Nature, Technology and Art: The Emergence of a New Relationship?
Author(s): Ursula Huws
Source: Leonardo, Vol. 33, No. 1 (2000), pp. 33-40
Published by: The MIT Press
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GENERALARTICLE

Technology
Nature,of a New
Emergence

and

The

Art:

Relationship?
ABSTRACT

Ursula Huws

T
history of the human conception of nature
in Western thought is a problematic and shifting one. We cantrace the notion of the natural as a separate "other,"counterposed to the human subject, back to Plato's Phaedrus,
but this "otherness"has taken a number of different forms. In
the earlyJudeo-Christian tradition, for instance, nature is a

Fig. 1. Photograph taken in a London garden, 1997. "Biophilia" isthe word used by biologist Edward 0. Wilson to describe humanaesthetic appreciation of the behavior of the animate earth, muchof which derives from its unpredictability within known parameters. While the habit of any individual plant may be well known,
for instance, the appearance of each leaf, and its relationship tothe ambient environment is a continual source of surprise.
(? Ursula Huws, 1997)

source of evil and original sin,
while in the scientific conception
it becomes a prey to be hunted
and subdued-even raped, if necessary-a view perhaps articulated most clearly in the seventeenth century by Francis Bacon,
who explained his experimental
method in the following terms:

Thethree-way
relationshipbetweenandnature,technology
thehumanhasbeena
subject
andshifting
oneintheproblematicofWestern
artandthought.
history
Inthisarticle,
theauthor
beginsbythishistory,summarizing
pointing
totheinadequacy
ofmosttheoreticalaccounts
inthefaceofthe
oftheinterpenetration
growing"natural"rebythe"technological"
fromsuchdevelopments
assultingandartificial
geneticengineering
Theauthor
goesonto
intelligence.
bearguethattheconvergence
tweenscientificindevelopments
thefieldofartificial
lifeandthe
artmovement
emergent
pointstothedevelopment
ofa newunderofthisrelationshipanda
standing
newrolefortheartist.

You have but to hound nature in
her wanderings and you will beable when you like to lead and drive her to the same placeagain. Neither ought a man to make scruple of entering andpenetrating those holes and corners when the inquisition oftruth is his whole object [1].
The self-conscious
human pleasure in "nature" is often
traced back by historians to the eighteenth century. Commentators may point to the careful reconstruction of asymmetrical wildness in the country gardens designed for English
landed gentlemen by Capability Brown, or to the fashion
among Marie Antoinette's courtiers for acting out the parts ofshepherds and shepherdesses in contrived rural surroundings. Later, the romantic movement, as exemplified in the
poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge, or the paintings ofG6ricault and Delacroix, sought out and celebrated both thehaphazard charms of the uncultivated countryside and thesavage dramas of the elements in full fury. It became fashionable to admire not the tamed, gentle landscapes of tended
garden and farmland but the windswept openness of mountain and ocean, the vicarious dangers of storms and torrents.
In place of a Tudor knot garden we find a turbulent Turnerseascape; instead of a Stuart lap dog, a snarling panther devouring its prey.
It is possible to interpret this romantic construction of nature as a product of and reaction to industrialization: the transformation of the natural world into a spectacle or "picnic" fora population living in a highly commodified urban society inwhich the satisfaction of daily needs no longer depends on
wrestling food, shelter and warmth directly from a hostile environment; a society in which all contact with the natural is me-

Ursula Huws (writer, researcher, photographer). Analytica, Social and Economic Research, Ltd., 46 Fertower Road, London N5 2JH, United Kingdom. E-mail:<analytica@dial.pipex.com>. Web: <http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/analytica>.
Editor'sNote:For moreworksrelatedto artificial life (A-Life),see Knneth Rinaldo, ed., Special
Section 'Artificial Life Art," in Leonardo 31, No. 5 Sixth Annual New YorkDigital Salon special issue (1998) pp. 370-407.

