do, given
my current belief that what has actually
been created is a graphic representation
TheProgenyof A-Life
In The Treeof Knowledge,
developmental of biological theory. I am not changed in
Humberto
Maturana
and Fran- the ways that I imagine Ray and Langton
biologists
cisco Varela suggest that the interconnect- are. But that does not mean I am
edness of being and its formal unchanged, for my understanding of life,
embodiment are inseparable components biology, knowledge, and being has been
of autopoiesis-the
necessary, integral altered by the metaphoricalresonance and
unity of living forms-and are, moreover, cultural mythology of artificial life
both environmentally determined and research [21]. Regardless of the ontological status one grants a-life, one is changed
determining [20]. Such close interrelationto
the
obtain
from
the
cellular
and changing as a result of one's encounships
In
can
ters with and considerations of it. It is,
life
social level.
this light, artificial
predatorialmanner, conversely, only living be seen not as an autonomous product of perhaps, part of Burnham's "psychic dress
forms would have need not to. Note that research, but as "structurally coupled" rehearsal"for things to come.
both cases reveal a prejudice for inten- with other natural and artificiallife-forms
While it may sound far-fetched, the
of artificialand natural
and
the
of
a
as
a
interconnectedness
of
tionality
life;
dynamic autopoietic system.
perpetuation
part
prejudice which, though it has much to It follows then that the artistic process of forms of life may extend beyond the
recommend it from the human perspec- visualizing and contextualizing artificial metaphysicaltransformationof conscioustive, is not, a priori, either a necessary or life forms can play a critical role in deter- ness and affect the development of physidesirable thing. Again, what must be mining not just the qualities of life-as-it- cal matter as well. Applying Rupert
emphasized here is that a-life confronts could-be but those of life-as-we-know-it. Sheldrake'stheory of causative formation
observers with a fundamentallyhermeneu- In other words, regardless of the extent to the project of artificial life suggests
tic problem-one that demands particular to which one believes a-life is alive, there that once an artificiallife-form comes into
caution-for the embeddedness of human is a field of scientific and artistic inquiry being in a certain configuration,it is more
perception and interpretation in limited that has brought the concept of artificial likely that, through the principle of morsystems of knowledge makes observers life into being; that has, in Feyerabend's phic resonance, the same conuration will
terms, contributed to the "'objective' arti- recur in the future [22]. While Sheldrake
prone to falling for the Shoe/Fly Fallacy.
the
are
aesthetic
Grey's jellyfish
prod- fact nature." And those fields and con- claims that morphic resonance is most
algorithmic models they specified, no
more than a few bear an apparently
uncanny resemblance to known forms of
life. But here I must place emphasis on
the words "apparently uncanny resemblance," for what is at issue is fundamentally a question of epistemology and
hermeneutics, of the systems of knowledge that form the basis for the interpretation of an emergent form or behavior
as similar or related to a known one, and
that enable the logical transference of
qualities of the latter to the former. If, for
example, Grey's algorithms model the
gestation and maturation of a jellyfish,
then the mysteries of phenotypic development from the genome appear to unravel
before our very eyes. Similarly, if Karl
Sims' algorithms for his Evolved Virtual
Creatures
(Fig. 3; see Color Plate A) act in
a predatorialmanner, then those artificially generated forms can be seen to behave
like forms of life, for apparentlyonly living organisms have need for such intentional, survivalistbehavior. But while only
living forms would have need to act in a
Fig.3. KarlSims, EvolvedVirtualCreatures,artificiallifeforms, 1994. Herethe creaturesare competingfor possession of a cube.
(Courtesyof KarlSims, ?1994)
386
Edward A. Shanken, Life as We Know It and/or
Life as It Could Be
potent within a species, he also claims the
same principle is at work at the quantum
level. Thus, certain aspects of causative
formation may influence development
between species, and perhaps between
natural and artificial forms of life. The
artist who gives rise to new forms of artificial life may, by morphic resonance,
influence the development of other artifi-
evolving open-endedly through a process
akin to naturalselection.
While I am skeptical of the epistemological and ontological claims of strong
artificial life positions, I nonetheless
believe that ultimately forms of life will
be able to be synthesized from nonliving
matter in the lab and studio. Indeed, if
replicable, the purported cloning of sheep
and monkeys from living genetic material
cial and natural life-forms [23].
The artificial creation of autonomous is a major step in that direction. If, as
communities that successfully self-repro- Christopher Langton suggests, it is preduce evolving entities, and the success of sumptuous to restrict life to carbon-chain
bottom-up, massively parallel situated phenomena on Earth; if life is, as Thomas
robotics in producing intelligent behavior, Ray has claimed, the inevitable, computalend credibility to materialist explanations tional result of the formal organization of
of life and intelligence. One can see these matter; if moreover, as Stuart Kauffman
developments, and the parallel ontological has proposed, the likelihood of its incishifts, as part of a continuum of increas- dence is much more common than previingly materialistic explanations of nature ously believed [26]; then the privileging of
between the 17th and 20th centuries, organic life as more or less unique and
from Descartes to Julien Offray De La precious, to say nothing of divine, needs
Mettrie and from Darwin to Watson and to be reconsidered. Bruno Latour has
Crick, or as part of an even larger shift argued that the rights commonly reserved
from ancient, religious creationism to sec- for humans may have to be extended to
ular, evolutionary functionalism.
