allow a person to make an informed decision about courses of biotechnologi- cal deployment is modest! Amateurs should be a key part in this discussion (as in any with revolutionary social potential). Artists, activists, and students work- ing in biotech are model amateurs who are making significant contributions to constructing a foundation for public discourse in the field of biotech, and should do what is necessary to replicate this discourse position and its alterna- tive forms of perception and investigation among as many people as possible. Finally, intervention in the utopian spectacle of biotech—what litte there {s—should begin as soon as possible. Here cultural producers are the experts. The current conditions that this group must engage seem to be as follows: specialists within the various areas that constitute the field of biotechnology tend to explain their discipline using the language of cybernetics. Unfortu- nately, this language is largely inscrutable to nonspecialists. To complicate the matter further, the standard utopian promises derived from the Enlighten ment rhetoric of progress that are used to adjust perception of or sell technol- ogy to popular culture do not generate sympathy or excitement. Biotech’s promises of a new body, convenience, democracy, and community (all the same promises used very effectively by information and communications technology) are tainted by trace cultural anxieties left behind by the prewar eugenics movement, and other, vaguer, big brother suspicions. The only other functional, broad-based popular utopian rhetoric that remains is Christian Consequently, when biotech makes one of its few media appearances in order to sell itself as a stock option or raise research money, it offers the promises of immortality, miracle cures, edenesque abundance, and new universalism (ie., DNA as a replacement for the soul). In contrast, CAE attempts to provide signs that contribute to the development of a critical (as opposed to utopian) public discourse on this subject matter and to disrupt or subvert the false spectacular distraction of progress and profit for al. (Creal Ar Ensemble ia colacwe of five arts dedicated to the explorason ofthe inersctions bbebween art ecology, real theory and pot activem. No longer a cloud on the distant horizon, the posthuman is rapidly becoming an everyday reality. Kevin Warwick communicates in binary code with com- ‘puter devices in the environment via an implant in his arm: portions of a lam- prey eel brain, transplanted into a mobile robot, direct the robot's motion; Cog, Rodney Brooks's humanoid robot, surveys the environment and plays catch with a human interlocutor. N. Katherine Hayles i not a question of whether the posthuman will Visualizing the Posthuman ve but what forms it wll ake when it does, In this dizzying cascade of posthuman visitations, an area of contestation that remains vitally under-determined is ‘embodiment, Should the body be seen as evolutionary baggage that we are about to toss out as we vault into the brave new world of the posthuman? Or does embodiment continue to be essential to human thought and being? Complexly related to this issue is the role of the visual in posthuman cul- tural production, for vision both constructs an embodied world for us and Convict © 2000. All rights reserved.signifies its meanings through representational practices. As text moves from the durable fixed inscriptions of print into the flickering signifiers of digital ‘media, visual forms, like the body, seem to lose their weighty materiality Yet the digital realm also has its embodied particularity; electrons flashing across a cathode ray tube are not less material than plant fibers impregnated with ink. On some deep level of correspondence, visual forms and ideas about embodiment evolve together. In my view, a erucial cultural project at this historical juncture isto find forms adequate to express and construct the posthuman without erasing embodiment as the essential enabling ground for hhuman existence. In digital environments, the old print relation between letter and phoneme, mark and sound, is being reconfigured as text becomes dynamic, dancing on the screen in ways impossible with durable inscriptions. As a con- sequence, text is reasserting itself not only as something to be read but some- thing to be seen. Word and image join in new collaborations, delighting in their flickering mutability and instantaneous transformations into one another. In the light speed with which these transformations take place and the infinite possibilities of mutation, text-as-image testifies to the posthuman body as a site of nonessentialist and culturally inflected production. But itis also possible to create text-2s-image that simultaneul insists on the continuing importance of embodiment to human perception and being. The trick is to do both at ‘once, to work at the borderline between text and image, enduring material form and mutable cultural production, without sacrificing either to the other. ‘The Topographic Text: Reading as Gliding “What does it mean to move through a maze of language?” Diana Slattery asks in her electronic hypertext “Glide: An Interactive Exploration with Visual Language” (academy.rpi.edu/glide/testbed). At the center of this question is Glide, imagined as a nonverbal language that can only be written, not spoken, although it can also be performed through gestures. The