O 2000 ISASTLEONARDO,

Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 33-40,

2000

33

Fig. 2. The never-quite-repeated patterns made by the imprints of these sea-birds' footprints in sand on a Portuguese beach are evidence of a source of visual interest that parallels that to be gained from some works of emergent art. (? Ursula Huws)

diated through multiple layers of technology and an elaborate and specialized
division of labor that permits few individuals to comprehend more than a fraction of any given process. In this conception, nature becomes an escape, anidealized space away from the world ofmachine-made artifacts that constitutethe daily environment of work, home,consumption and urban leisure.
More recently, technology has evenentered the body itself, in the form ofprocessed food, manufactured drugs,
plastic surgery, genetic engineering,chemical contraception and sexual responses conditioned by the lens of massmarket pornography. In a worldview inwhich the "technological" is counterposed to the "natural,"this aligns the self
ever more closely to the former and sets
it in opposition to the latter. No longer
the raw material of life, nature has become a site of non-activity or leisure, anegative, a signifier of the absence ofhuman intervention, or simply an extra
category in the vast and ever-expanding
range into which commodities can beclassified. Thus, we might buy "natural"
remedies in a health food store, choose
food to which only "natural"flavors andcolors have been added, use "natural"
methods of birth control, ask our hairdressers to give us a "natural look" or
buy cosmetics made with only "natural"
ingredients.
In the postmodernist vision (or atleastJean Baudrillard's version of it) all
reality has become simulation, and thenatural is reduced to a single-albeit
in social disheavily loaded-symbol

34

HzIws,Nature, Technology and Art

course, to be manipulated and replicated like any other symbol. This viewhas a neatness and plausibility that is attractive to anyone trying to make senseof human consciousness under the conditions of advanced capitalism. Indeed,
it appears to break down the crude
mind/body dualism implicit both in theFig. 3. The fountainby Richard Huws
(1902-1980) for the1951 Festival of
Britain formed thecentral feature ofthe "Sea and Ships"
Pavilion. Partly inspired by the sightand sound of waves
crashing on the
shore in his native
Anglesey, he designed its curving
steel buckets so thatthey would empty at
differing intervals,
producing a patternthat, he calculated,t:.

wouldnot repeat itself exactlyfor atleast a million
years. (? Richard
Huws Estate, 1951.

Courtesyof Ursula
Huws.)^.

romantic artistic notion of nature "outthere" as an escape and in the scientificnotion of nature as raw material for experiment. Yet this view also poses problems: the human subject it assumes is
one whose entire existence is produced
and reproduced within the interplay of
discourses, a person whose every dimension is socially determined. It thus tries
to resolve the contradictory relationshipbetween the cultural and the biologicalby writing the latter out of the picture
altogether and denying any place for thematerial reality of the body as an entity
made up of perishable, living tissue,
formed of the same cellular material asother living beings, and hence itself apart of "nature."
There is a second objection to thismodel, more directly relevant to a discussion of art and technology. This arises
from an examination of the evidence
produced by anthropology and of the
products of other cultures that suggeststhat it is dangerously simplistic to regard
the "natural"as just another artifact oringredient in our specific cultural vocabulary.I use the word "nature"here in
the neo-phenomenological sense-ultimately derived from Heidegger [2]-in
which it is employed by David Abrams toindicate "the animate earth" or the "lifeof the land" [3], in other words, those
aspects of the environment that are perceived by most people in Western cultures as "alive"or subject to non-humanforces, to be studied by means of the biological and meteorological sciences.
Using this definition, we find that
there is hardly a society known to literature that does not express some aesthetic appreciation of the natural. The
evidence for this can be found in a variety of forms, including folksongs, stories, myths, rituals and the design anddecoration of everyday and ceremonial
objects. The evidence is there in the nostalgic laments of the exile for the beauties of the landscapes of home; in thecomparisons made when enumerating
the attractions of the loved one in songs

