Essay 2

Animalsvs.Machines: Eduardo Kac and Avital Ronnel have compiled a book that poses many questions about the relationship of animals and machines with humans as the connection between the two. As well as being the connection between animals and machines, humans are also apparently the dominant species within the classification of animals, which I believe Kac and Ronell are demonstrating by placing their own biographies among the list of the rest of the animals portrayed in the book, reminding the reader that we are still animals, yet dominant and more highly evolved which is expressed by the subject matter of the book which Kac has contributed to in ways other than constructing it by genetically altering Alba the fluorescent bunny. Page after page of Life Extreme is filled with photographs, biographies, philosophical conjecture and poetic quotes that work together to show all sorts of interesting points about our position not only as creators of machines, but now as creators, or at the very least modifiers of biological creatures through the advent of our new tools. Ronell quotes Descartes “If we were masters of biology, we would be Gods”, a statement that would have been made at least 359 years ago. Since then we have come a long way in biology, by no means far enough to call ourselves omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent and certainly not perfectly benevolent, but by using our growing knowledge of science and applying it to form new technologies capable of altering the DNA of animals and plants around the world, are we attempting, even if not consciously, to slowly evolve from our primal animalistic form into our own definition of what God is, albeit synthetic? Antonin Artaud’s quote, “I am not raving. I am not mad. I am telling you that microbes have been re-invented in order to impose a new idea of God” is placed next to a picture of a poliomyelitis virus that was created from scratch by scientists at the State University of New York in 2002. Though the explicit purpose of the experiment was to create “bio-warfare countermeasures” the situation also implies the ambitiousness of scientists, moving forward in biology and demonstrating our power by showing that we can recreate what is natural. Something like the Schwarzenegger Cow, a Belgian blue cattle with a gene that “suppresses the production of Myostatin” which results in the growth of twice as much muscle is an example of altering the course of another species’ evolution as opposed to just reproducing it.
But are the paths of evolution from these new species as synthetic as the machines we use to alter them? Is there much difference between animals and machine when they are both malleable to us now? I would say that animals and machines are undoubtedly similar in many ways, but that is mostly because we have taken principles that we learn from nature and apply them to our machines. Maholy-Nagy claimed, “Nature evolves in ingenious forms, often technologically useful. Every bush, every tree, can instruct us in and reveal new uses, potential apparatus, and technological inventions without number.” Nature has existed for much longer than our technologies, so I would assume that most similarities are due to inspiration by and imitation of nature in our machines. Because we have constructed all of our technologies, we have a complete understanding of them. We may understand the way that animals work, but we cannot make a complex animal from scratch as we can with technology, and though we can manipulate animal forms, the number of failures over successes in doing so shows that we are not near consistent or efficient enough to say that we have even come close to “mastering biology”.