narrative at the site, “The Death Dancers,” illustrates the different modes through which Glide can be apprehended. The narrative takes place four thousand years in the future, when humanity has been infected with the I-virus, bestowing on selected ‘members the dubious privilege of immortality. The Lifer, as they are called, ‘become so jaded that only one event can pique their interest—the Game, a contest based on negotiating a complex maze comprised of the glyphs of the Glide language. The twenty-seven glyphs making up Glide are all variations of semicircles of 2 certain radius and its double. Their similar geometries make it possible for them to fit together into larger patterns, creating mazes that are also inscriptions conveying meaning. Semantically the glyphs function somewhat like ideograms, with each, ‘mark conveying three root meanings along with successive layers of sec- ondary, tertiary, and sometimes quaternary connotations. The Lexicon at the site illustrates this process of signification by displaying a moving circle of ‘glyphs. When the user clicks on one of the marks, it breaks off from the circle and shoots out rays displaying the three root meanings. Additional clicks ‘expand these into second and tertiary meanings until all of the overlapping terms have been revealed, creating a semantic network that functions more as 80 artjournd Convict © 2000. All rights reserved.nthe contest of he beth Ounce afar the (pinay fo of arciectire te maze, ace {he pre best anc mazes ve made Bng.ag. (Gee phe bc, ie see BS are co wring te of pa tat mate uo architatare eal an ner srr, eter pe of ering. hare an extended metaphor or a haze of signification rather than a clearly defined denotation. ‘To run a maze of glyphs, then, is both to enact a physical performance and apprehend the subtle metaphoric connections that comprise each glyph in itself and the larger meanings that flow from several glyphs joined together. “The Death Dancers” narrative describes the Millennium class of initiates, ado- lescents who are being rigorously trained by Dancemaster Wallenda, a Lifer whose job it is to instill a Zen-like discipline in his students so they can run smazes of increasing complexity. The four students embody distinct types ‘which correspond to different approaches to solving the mazes. The Chrome type relies on rational calculation of angles, degrees, and radians; the Swash type sparks on creative ingenuity; the Bod draws on the body's proprioceptive and kinesthetic capabilities; and the Glide gains an intuitive understanding of the language so she can think in Glide, running the maze as if she were learning a poem. Put into syncopation with these different types are different ‘modes of cognition described as Island-Mind, the rational cogitation of the conscious mind: Sea-Mind, the cognition that emerges from dreams, omens, and metaphors; Gut-Mind, centered in bodily sensation and emotion; and Lily-Mind, a transpersonal awareness that melds into what Emerson called the Oversoul. To run a maze in a certain way amounts, then, to mobilizing a cer- tain mode of cognition. Rational consciousness in this world is merely one ‘mode of cognition among many, and not necessarily the most powerful. The Dancemaster, for example, can choose to make the maze mirrored, in which case the visual faculty becomes almost worthless and those relying on Island- Mind are easily outrun by Dancers calling instead on Gut-Mind. Reading prac- ‘dees for Glide thus involve whole-body processing and a variety of sensory ‘modalities Enhancing the richness of interpretation (which is also always a perfor- ‘mance) is the complexity of decoding. The compound glyphs that make up ‘mazes can be taken apart not just in one way, as when one decodes an alpha- betic word into letters, but in multiple ways, each of which is an appropriate reading of the maze. For example, the glyph for “architecture” can be decon- Copvricht © 2000. All rights reserved.structed into the glyphs for “matter” and “mind”; alternatively, it can also be read as glyphs for “fire” and “moon,” with “root” and “unity” in the middle. ‘The muliple ways in which glyph mazes can be decoded suggest an entirely ‘new interpretation for the hypertext link. Instead of the “go to” computer command, Slattery conceptualizes the link as the matching of similar geome- tries within glyphs to form more complex topographical surfaces. It is not a ‘question, then, of creating a pointer from one address in the computer mem- ‘ory to another but of finding spatial forms that fit fluidly together and that, ‘once joined, can be decoded into different components than were used to assemble them. “Test expands and contracts,” Slattery writes, “moves along the axis, breaks out of lines, offers altemative pathways, explodes in your fice. Text is definitely getting out of line.” It is not merely a metaphor to say that Glide is metaphoric. Metaphor, ‘which joins two disparate things together by asserting an identity between them, is here enacted physically by joining one glyph to another to form a larger topographic shape. Just as metaphor ereates an emergent meaning that is more than the sum of the parts, blossoming forth as a realization inhering {n neither component individually but rather growing out of their interac- tions, so the meanings that emerge from the glyphs and the larger mazes they form come from complex interplays between