main a moot, and variable, point. Only asolipsist could deny, however, that there;. Fig.4. Norman
is overwhelming evidence that some joy?i .f~''White, Menage,~::
in the contemplation of the natural is1974. Mfenageproone of the most constant elements inducessurprisingly
behuman experience, as expressed acrosscomplexgrouphaviorby relatively
most of the range of cultural forms that
simplemeans.It
have come to be regarded as "art."
consistsof four roWhile the particular aspects of the natubots with attached
ral singled out for special attention or
spotlightscrawlingbackand forth along admiration vary widely across cultures,some elements of aesthetic appreciation
separateceilingtracks,and a fifth
seem evident both when natural phestationaryroboton
nomena are represented descriptively or
the floor.Eachof
symbolically and when they are used as
the five machines~
metaphors for human attributes.
has a rotatingan~~~Because of the limitations of the metenna-like scanner,~-~Rjy~:,designedto point to- dia available, most of the visual represenwardanystronglight tations of nature available to us are4,!~:?,~i~i~:::.:,~.
: source. Ceiling rostatic. We might think of the delicate silbots thereforetendhouettes of trees, birds and prancing
to lock into eachdeer in Persian miniatures; the solemn,i others'gazesuntil
theirnon-responsive hieratic profiles of clan animals on Native American totem poles; the misted
track-motors
pullthemapart.The
mountains in the backgrounds of earlyfloor robotscans
Renaissance Italian paintings; a whirlingverticallyas well as
carp or spray of cherry blossom on ahorizontally andscroll; or even the leaping
Japanesegraphsits own
horses in the Lascaux cave paintings-all
movementsas it
tracksthe ceilingro- share a quality of a moment frozen inbots. (? Norman
time, however grandly and expertly thisWhite, 1974. Photo:
may have been synthesized to produce
MichaelMitchell.)the effect that we can only describe, inadequately, as "timeless" or "classical."Even when it adorns an object that isoriginal intention of their producers
handled every day, the "natural"thus apcan ever be deduced by a viewer looking
through the lens of another culture.
pears in a separate, framed-off space, set
a little apart from the dynamic flows of
Whether or not such representations
are even to be regarded as "art"must re- life around it. Indeed, in some concepFig. 5. Norman White, Splish Splash Two, 1975. Commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for the foyer of its Vancouver headquarters, Splish Splash Twouses hardwired electronic circuitry to trigger randomly initiated "ripples" of light, designed tosimulate the effect of falling raindrops on a pool. (? Norman White, 1975)

or poems of loss and courtship; in pae-ans of praise to gods or invocations tospirits; or in representations of animals
and plants on pottery,jewelry or fabrics.
The interpretation of these representations is, of course, culturally specific andit would be naive to suggest that any
pleasure derived from their contemplation in one context is directly comparable with that which would be experienced in another, or indeed that the

Huws, Nature, Technology and Art

35the next. The very evanescence of theevent forms part of the attraction. This
Fig. 6. Norman
White, HelplessRophenomenon, christened "biophilia" bybot,begun in 1987,
biologist Edward 0. Wilson, has been
still being refined
discussed in relation to the selective
and developed. This
breeding of ornamental plants bywork comes closer
George Gessert, who concludes thatthan any of White's"one of the great unacknowledgedother work to date toforces of domestication today may be
the concerns of the": :~=
6artificial life comhunger for diverse uselessness [4]."Whether we can describe a tank of.i;::;:.::::
munity. This is aspeaking robot that::.ifish or a pot of geraniums or eventropicalcan only be moved
a window looking out over a spectacularby human assistance.
"view"as "art"is a debatable point. Whata parody of emo|...Inisundeniable is that these are a source oftiltionally manipulative
ituSE
aesthetic pleasure and interest to a greato .humans inbehavior, it
senses the presence
many people, perhaps many more than.
.
of a person and beever gain enjoyment from the contemplarogins by pleading potion of the officially canonized works onlitely for help.
surely:;tsi
display in art galleries.
Having enlisted aid,::etwee..
A more interesting question, perhaps,
it senses howiswhetherart (that is, formal art, as pracit
isbeingroughly
handled and reticed by people whom society labels as
sponds to consider"artists")can ever satisfy this hunger forateness by becoming
diverse uselessness, generating the sorts
progressivelyruderof satisfaction produced by the observaand more demandtion of nature not as static image but as
ing. (@ Norman
White,1990)
process (Fig. 2); whether, in other words,
it is possible to represent, comment
upon or simulate nature in an artistic
form not as likeness but as behavior.
Twentieth-century art has produced
occasional and sporadic experimentsthat might be interpreted as attempts todo this. The mobiles of Alexandertions of art this quality of timelessness
ited at will or even to cultivate a sort ofand unchangeability is precisely what connoisseurship of their delights. How
Calder recreate the visual interest and
as
art.
In
it
its
character
birds
in
we
else
can
explain keeping
John
gives
pleasure derived from observing the inKeats's classic formulation of the roman- cages or fish in tanks, or the many elaboterplay of natural shapes in motion, suchtic aesthetic, for instance, the conclusion rations of gardening, both indoors and as seaweed swirling in a rock pool, a butthat "Beautyis truth, truth beauty"in the out, that most cultures have developed? terfly investigating a flowering shrub or
Ode on a Grecian Urn derives precisely
Part of the joy of such spectacles is gulls wheeling in a current of air. The
from the freeze-frame nature of the for- surely the tension afforded to the viewer self-destructing "meta-machines"of Jeanever unconsummated terra-cotta image between the expected and the unexTinguely could be interpreted as artisticthat will remain perfect even "when old pected. One can know the characteristic analogies of dramatic natural events
such as storms or tidal waves. The water
age shall this generation waste." Change form of development of a particularover time (except that resulting from the plant, for instance, or the characteristic sculptures of my late father, Richard
aging of the materials from which it is pattern of movement of a particular spe- Huws, in which curved buckets of differmade) is explicitly precluded from this cies of fish, or butterfly, but one can ent sizes and forms emptied their concharacterization of art, and it is from this never anticipate quite how any giventents with a crash, were designed to emutime
that
a
work
of
outsideitselfwill
flowerleaf
orlate the never-quite-repeatingpatterns ofagainstarrangequality being
derives its poignancy.
its neighbor (Fig. 1), or precisely what waves breaking on the shore (Fig. 3). It
However, if we move beyond the me- direction any given movement will take. could be argued that the medium of
dia narrowly defined as "art"in Western One may well know the cuteness of a kit- film, and later video, also added a dyculture, we can find evidence of the ten, and it is perhaps its very familiarity namic dimension to visual art. However,natural being enjoyed aesthetically, not that endears one to the sight of it. Yet films and videos (reproducible comjust as a frozen, visual image but in an- the chief charm of watching a litter of modities as they are) offer closed, reother way:for how it behaves. There are, kittens at play is the unpredictability of peatable experiences. While they have afor instance, the simple pleasures of their interactions with each other and beginning, a middle and an end, andwatching the movement of clouds across their environment. In other words, one movement and progression take placea sky, the play of ripples in water or the derives a great part of the pleasure not within them, they are nevertheless "outmovement of wind in leaves. There are from capturing a passing moment in side time" in the sense that each showing
some near-eternal form but, on the con- is identical to the last. The director's viexamples from many societies of people
going to some lengths to contrive situa- trary, from the continuing surprise of sion remains frozen, printed permations in which such pleasures can be vis- watching how each moment evolves into nently on celluloid or magnetic tape for
li -'

