Viral Behaviors: Viruses and Viral Phenomena across Science, Technology, and the Arts (Biotechne: Interthinking Art, Science and Design)

In a new era of global virology that requires novel methodologies to improve the comprehension of viruses and viral phenomena, Viral Behaviors explores the cultural, material, and artistic significance of viral agents. Across a rich variety of case studies stemming from different areas of interest-covering literature, the graphic arts and scientific visualization, as well as performance, installation and bioart-this book asks whether embracing the complexity of viruses, rather than obsessively measuring, dissecting, or precisely mapping their parts and manifestations, may provide new methodological directions in the intersection of scientific thinking and artistic practice. The book examines the struggles and successes of science and technology to tame the elusive nature and behavior of viruses, and the potential of art-based and cross-disciplinary collaborations to better communicate their complex making and intense entanglement with the world at large. Combining perspectives from art, philosophy, science and technology, it places biological and informational viruses alongside each other, revealing that, while the two types of agents affect the world in very different ways, their histories and manifestations contain surprising similarities that speak to a cultural continuum. Viral Behaviors unravels the extraordinary mobility of viruses across disciplines, and their intersection with all aspects of culture, rather than their import within one specific disciplinary realm. It shows how the numerous attempts by artists, scientists and professionals to tackle, represent and appropriate viruses, and their intricate dynamism, can lead to new nuanced and sophisticated understandings of these substances and their related phenomena, and reveals the contribution of non-measurable or non-traditional practices in their construction and dissemination. Cover Contents List of Illustrations Introduction Once Upon a Virus Going Interdisciplinary The Role of the Arts Blending Visions 1 Virological Ambiguities The Lone Wanderer Conflicted Nature Onto-Epistemological Dilemmas Invisibility Entangled Realities—A Different View on Viruses Taxonomy and Classification of Viruses How to Describe Complexity? 2 Navigating the Unfamiliar: Strategies of Coping Modeling Viral Realities Uncanny Similarities Stylistic and Methodological Crossovers Classifying and Representing as Culture 3 Imagining Viruses Seizing the Invisible: An Important Race One and Many Visualization, Bìos, and Politics Entity and Movement: Performing Viruses Seeing as Knowledge and the Technico-Aesthetic Image Control and Transformation 4 From a Distance Viruses and the Unknown The In Vitro Approach and Computer Malware Boundary Crossing and Boundary Building: Dancing between Authentic and Artificial Layers and Transformation Beyond the Virus as Object 5 Situated Epidemiologies Epidemiology and the Collection of Data Epistemic Uncertainty Mapping Worldwide Diseases: People as “Blobs” Trust the Numbers? Mathematical Modeling and the Problem of Uncertainty Data and Storytelling Biosociality and Outbreak Narratives: Whom Does Collective Behavior Serve? Situated Data for Diverse Communities 6 Affective Epidemiologies Viral Narratives: Metaphors, Objects, and Carriers From Outbreak Narratives to Communicable Narratives Affect and the Unseen Borrowed and Anticipated Reactions Affect, Anticipation, Rebellion Reversed Narratives 7 Breaking the Binaries, Embracing the Viral The Provisional and Beyond Appropriating the Viral Taming the Viral In Search of the Good Virus The Good Virus: With a Little Help from Human Friends Viruses and Co-Dependency Constructive Noise and Viractual Insights The Viral Takes Charge, or, the Art of Taking Risks 8 Toward Viral Methodologies References Index