root, secondary, and tertiary ‘meaning of components that themselves can transform into other shapes as the reader plays with deconstructing the maze into different glyphs. The highly interactive and emergent nature of this kind of reading is visually reinforced at the site by animation that shows one glyph morphing into another, an action that both demonstrates and enacts the reading practices Glide requires. Slattery combines this unique interpretation of hypertext with an under- standing of metaphor as a performance whose most important purpose is to increase connectivity. For the individual subject, writing/reading/performing Glide increases awareness of multiple cognitive capabilities located throughout the body; Glide also increases connectivity between the individual and the Lily-mind and thereby with other subjectivities as well. “The cognitive func- tion of metaphor increases the connectivity between minds, internally and socially,” Slattery writes, Although the mazes remain stationary during a given. rrun/reading, the technology underlying them allows them to be instantly rearranged into different shapes, much as the letters on a computer screen are perceived as stationary but can be transformed by a keystroke into different fonts, etc. Such transformations are possible because computer script, unlike Print, is not durably inscribed; the apparent fixity of screenic text is produced by a constantly sweeping electron beam that refreshes the screen many times ‘each minute, The mazes are like computer writing in that they embody a process of becoming, functioning as mutable signifiers always available for transformation and re-writing. In a larger sense, the entire Glide site is a metaphor for the reading and ‘writing practices hypertext initiates. By imagining a mode of reading that is also a performance, Slattery intimates, the hypertext reader draws on 2 fall range of sensory modalities that includes rational analysis but also propriocep- tion, kinesthesia, emotions, tactilty, and intuition. Visualizing the site map as a maze written in Glide, she constructs the site as a topographic space the $2 artjourmal Copvricht © 2000. All rights reserved.reader can explore through her embodied actions of moving the cursor and licking, much as the Dancer explores the Glide maze through a physical jour- ney that is also reading. Slattery includes morphing programs showing one glyph transforming into another, thus suggesting that the language is not a static inscription but itself a performance always in the process of becoming. ‘What is the upshot of these complex metaphoric interplays? Slattery links them with the medium when she writes, “The computer is a technology as protean in its applications as fre or electricity. Is it possible that the impact is being felt... in the ways we construe, form, and use language itself?” Here her project is revealed not only 2s an attempt to imagine a visual language, Dut moreover to imagine it within a medium capable of transforming our sense of how language functions, For her, hypertext instantiates and demands cyborg reading practices that transform human subjectivity even as they are transformed by it. At the Glide site, reading is performed as more than a cog- nitive activity—or rather, itis an activity that takes place in the embodied cognitions of a posthuman subject who is made to realize anew the inextric- able entwining of body with mind, image with text, We are the medium, and the medium is us. NL athrine Hays Profestrof Engh atthe Univrsy of Clfomi, Los Angeles Se the author ‘of Chor Bnd Orde Darter Cetera Lita rd Src aca Come iver Pes. 1990) and How We Became Posten: VtulBoes Cybernetic Lieu, od iomecs (Cheap: Unversity of Cag Pres 1999) Having the human genome is like haviog a Lendsst map of the earth, compared toa word where the map tapers off into the unkown... 1s as diffrent view of human biology as « map of the eath lathe fourteen -hundreds was compared toa view from spc tay. —Bric Lander, molecular biologist ‘This is ike Veins... . Before Vealins, people dita’ ren koow they had ears and lungs. —Norton Zinder, molecular biologist ‘Mops are models of worlds crafted through and for specific practi of intervening and ways of life, —Donna Haraway ‘The Human Genome Project turns out to be a ferocious magnet for a host of synoptic metaphors, very few of which actualy evoke the human body. Such terms a8 Holy Grall, code of codes, map of the earth, book, set of instruc- tions, mosaic, jigsaw puzzle, recipe, scripture, blueprint, Ernest Larsen and Sherry Millner Talmud, software, the key to human nature, master med- ical model, summit of human knowledge all crop up regu- Mapping the New New World arly both in scholarly and popular discourse. These prolif- erating metaphors register as totalizing attempts to grasp the sense of the immense project all at once; and, in fact, the HGP is profess- edly a totalizing project, with the molecular biologist playing the role of the Great Totalizer of Biotech Oz. Critical theory's noble renunciation of grand narratives, its reluctant long goodbye to the project of totalization, has been answered by molecular biology’s compensatory inauguration of the unraveling Copvricht © 2000. All rights reserved.Copyright of Art Journal is the property of College Art Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, user's may print, download, or email articles for individual use.