1-

*

...

....

36

Huws, Nature, Technology and Art

as long as the medium survives. In aslightly different way, the "landscape architecture" or "nature sculptures" of artists like Christo, Richard Long, Andy
Goldsworthy and Carl-Erik Stromm entail a sense of interaction between art
and nature, and of process as a characteristic of both. The work of art placed ina "natural"outdoor setting, outside therarefied space of the gallery, takes its
place alongside and within natural processes and may be constructed of ephemeral materials that weather and decay as
do leaves or twigs (if indeed the works
are not actually made of these materials). Ironically, though, the means bywhich audiences usually become awareof such works are precisely those the artists appear to be trying to subvert: still
photographs in exhibitions or books, or
documentary films.
If we except the forms of art that involve live human performance (among
which I would include music and muchconceptual art), it is only recently, with
the introduction of information technologies, that it has become possible toenvisage forms of art that make it possible to explore or model the way "nature" behaves (as opposed to how it
looks) in any depth. Perhaps the mostpromising vehicle for such exploration
has been the coming together of thenexus of technologies currently known
as "artificiallife" (or AL) with the movement that is beginning to be called"emergent art" [5].
Fig. 7. Doug Back, detail of Sticks,1979. Sticksproduces patterns that appear to mimic animate
The relationship between computers behavior with an extraordinaryeconomy of means. The work consists of a series of identicaland art has in the past been sadly domi- stepper motors, each with a horizontal stick attached to the shaft, arranged so that the sticks cannated by graphics. Seduced by the ability bump into each other as they spin. Each collision produces an automatic reversal of the directionof ever more powerful and memory-rich of spin, producing the illusion that each stick is "learning"to avoid its neighbors. Back discovered this characteristicof two-phasestepper motors by accident when, in a spirit of experimentamachines to store ever more densely
tion, he attached a motor that he thought was broken to a source of alternating (instead ofpacked concentrations of pixels, com- direct) current. (? Doug Back, 1979)
puter designers and artists have become
obsessed with reproducing on thescreen the sorts of images, both still andA small and largely neglected group wired electronics to more complex softmoving, that could previously be con- of artists have chosen to use computers ware-driven works. These pieces are
structed only on canvas, paper, celluloid not just to imitate brush or camera, but closer to robots than to paintings or vidor magnetic tape by hours of painstak- to model or set in motion patterns of eos, making use of sensors and motors
behavior that, by analogy or mimicry, to move around in and respond to theiring work or laborious special effects.
However, none of these admittedly dra- can parallel those found in the natural environments, including interacting
matic effects exploits the unique at- world and give rise to the responses of with human spectators and, very often,
tributes of the computer. Just as early surprise, insight, amusement or delight with each other. Eduardo Kac has traced
the origins of this approach to a small
photographers strove for recognition as that are triggered by observing otherartists by aping the look of the conven- (non-human) forms of life.
group of artists who began experimenttional salon paintings of the period, andThe starting point for such work has ing with robotics in the 1960s, including
early films mimicked the theater, so not been so much the computer's ability Nam June Paik and Shuya Abe, Tomthese computer artists can be seen as to produce dramatic visual effects on a Shannon and Edward Ihnatowicz [6].
While there are isolated individuals
copying the externals of older forms of screen as its ability to process nonvisual art. To the extent that "nature" graphical information. We can detect an (for example, Simon Penny at the
makes an appearance at all in such evolutionary chain running from me- Carnegie-Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh)work, it does so in its traditional role, chanical engineering (as in Tinguely's working at the interface between art anddepicted descriptively and passively, as a Heath Robinson-esque machines, set in robotics in several parts of the world, a
motion by gears and pulleys) via hard- major center of this new movement ispoint of reference or as metaphor.

