Based on in-class readings and discussion, write a minimum 500 word précis of the text, summarizing the main points and using short quotations from the text as evidence for points made. Try to form a conclusion as to how successful you feel the argument is based on your own findings. If you wish, make your reference to visual examples. Aim for a formal academic tone using the third person throughout.

Quotes from Blais, J. and Ippolito, J. (2006), At The Edge of Art, London, Thames and Hudson, Introduction, pages 7-13

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The first section informs the reader of people that  are creating inventive mechanisms in technology and carrying out different experiments.  In the first paragraph we are introduced to ‘’Joe Davis…research affiliate in the Department of Biology at MIT’’. Pg 7

 Joe Davis had been experimenting with how E. coli responds to jazz music. This experiment says that Joe could be trying to find a link between music and science and if they influence each other. ‘’His ideas are certainly inspiring, inventive and thought-provoking but plans to put a map of the Milky Way into a transgenic mouse…..too far out to qualify as bona-fide science’’. Pg 7 This quote is saying, on one hand, it could be said that he is taking science a step further but on another hand, that he is not taking science seriously if he was on the path to curing diseases or understanding how E. coli affects society. You could say that Joe Davis is not trying to be the world’s best scientist but to add more to the meaning of science and making it a more entertaining subject in artistically terms.

 The emergence of ‘’biologists, engineers, designers and hackers rather than the newest crop of fine-arts graduates and they wield powerful twenty-first-century tools such as DHTML…..rather than a nineteenth century palette and brush’’. Pg 8

This explains that artists are dying and the Internet is taking over. The idea of a painter with his palette, brush and canvas has now been taken over by people today that do not take the time to create paintings or artwork as was done in the old ages. A palette  and brush could now be described as a computer and a mouse. This text states that ‘’Would-be artists don’t need to haunt the Moulin Rouge or Cedar Tavern  to rub shoulders with today’s Picassos and Pollocks; with a computer and modem they can tap into a vast network of shared resources and ideas online…’’.  Pg 8 That quote is trying to say that the Internet has made people too lazy to go out into the world to find other artists and mingle but instead search for what they are looking for online than seeing the work in person.

Art is needed in society because people need an outlet, a way to express themselves, so art can be described as an ‘’antibody’’ because it creates an escape from the internet or everyday lives. The term that could be used to describe the Internet in this paragraph is a large ‘’e-commerce’’ because it is where ‘’art and non-art become irrelevant in an age when art and science, commerce and fashion are all whipped together in the global culture blender we call the Internet’’. Pg 8

Art is different from technology because it has been stated in the text ‘’is that art is accountable to the social body as antibodies are accountable to the biological one.  …Viruses originate outside a host organism and are interested in that organism’s surviving only long enough to enable it to infect other hosts’’.  Pg 10

Technology can be defined as a virus because it is ‘a cultural phenomenon’’.  Technology since the industrial age, has advanced in many ways, from faster transport to computers that operate at high speeds. This fast-paced upgrade of continuous technology is similar to the way a virus attacks the human body or a computer system. Both attack at high speeds. ‘’The earliest human technology may have been the arrowhead; some of the most recent ones require only the pressing of a few buttons to pound the world’s cities into radioactive rubble.’’ Another quote that highlights the danger technology brings and how a quick electrical command button can bring sad consequences.  ‘’Unlike microprocessor speeds, the human capacity to foresee the ethical consequences of technology does not double every eighteen months,…..that people wonder whether these tools are under our control or we are under theirs’’ This statement is conveying that speed of technology growing means that even though we as humans create and build it, it is out of our control and other hands may not know what to do with it, such as nuclear weapons.

Art and Technology, very different, but both have been created by humans and their minds. Both have to live along side one another as each year they grow, ‘’for art to keep up with the energetic pace of technology in the Internet age is to adopt many of its functions.’’ So it has been stated that both co-exist, now to differentiate them, it is said ‘’the main difference is that art is accountable to social body as antibodies are accountable to the biological one’’, this states that it is only accountable when held in the their own context. Art is accountable to art but can be accountable to technology if it is needed.

In conclusion, ‘’each culture must come up with its own definitions of art’s functions to ensure its adaptability and survival’’, this states that art is needed in all parts of society to survive because it is a natural occurrence, ‘’if nursing ensures survival by transferring somatic memory, art ensures survival by transferring cultural memory’’. Culture thrives on art because it keeps society engaged because ‘’the edge of art traces a fine line between life and death’’.  The text brings up many points and facts to argue its reason whether art and technology are similar. The purpose of this text could be to show that art could exist in technology because scientists are creative with their inventions but these inventions are not a natural component.