In 1997, I introduced the concept and the phrase “bio art”, originally in relation to my artwork “Time Capsule”. This work approached the problem of wet interfaces and human hosting of digital memory through the implantation of a microchip. The work consisted of a microchip implant, seven sepia-toned photographs, a live television broadcast, a webcast, interactive telerobotic webscanning of the implant, a remote database intervention, and additional display elements, including an X-ray of the implant. While “bio art” is applicable to (...) a large gamut of in vivo works that employ biological media, made by myself and others, in 1998, I started to employ the more focused term “transgenic art”. Republished in Ars Electronica ‘99—Life Science, ed. Gerfried Stocker and Christine Schopf, 289–296.) to describe a new art form based on the use of genetic engineering to create unique living beings. Art that manipulates or creates life must be pursued with great care, with acknowledgment of the complex issues it raises and, above all, with a commitment to respect, nurture, and love the life created. I have been creating and exhibiting a series of transgenic artworks since 1999. I have also been creating bio art that is not transgenic. The implications of this ongoing body of work have particular esthetic and social ramifications, crossing several disciplines and providing material for further reflection and dialog. What follows is an overview of theses works, the issues they evoke, and the debates they have elicited. (shrink)

The first round about ‘The myth of ASCOT and its rival ASCO2.T: tech-noetic vs. techno-logic’ exposed the hazard in colliding obsolete disciplinary categories under outdated procedures. The orthodox jurisdiction of Ars Electronica and CERN in Collide@CERN, one of the most prominent ongoing programmes of this kind, does not eliminate the risk of missing the target by operating with categories of artists and scientists. Art is one of those disciplines with a long expired warranty, but with decay on its periphery (...) that is turning into fertile forefront territories. Fresh temporary categories are marking and spreading over these uncharted territories and sensibly interconnecting with peripheries of other disciplines. The ex-artist that is reborn in this peripheral transdisciplinary zone can be provisionally categorized as a polyphibian for its features to be carefully studied. Like amphibians, a polyphibian can coherently transcend from one medium to another, in between and beyond the disciplines. In order to research the implications of such ‘categorical’ mutations, a readymade was submitted to the organization of Collide@CERN under the licence of R. Mutt. Namely, the readymade ASCOTT (Apparatus with Super COnducting Thought Transduction) dubbed also ASCO2.T is needed as the second-order upgrade of the existing plan for ASCOT (Apparatus with Super COnducting Toroids) invented by the scientists for CERN. As is expected from the reputation of R. Mutt’s readymades – this submission was ignored and refused in just the same quiet manner as his most notorious one. But if society would not provide salons for the refused artists (Salon des Refuses) right next to the salons under the scrutiny of academically established artists, there would be no mutations and no evolution in art. Such mutations of the artist into a ‘complex and widely distributed system’ at the dispersing fringes of decomposing art was already predicted by R. Ascott. Polyphibians are the species surviving the ripening metamorphosis of disciplines by taking refuge in the unexplored transdisciplinary buffer zone. This is the only zone where a confrontation of ASCOT technology with tech-noetics of ASCO2.T is possible. The refused unknown demands not a Salon but the Interval of Suspended Judgement. In the sequel to the first round of this debate, the Interval of Suspended Judgement will be investigated. (shrink)

Answering a call for a 2013 exhibition at Ars Electronica bridging art and synthetic biology, a group of artists and designers offer ‘Blueprints for the Unknown’. Their fictional scenarios offer possible futures already embedded in and ready to become our present. By imagining potential events and soon-to-be organisms and bodies, these blueprints perform the untenable relationship between predictable bioengineered living forms and the unpredictable contexts within which such life subsists over time. While synthetic biology focuses on the particularities of (...) each micro-manipulation within a specific timeframe, art practices can speculate on the wider reverberations of modified life, making visible the vulnerable encounters and uneven exchanges across variable living forms and scales, from molecule to human, synthetic to organic. This paper explores the indeterminacies that arise as living forms become synthetically modified, reorganized and redirected at will. (shrink)

Contractualist work in business ethics as well as in economic organization theory views opportunistic behaviors as problematic since they create economic harm and are often considered to violate ethical norms. Yet, much of the empirical literature on opportunism has adopted a rather simplistic definition of opportunistic behaviors as behaviors that violate formal and/or relational contracts and assumed that instances of opportunism can be unequivocally defined by simply referring to the content of contracts. The consequence of this assumption has been a (...) disregard for factors other than the content of contracts that may influence whether exchange partners judge an unexpected behavior they face during exchange relationships as opportunistic or not. The present investigation explores the factors that shape exchange partners’ subjective opportunism judgments through two vignette-based laboratory experiments. Results from the first experiment, where subjects were asked to take the perspective of a harmed party, show that opportunism judgments are influenced by the type of the behavior, type of the causal account provided for the behavior, perceived type of the exchange, and personality traits of the actor making the judgment. The second experiment, in which subjects were asked to take the perspective of the transgressor, demonstrates the influence of perspective. In particular, victims are more likely to assess a given unexpected behavior as opportunistic than transgressors, and their judgments do not relate to the underlying factors in the same way as the victims’ judgments. I discuss implications in terms of the governance of interfirm exchange relationships. (shrink)