Huws, Nature, Technology and Art

37since the 1960s. White is described by
Kac as "the first artist to have consistently championed robotics as an art
form throughout the years" [7].
Although produced without computers, some of White's early electronic
works already demonstrated his interest

Canada. The Toronto-based Artist Robot
Group has about 40 members, most ofwhom have links with the Ontario College of Art and Design, many of them as
students of Norman White, who has
been exploring the artistic potential ofelectronics and computing technologies

Fig. 8. David Rokeby, Giver of Names, first exhibited in 1997 but still under development.
Giver of Names consists of a computer that "grabs" as an image any object proffered to it
and visibly performs many levels of image-processing (including outline analysis, division
into separate objects or parts, color and texture analysis) while uttering an audible commentary through a voice synthesizer. The results of these analytical processes are then "radiated" through a metaphorically linked associative database in order to select anappropriate phrase or sentence, which is finally "spoken" by the computer. The original(1997) database consisted of all Rokeby's own writings over a 12-year period and, in his
words, "used this landscape of word usage as a terrain to wander. The work generated sentences that I might have written, often absurd, often very funny, sometimes startlingly
wise. It was a sort of self-portrait." (? David Rokeby, 1999):.?iLPIi' t6k

'!"t
'
s.~
J[..7~~~ 1~K~'~~~~ .,~-----~ ~ 1+-

~

11WUW

38

Huw.s,Nature, Technologw and Art~~B)~~p~~a'r lA Ti
rin producing unpredictable behavior
analogous to natural processes. His 1974
Mbnage (Fig. 4) (built in homage to thebrain researcher W. Grey Walter, whopioneered the artificial modeling of organic behavior) consists of five robots,
which both emit and respond to lightand respond to each other with complex
and unpredictable movement. The 1975
Splish Splash Two (Fig. 5) uses randomly

initiated ripples of flashing lights tosimulate the effect of raindrops fallingon the surface of a quiet pond. In 1977,
White introduced a microcomputer tocontrol the interactive robot in Facing
Out Laying Low (Color Plate B No. 2),

