The author has already attempted to create an artistic counterpart to the reductionist, transparent, incapacitating development of the neurosciences and neuromarketing by using their tools. Subsequently artistic interpretations of the transparent and structure-determined DNA are now to be implemented analogous to the biotechnological and genetic development. Behind every digital image, text or video there are ones or zeros, which receive their form and meaning exclusively through algorithmic interpretation. In the same way, behind every living being, no matter how different they seem to be, according to reductionist genetics there are only base sequences of A, G, C and T.
There are unlimited possibilities to interpret things like DNA artistically. In nature, DNA is read sequentially, or rather interpreted sequentially. Therefore DNA is also sequentially structured so that the sequentiell interpretation makes sense or vice versa. To interpret this sequential structure, it also makes sense to use a sequential interpretation. Probably the most feasible way of an artistic algorithmic sequential interpretation is the generation of sound, which is why the attempt is made to create music from DNA. In nature, proteins also maintain their function through their specific sequential sequence of amino acids. The proteins are assembled on the basis of the sequential sequence of codons in the DNA. Instead of always reading dry words and structural formulas when dealing with biology, it would be interesting to listen to soulful sounds that have their origin in the blueprint of life. Not everybody understands structural formulas, but everybody understands music, even if this understanding is not rational, but rather sensual. Furthermore, why not convert the language of DNA into human language, since we already use letters to represent bases and amino acids? The attempt of a speech synthesis on the basis of DNA was also dared here in an experimental version.
With this tool you can transform any DNA and RNA into sounds and music. You can choose from a variety of instruments and synthesizers that can be combined to create even orchestral sounds. The settings let you choose the beat, key signature, instruments, start index, start delay, note spectrum and algorithm to be used. With a little sensitivity, you can even get musical experiences out of pathogens.
What is man? A question which, even before Immanuel Kant posed it in
his lecture on logic [1, p. 25], had countless answers ranging from
zõon lógon échon and zõon politikón (the rational and political
animal, Aristoteles) to the image of God. Today, 239 years later –
and in times of physics, genetics, psychology, biotechnology,
artificial intelligence and above all the advancing material
reductionism – the question is more relevant than ever.
In 1913, environmentalism was taken to extremes with the behaviorism
of J.B. Watson, who argued that the environment is the only thing
that makes up a person, including his emotional life. There is no
such thing as self-observation, he reacts according to a
stimulus-response scheme [5], the human being is entirely a product
of his environment.
Ten years later, after having previously used psychoanalysis,
including self-observation, to define the subconscious as the
driving force behind our actions, Sigmund Freud reduced the human
being to an apparatus in The Ego and the Id [6].
Years earlier, with the Nobel Prize 1906 awarded to Camillo Golgi
and Santiago Ramon y Cajal for their research into the structure of
the nervous system [7], a corner stone was laid for today's
neurosciences and the associated reduction of the human being to a
mere quantitatively measurable neuron activity. While behaviorism
already led to the targeted manipulation of humans by means of
successes ranging from conditioning to nudging, neuroscience and
computer science promise far more profound possibilities to reduce
humans to a Pavlovian dog [8, 9].
The shift from classical marketing to neuromarketing [10, 11] and
Silicon Valley's increasing investment in brain research [12] show
that reductionist neuroscience will continue to expand its lead over
classical psychology in the reduction of the human being. The human
being here is predominantly a determined and transparent product of
his neurons.
Hundreds of years after Aristotle, man was raised to the image of
God, but in 1859 with the creation of the species Darwin brought him
back into the animal kingdom [13]. If the above developments mark a
reduction of man according to the top-down principle, Gregor Mendel
seven years later, with his Mendel's rules [14], set the beginning
of genetics and the accompanying reduction according to the
bottom-up principle. One year later, Francis Galton founded
behavioural genetics [15], the reduction of behaviour to genetic
predispositions. Building on both, together with the discovery of
chromosomes and their underlying genes, unscientific methods and
political objectives launched eugenics, race theory, and the age of
Social Darwinism under the guise of scholarliness [16]. Whereas in
behaviorism and classical psychology one could still partially
protect oneself from reduction by consciously behaving differently
or by lying, in Social Darwinism one was and is a determined,
transparent product of one's origin and thus of one's genes. The
idea that efficiency, intelligence and morality were determined by
heredity lost its charm after its sad National Socialist peak and
has since been hushed up, especially in the German-speaking world.