nonhumans-including
technologyGerman anatomist Ernst Haeckel's because our inextricably mutual codependictum that "ontogeny recapitulates phy- dence defies the possibility of coherently
logeny" (that fetal, or ontogenetic, devel- asserting the autonomy of either as a disopment recapitulates phylogenetic stages crete entity [27]. As for artificialforms of
of human evolution) has been restated in life and intelligence, one can imagine that
a work of art by Ken Rinaldo as Technologythe life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of such entities may be protected by
Recapitulates Phylogeny (see p. 372) [24]. I
suggest further that ontology recapitulates virtue of their birthright as citizens. Scitechnology. Indeed, we not only make ence fiction or constitutional law, artificial
machines in our own image, but make life breeds strange bedfellows indeed!
ourselves-psychically and metaphysically-in the image of our machines. At the Acknowledgments
risk of oversimplification,Renaissance and
This essay was first publishedon the Web in
Leonardo
Electronic
Almanac6, No. 2 (March1998)
world
views
were
Enlightenment
deeply at
mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/CURspiritual: human beings and machines RENT/lea 6-2new.html. An earlierversion was
alike were seen as continuous with the presented at the College Art Association Annual
divine. In contrast, the world view of arti- Conference,New York, 13 February1997 as part
of the panel "The Artificial Life Class," Roy
ficial life is comparatively materialistic:
Ascott, chair. It is dedicated to the memory of
human beings and machines alike are seen my grandfather,Aaron EdwardFishman,M.D., a
as so much matter and energy of varying man who createdand nurturedlife. I am indebted
to BarbaraHerrnstein Smith, whose many condegrees of organizational complexity. As versations with me on matters ontological and
Margaret Boden, Simon Penny, and oth- epistemologicalhave greatlyinfluencedmy thinkers have noted, it calls for the familiar ing on real and artificiallife.
postmodern evacuation of epistemological
andNotes
absolutism [25]. Enlightenment claims of References
1.
Paul
"Nature as a Work of Art,"
Feyerabend,
transcendent values of truth, beauty, and
in Common
1, No. 3, 8 (1992).All further
Knowledge
the good must be replaced by values that citationsof
Feyerabendrefer to this article.
emerge artificially, organizing themselves 2. While Feyerabend[1] rightlyoffers the proviso
autopoietically from the bottom up, that science is no monolith, and that as a result
his discussion is circumspect, his assertion on
behalf of the contributionartists could make in
the creation of the "'objective'artifactnature"is
troublingfor it either fails to recognize the fields
of science dedicatedto understandingparadox,or
implies that their contributions are somehow
severely limited by the educationaland/or other
institutionalconstraintsimposed on scientists as
opposed to artists.At the same time, there is reason in the position that the trainingand practice
of individualsin highly specializeddisciplinesdoes
create practitioners and fields of differential
expertise;that while, for example, scientists can
think creativelyand lawyers scientifically,training
in particlephysics could no more prepareone to
defend an allegedmurdererin court than training
in capitallaw would prepareone to split atomsthough each area of training might conceivably
offer insightsinto the other.
3. ChristopherLangton,"ArtificialLife," in MargaretA. Boden (ed.), ThePhilosophy
ofArtficialLife
(Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress, 1996)pp. 39-94.
ModemSculpture:
TheEffects
4. JackBurnham,Beyond
andTechnology
ontheSculpture
ofScience
of ThisCentury,
1st Ed. (New York:George Braziller,1968).
5. See Burnham[4] 376. Note that in the second
and third printings of BeyondModernSculpture
the text was revised. See also Joe Davis,
"Microvenus,"in Ellen K. Levy with Berta M.
Sichel, eds., Art Journal55, No. 1, 70 (Spring
1996).I am gratefulfor Davis'sassistancein helping
me to clearup this discrepencybetweenprintings.
6. BarbaraMariaStafford,ArtfulScience:
EnlightenmentEntertainment
andtheEclipseof VisualEducation
(Cambridge,MA: MIT Press, 1994) pp. 194-95.
According to Stafford,the makeshiftmetabolism
of Vaucanson'sDuck (ca. 1733-34) was intended
to prove Hecquet'shydraulicmodel of the digestive system. Fifty years later, after the maker's
death, it was revealedto be a hoax because seeds
actuallyonly entered the breathingtube and not
the stomach. The degree to which this was an
embarrassment to the Age of Reason is, of
course, a matterof interpretation.
7. See Thomas S. Ray, "An Approachto the Synthesis of Life,"in MargaretA. Boden, ed., ThePhilosophy
ofArffticalLife (Oxford:Oxford University
Press, 1996) pp. 111-45; CraigReynolds,"Flocks,
Herds, and Schools: A Distributed Behavioral
Model,"in Computer
21, 25-34; RodneyA.