which surveys its surroundings from afixed point and responds to activity that
it finds "interesting"with a variety of audio responses. White's more recent HelplessRobot(Fig. 6) also has a "voice"that it
uses to entice passersbyto move it. Whenthey oblige, the robot becomes progressively more demanding and imperious
until they are forced either to become its
slaves or to disengage themselves. Offering an ironic metaphor for certain kindsof interpersonal relationships (or indeed
for the general relationship between
people and technology), this machine issensitive enough to detect and respondto very slight variations in the behavior
of its human operators, thus producing avast range of differentiated responses
from a limited vocabulary.
Doug Back was another early experimenter with self-organizing kinetic
sculpture. His 1979 Sticks (Fig. 7) produces what appear to be extraordinarily
lifelike behavioral patterns by means ofa simple series of identical two-phase
stepper-motors, each with a horizontal
stick attached in such a way that the
sticks collide with each other as the motors turn, reversing their direction ofspin in the process.
Another important artist in the Artist
Robot Group is David Rokeby,whose Very
NervousSystem,begun in 1982, involves alarge wired-up space within which any
movement is tracked, responded to andtransformed into music. The piece thus
permits a dancer to generate his or her
own soundtrack. His Giverof Names(Fig.
8) is a computer installation that "grabs"
an image of any proffered object, processes it onscreen and "radiates"the results of this analysis through a metaphorically linked associative databasefrom which phrases or sentences are constructed and then spoken aloud.
In Europe, a central locus of thismovement is at Newport College of Art
in Wales, under the directorship of Roybrought about by the nature of the technology employed in the creation both of
AL simulations and of emergent art. To
the extent that artists are concerned with
developing unpredictable patterns of behavior (as opposed to producing robots
that mimic the externalities of "natural"behavior), they are using information
technology in ways that are closely allied
to those of the AL research laboratory.
In some cases, this process also involves a conscious rejection of traditional, positivist, scientific models. AL
scientist Inman Harvey says,

Fig. 9. NickJakobi, Evolved Octopod, 1997. Evolved Octopodwas designed byJakobi at the
School of Cognitive and Computing Systems at the University of Sussex and built by Applied AI Systems, Inc. Ant-like creatures simulate evolutionary processes by testing a wide
range of possible strategies at random and selecting those that work best. The "winners"
are reproduced with some mutations and the cycle repeated, producing, in Jakobi's words,"control systems that work, but we don't know how." (? COGS, 1997)

Ascott (who can also be credited, indirectly, with introducing electronic art to
the Ontario College of Art during his
brief spell as principal there during theearly 1970s). In the summer of 1997,
Newport hosted a "research conference"on Art and Consciousness in the PostBiological Era, where artists as diverse as
Rebecca Allen, Ebon Fisher, Zoe Beloff
and Nik Williams, as well as double-acts
Alan Dunning and Paul Woodrow, Nita
Sturiale and Anita de Waard, and Knut
Mork and Stahl Senslie put on whatamounted to a 3-day interactive experimental workshop in emergent art [8].
As artists like these have been moving
closer to the world of computing in theirsearch for newer and subtler ways tomodel, parody or comment on the behavior of the natural world (including human behavior), so computer scientists
have been meeting them halfway in attempts to simulate natural processes thathave come to be described as artificial
life. A development from the more tightly
conceived field of artificial intelligence(AI), AL uses computing not simply to try
to mimic human intelligence but also togain insight into a wide range of naturalprocesses, from the evolution of particular biological forms to patterns of communication. Indeed, it is sometimes
claimed that the development of an AL
model is closer to art than to science.
Lars Risan, for instance, argues that theprocess is essentially a branch of engineering, involving skilled craftsmanshipand a much greater degree of intimacy
with the subject than the "distance"of thescientist, and that therefore "as artistic
expressions, Alife simulations have aesthetic value" [9]. The AL movement has
already produced some curious interdisciplinary hybrids. For instance, the Moscow-basedcompany AnimaTek,which has
produced "softwaretoys"in which virtualfish breed new progeny with constantly
mutating forms, methods of swimming
and responses to their virtual environments, resulted from a collaboration between psychologist Vladimir I. Pokhilko,
theoretical and experimental physicists
and Alexey Pajitnov (the hacker who invented the game Tetris, known only too
well to all Gameboy owners and their parents), backed by investment from the
U.S.-based Bullet-Proof Software company [10].