With the discovery of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), its double helix
[17] and genetic engineering [18], founded in 1971, man was elevated
above evolution and given the tools to change life to suit his
taste. With the Human Genome Project in 2001, the human genome was
finally completely decoded to its bases [19].At the same time, man
was reduced to a genetically determined, transparent product of his
base sequence.
In 2018, these tools were applied to the decoded human genome,
produced genetically modified offspring [20] and thus initiated a
development that may not be stopped. External determination by
origin, gives way to prenatal external determination by genetic
engineers. Eugenics and Social Darwinism could experience a
dangerous and profound renaissance through these biotechnological
developments.
Although the foundations for the patenting of genetically modified
organisms have already been laid, such as by the EU Directive
98/44/EC, that directive still prevents dystopian visions of the
future from becoming reality by excluding gene patents that
intervene in the human germ line [21].
In the case that individual genes for human modification can ever be
patented – keyword designer babies [22], the aforementioned
conditioning and neuromarketing – we as mankind are about to answer
the fourth Kantian question asked at the beginning – what is the
human being – as neither a product of its base sequence nor as a
product of its neurons, but completely reduced to solely product.
Both supporting and parallel to these developments, the development
of artificial intelligence [23], the foundations of which were laid
in the last century, is currently proceeding at a rapid pace.
Nowadays, AI reduces humans completely to the data traces they
voluntarily leave behind in their daily lives, which are shaped by
Instagram, Google, Amazon and the others. At the same time, wherever
AI enters the scene, from diagnostics [24], to production [25], to
human leisure activities [26], it knocks human intelligence from its
throne. A predicted mass unemployment [27], in which all sectors,
including the creative industries, will be affected [28], is pushing
people into insignificance. In view of a future technical
singularity, the fourth Kantian question can possibly in the future
be answered with „irrelevant“.
The author has already attempted to create an artistic counterpart
to the reductionist, transparent, incapacitating development of the
neurosciences and neuromarketing by using their tools. Subsequently
artistic interpretations of the transparent and structure-determined
DNA are now to be implemented analogous to the biotechnological and
genetic development. Behind every digital image, text or video there
are ones or zeros, which receive their form and meaning exclusively
through algorithmic interpretation. In the same way, behind every
living being, no matter how different they seem to be, according to
reductionist genetics there are only base sequences of A, G, C and T.
There are unlimited possibilities to interpret things like DNA
artistically. In nature, DNA is read sequentially, or rather
interpreted sequentially. Therefore DNA is also sequentially
structured so that the sequentiell interpretation makes sense or
vice versa. To interpret this sequential structure, it also makes
sense to use a sequential interpretation. Probably the most feasible
way of an artistic algorithmic sequential interpretation is the
generation of sound, which is why the attempt is made to create
music from DNA. In nature, proteins also maintain their function
through their specific sequential sequence of amino acids. The
proteins are assembled on the basis of the sequential sequence of
codons in the DNA. Instead of always reading dry words and
structural formulas when dealing with biology, it would be
interesting to listen to soulful sounds that have their origin in
the blueprint of life. Not everybody understands structural
formulas, but everybody understands music, even if this
understanding is not rational, but rather sensual. Furthermore, why
not convert the language of DNA into human language, since we
already use letters to represent bases and amino acids? The attempt
of a speech synthesis on the basis of DNA was also dared here in an
experimental version. In the future other sequential interpretation
forms like texts, scripts including movies might be imaginable.
Through artistic interpretations of (one's own) DNA, man freely
defines its meaning. Contrary to fixed value judgements such as good
or bad, high or low quality, proficient or lazy, he distances
himself, places himself as an interpreter and no longer as a
determined, transparent product and thus as an individual above this
sequence of elements. He becomes more than the sum of his bases.
literature
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