Graphics
Brooks, "IntelligenceWithout Reason,"in ProceedonArtifiingsof the 1991International
Joint Conference
cial Intelligence,
pp. 569-95; and Brooks and Lynn
Andrea Stein, "Building Brains for Bodies," in
Autonomous
Robots1 (1994),pp 7-25.
8. Author's interviewswith Brooks (April 1996)
and Rinaldo(September1996).
9. See the Web sites www.hip.atr.co.jp/-ray/
pubs/art/art.html and www.hip.atr.co.jp/-ray/
pubs/fatm/node9.html. Ray has also collaborated
with artists Christa Sommerer and Laurent
Mignonneau on A-Volve, on the Web at
www.ntticc.or. jp/preactivities/gallery/avolve/explan_v_e.html.
lo. See Langton [3] and Ray [7].
11. Elliot Sober, "Learningfrom Functionalism:
Prospects for StrongArtificialLife," in Boden [8]
p. 372.
12. The term "life themselves"is my own.
EdwardA. Shanken,Life as We Know It and/or Life as It Could Be 387
13. See Tom Ray, "Recognizing Life," on the
Web at www.hip.atr.co.jp/-ray/pubs/zen/
node2.html.
26. StuartKauffman,TheOriginsof Order:SelfOrgain Evolution(Oxford: Oxford
nigationand Selection
TheTreeof Knowledge:
TheBiological
Rootsof Human UniversityPress, 1993).
14. Accordingto Simon Fraser,a Santa Fe Insti- Understanding
(Boston: Shambala Publications, 27. Bruno Latour,"On TechnicalMediation:Phitute postdoctoralfellow who developed MacTier- 1992).
Knowllosophy, Sociology,Genealogy,"in Common
No. 2, 29-64.
ra, a Macintoshimplementationof Ray's artificial 21. For more on this
3,
edge
see
N.
Katherine
topic,
life program(originallywrittenfor the DOS operHayles, "Narrativesof ArtificialLife," in George
the
"Tierra
aims
to
evolutionstudy
ating system),
Robertson,MelindaMash, Lisa Tickner,Jon Bird,
ary process by the instantiationof evolution in BarryCurtis,and Tim Putnam,eds., FutureNatural:
anotherform, namelyin an ecosystemof interactNature, Science,Culture(New York: Routledge, Edward Shanken
is an art historian
ing and competingmachine code programsliving 1996) pp. 146-64.
in the Tierraenvironment,which emulatesa masteaching at Duke University. A 1998-99
22. See Rupert Sheldrake,A New Science
of Life: Luce/American Council of Learned Socisivelyparallelcomputer."
The Hypothesisof FormativeCausation(London:
15. More on synthetic biology can be found on Blond & Briggs, 1981). Sheldrake's theory of
eties fellow, his current research is on
the Web at www.hip.atr.co/jp/-ray/pubs/zen/
causativeformation by morphic resonance is by American art and
in the
technology
nodel.html.
no means widely accepted, so my own theorizaon
Burnham's
1970
Jack
16. Burnham[4] pp. 49-109.
tion based on his ideas is admittedlyhighly specu- 196os, focusing
He
is
Is
exhibition,
"Software."
lative.
editing
17. Feyerabend[1] p. 7. I have taken the liberty
of neuteringthe philosopher'spoetic genderingof 23. See Roy Ascott, "NatureII: TelematicCulture ThereLove in the TelematicEmbrace?: Theories
"Natureas she is in and of herself-and this lady, and Artificial Life," Convergence
1, No. 1, 22-30
of Art, Technologyand Consciousnessby Roy
we shallnever know..."
(Spring1995).
Ascott (forthcoming in 1999 from Uni18. See Michael Joaquin Grey, "Jelly Lovers: 24. I am indebted to Ken Rinaldo'sartworkTechof California Press). Recent publiDreams of Causality,"in Art Journal55, No. 1, nologyRecapitulates
Phylogeny
(1993) and his discus- versity
of
with
and
sion
his
reference
to
for
collaborated
artist
cations include "From Drips to ZOOBs:
it, including
Haeckel,
36. Grey
computer
programmerRandolph Huff on the creation of my thinkingon these matters.See pp. 371-376 in The
of Artist/Inventor
Cosmology
the algorithms for these and other works. Jelly this issue.
Michael Grey" in ArtByte (Vol. 1, No. 3)
Cycleis on the Web at www.aec.at/prix/1994/
25. See MargaretBoden's introductionto ThePhigrafik94/94gn-jelly.jpeg.
Oxford
University and "The House that Jack Built: Jack
losophy
ofArtifcialLife (Oxford:
19. For an excellent and in-depth discussion Press, 1996) pp. 1-31, and Simon Penny, "The Burnham's Concept of 'Software' as
of these and related matters, see Susan Oyama, Darwin Machine:ArtificialLife and Art," on the
a Metaphor for Art," forthcoming
in
The Ontogenyof Information:
Systems Web at www-art.cfa.cmu.edu/www-penny/texts/
Developmental
ConsciousnessReframedII.
and Evolution(New York: CambridgeUniversity Darwin Machine .html.
3 88
Press, 1985).
20. Humberto Maturanaand Francisco Varela,
EdwardA. Shanken,Life as We Know It and/or Life as It Could Be