Since its inception, one of the ways inwhich the AL movement has distinguished itself from AI has been by a fascination with art and a willingness to collaborate with visual artists. Since the late1980s, "artistic"presentations have beenused as a way of demonstrating work-inprogress at AL conferences, and in 1992
a 2-week workshop was held in Aix-enProvence in which some 50 scientists
came together with about the same
number of artists to explore themes related to artificial life [11].
This blurring of the boundaries between art and science results in partfrom a convergence in methodology,

I would claim that the false gods of scientific objectivitypreventscientistsandengineers from reaching goals that we
can achieve, as in my own researchon
artificialevolutionand evolutionaryrobotics. So when I think it will annoy
somebody I call ALife a "postmodern
science" and our style of evolutionary
robotics "postmodernrobotics."Gratifyingly,some scientistsare outragedby
this [12].
This scientific version of "epatant labourgeoisie" goes further than a simple
desire to shock, making a serious point
about self-referentiality [13]. Harvey
continues,
We rejectthe premisethat animals,humans (and ideallyrobots) are basicallyrational creatures reasoning about apre-existingobjectiveworld,in favorof
seeing them as organismsthatmaintaintheiridentitythroughcontingentadaptive behaviourin a world which arises
for them and is givenmeaningthroughsuch behaviour. One way of pointing
this up is to bring into a scientificconference artists who are recognisably
dealing with the same issues that concern us. And anywayit is fun [14].
Along with Joe Faith and other colleagues from the University of Sussex,
Inman Harvey organized in July 1997 an
exhibition called Like Life at theBrighton Media Centre, bringing together the works of AL scientists andemergent artists. Here, White's Helpless
Robotand works by fellow Canadian artists Mark Tilden and Nell Tenhaaf could
be seen alongside products of AL research. The latter included an octopod
with an evolved control system (Fig. 9),
designed by Nick Jakobi of Sussex
University's School of Cognitive andComputing Systems "to create a virtual
reality within which possible control systems could be tested at speed." The exhibition also included an appearance by acharming meccano ant and a computer
game, designed by Stephen Grand andCyberLife Technology, in which graphically represented "creatures" evolve intheir own virtual world, with simulated

Huws, Nature, Technology and Art

39brains, biochemistry and genomes. Like
sophisticated versions of the Japanese"cyberpet" toys known as tamagotchi(which "die"if their tenders do not keepthem fed, clothed and amused), thesecreatures can be "talked to" and taught
to eat, drink and meet other creatureswith whom, after a period of about aweek, they can mate, producing a new,
distinctive and, in theory, more evolved
generation of creatures. Such exhibitions may come to be regarded in the future as a turning point, a first encounter
between emerging branches of technology and art with the potential to generate a new synthesis that could enrichboth science and art by producing fresh
insights into natural processes.
One of the most striking aspects of thisexhibition, and of the Fourth European
Conference on Artificial Life to which it
formed an adjunct, was the strength of
the interest it provoked in the British
media. The subject of AL appears to
strike a strong chord with the generalpublic, summoning up images of the AL
engineer as a tamperer with nature, aFrankenstein-like creator of monstrous
pseudo-people. Linked in the popularimagination with fears provoked by suchdevelopments as experiments in genetic
engineering, cloning or computer programs that can beat grand masters at
chess, AL is seen as the technology that
finally makes people redundant. The artist-scientist who uses it becomes a sort ofalchemist who, instead of producing goldout of dross, produces life itself out ofsilicon, plastic and bits of wire. In its insistence on the "unnaturalness" of any
experimentation, this reaction reinforcesthe dualistic model in which the "artificial" is counterposed to the "natural."
The specific focus of this reaction appears to be the fact that the AL producthas "a life of its own" (to quote the titleof an emergent art exhibition held in
Mexico City in November 1997). The
prospect of out-of-control robotic creatures (or, even more frighteningly, genetically engineered life forms) rampaging around doing their own thing
regardless of the human or environmental consequences is the stuff of science
fiction. Whether the originating puppetmasters of these machines are believed
to be mad scientists/inventors or profithungry transnational corporations, thefear evoked is essentially the same: thepowerlessness of the ordinary human being in a world in which individual agency
has largely been removed and vested intechnology. This fear can, perhaps, beregarded as legitimate in a society in

40

Huws, Nature, Technology and Art

which technologies that are understoodby the few have to be used by the manyin waysthat are not life-enhancing. Many
have experienced the computer as something that makes redundant or de-skills
what was previously a secure job; thatstandardizes and depersonalizes processes that used to be friendly and intimate; that makes parents seem dumber
than their children, and grandparents
dumber still; that makes it possible forstrangers to collect personal information
to be used for commercial purposes. Few
people believe in the altruism of governments, employers or the manufacturers
and providers of goods and services, andthere appears to be a strong intuitive understanding that most of the technologies used extensively in our society aretechnologies of control adopted precisely because they offer their controllers
new ways of consolidating their power[15]. Why else would they want them?
Such fears feed an "us-and-them"modelin which "we"are natural and vulnerable
while "they"stand for artificiality, technology and insensitivity; "we"represent
life, while "they"represent death.
It is precisely because of such fears
and stereotypes (and the underlying experiences of which they are expressions)that the project of reinventing the relationship between technology and nature
is so important, and that this project
should not be left in the hands of specialists but should be reappropriated forhumankind at large.
Perhaps the development of genetic
engineering draws attention most strikingly to the blurring of boundaries between the animate and the inanimatebetween biology and technology. Joe
Davis, an MIT-based artist, has alreadydramatized this by embedding a visual
theimage-a feminist symbol-onto
DNA structure of an E. coli bacillus, now
reproduced many millions of times (heclaims to be the world's most "published"artist!). It is possible, of course, to imagine interventions that are less benign intheir effects, wittingly or unwittingly.
This is where the role of the artist becomes crucial. It is the artist who can act
as a sort of freelance commentator, providing insights into the workings of theuniverse that go beyond the literal, drawing our attention to the irony, pathos,
beauty or sheer extraordinariness of theworld we inhabit, and to the awesome
powers to destroy or mutate it that lie in
the hands of scientists. To the extent thatscientists are free agents, independent oflarge companies, governments or otherinterest groups, they too form part of thisenterprise that involves an interactivedialogue across disciplines, spanning emotional, ethical and sensory experiences aswell as addressing more narrowly scientific questions about the nature of theuniverse. Few scientists, however are
granted the freedom to step out of theirdisciplinary straitjackets and present an
integrativevision that is accessible to a lay
audience. For the time being, in the urgent project of making sense of the relationship between human understanding
and the natural world, it seems likely that
art is the best means we have.
References and Notes
1. Quoted in S. Harding, Whose Science? Whose
Knowledge?(Buckingham, U.K.: Open Univ. Press,
1991) p. 43.
2. M. Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology," in D.F. Krell, ed., Martin Heidegger:Basic
Writings (London and Henley: Routledge andKegan Paul, 1978) pp. 287-317.
3. D. Abrams, TheSpellof theSensuous:Perceptionand
Language in a More-than-HumanWorld(New York:
Vintage Books, 1997) p. 202.
4. G. Gessert, "The Rainforests of Domestication:
Ornamental Gardens as Sites of Maximum Genetic
Diversity among Domesticated Plants," Leonardo30,
No. 2, 129-132 (1997).
5. The exact origin of the term "emergent art" isobscure. According to Norman White, who describes himself as an emergent artist, "'Emergent' isa term borrowed from the Artificial Life community, which may well have got it from theoreticalmathematics or physics. I have no idea of its precise
origin within this context. I only know it fits." (FromE-mail communication with the author, 1999.)
6. E. Kac, "Foundation and Development of Robotic Art," ArtJournal56, No. 3 (1997).
7. Kac [6].
8. Anonymous, "Consciousness Reframed," Entropy
1, No. 3 (Fall 1997).
9. L. Risan, "Why Are There So Few Biologists
Here? Artificial Life as a Theoretical Biology of Artistry,"in P. Husbands and I. Harvey, eds., FourthEuropeanConferenceon ArtificialLife (Cambridge, MA,
and London: MIT Press, 1997) p. 29.
10. E. Corcoran, "One Fish, Two Fish," in Scientific
American267, No. 1 (July 1992) p. 109.
11. Artificial Life, Art and Cognition, International
Summer School, Aix-en-Provence, 6-17 Jtly 1992.
12. Inman Harvey, E-mail communication with theauthor (September 1997).
13. This is French for "shocking the middle class,"a term used to describe the social role of the avantgarde artist since at least the Dadaists.
14. Harvey [12].
15. This view was expressed in a particularly overt
way when information technology began to be introduced on a mass scale by Italian industrialist
Franco di Benedetti, managing director of Olivetti,
who, speaking at a Financial Timesconference in
1979, pronounced that "information technology isbasically a technology of co-ordination and controlof the labor force: the white-collar workers
Taylorian organisation does not cover." (Quoted in
U. Huws, Your ob in the Eighties [London: Pluto
Press, 1981] p. 26).
Manuscript received 6June 1998.