The article focuses on the complex positioning of people from disempowered backgrounds with respect to liberalism and liberal dividends. The author offers the term liberal bargain, paraphrasing Deniz Kandiyoti’s “patriarchal bargain” and Cynthia Cockburn’s “ethnic bargain,” and dwells on the interconnections between the three. The liberal bargain indicates the particular consciousness and symbolic whitening that “colorized” people tend to adopt when they attempt to cash in on the liberal promise. Within the discourse of postcolonial feminism, the concept is intended to (...) promote the discussion of power differentials among women, through refining the analytically dissatisfactory color metaphors habitually used to address issues of hegemony and ethnocentrism. (shrink)

Brain, Mind and Consciousness are the research concerns of psychiatrists, psychologists, neurologists, cognitive neuroscientists and philosophers. All of them are working in different and important ways to understand the workings of the brain, the mysteries of the mind and to grasp that elusive concept called consciousness. Although they are all justified in forwarding their respective researches, it is also necessary to integrate these diverse appearing understandings and try and get a comprehensive perspective that is, hopefully, more than the sum of (...) their parts. There is also the need to understand what each one is doing, and by the other, to understand each other's basic and fundamental ideological and foundational underpinnings. This must be followed by a comprehensive and critical dialogue between the respective disciplines. Moreover, the concept of mind and consciousness in Indian thought needs careful delineation and critical/evidential enquiry to make it internationally relevant. The brain-mind dyad must be understood, with brain as the structural correlate of the mind, and mind as the functional correlate of the brain. To understand human experience, we need a triad of external environment, internal environment and a consciousness that makes sense of both. We need to evolve a consensus on the definition of consciousness, for which a working definition in the form of a Consciousness Tetrad of Default, Aware, Operational and Evolved Consciousness is presented. It is equally necessary to understand the connection between physical changes in the brain and mental operations, and thereby untangle and comprehend the lattice of mental operations. Interdisciplinary work and knowledge sharing, in an atmosphere of healthy give and take of ideas, and with a view to understand the significance of each other's work, and also to critically evaluate the present corpus of knowledge from these diverse appearing fields, and then carry forward from there in a spirit of cooperative but evidential and critical enquiry - this is the goal for this monograph, and the work to follow. (shrink)

Various studies on the impact of religiousness on consumer ethics have produced mixed results and suggested further clarification on the issue. Therefore, this article examines the effect of religiousness, materialism, and long-term orientation on consumer ethics in Indonesia. The results from 356 respondents in Indonesia, the largest Muslim population in the world, showed that intrinsic religiousness positively affected consumer ethics, while extrinsic social religiousness negatively affected consumer ethics. However, extrinsic personal religiousness did not affect consumer ethical beliefs dimensions. Unlike other (...) studies in developed countries, materialism and long-term orientation influenced only a few of the consumer ethical beliefs dimensions in this study. To date, the study is one of the first empirical studies to explore the impact of religiousness on consumer ethics in Indonesia. The study contributes to the debate on the impact of religiousness on consumer ethics and can assist managers and public policymakers in their effort to mitigate unethical consumer activities in Indonesia. (shrink)

The current research investigates how religiosity can influence unethicality in a consumption context. In particular, considering the link between extrinsic religious orientations and unethicality, this research clarifies why and when extrinsic religiosity leads to unethical decisions. Across two studies, findings show that ethnocentrism is both a mediator and a moderator of the effects of extrinsic religiosity on consumers’ ethical judgments. This is because extrinsic religiosity leads to ethnocentrism, and in-group loyalty manifested through ethnocentrism increases support for unethical consumer actions, thus (...) establishing ethnocentrism as a mediator. At the same time, different levels of ethnocentrism can also influence how extrinsic religiosity leads to supporting unethical consumption via self-righteousness, thus establishing ethnocentrism as a moderator. The findings from this research have significant implications for diverse stakeholders who have an interest in religiosity and consumer behavior. (shrink)

We investigate iterating the construction of $C^{*}$, the L-like inner model constructed using first order logic augmented with the “cofinality $\omega $ ” quantifier. We first show that $\left (C^{*}\right )^{C^{*}}=C^{*}\ne L$ is equiconsistent with $\mathrm {ZFC}$, as well as having finite strictly decreasing sequences of iterated $C^{*}$ s. We then show that in models of the form $L[U]$ we get infinite decreasing sequences of length $\omega $, and that an inner model with a measurable cardinal is required for that.

PrécisDespite significant scholarship, research, and funding dedicated to implementing criminal diversion programs over the past two decades, persons with serious mental illness and substance use disorders remain substantially overrepresented in United States jails and prisons. Why are so many U.S. adults with behavioral health problems incarcerated instead of receiving treatment and other support to recover in the community? In this paper, we explore this persistent problem within the context of “relentless unmet need” in U.S. behavioral health (Alegría et al., 2021).

We consider the modality “ $\varphi $ is true in every $\sigma $ -centered forcing extension,” denoted $\square \varphi $, and its dual “ $\varphi $ is true in some $\sigma $ -centered forcing extension,” denoted $\lozenge \varphi $, which give rise to the notion of a principle of $\sigma $ -centered forcing. We prove that if ZFC is consistent, then the modal logic of $\sigma $ -centered forcing, i.e., the ZFC-provable principles of $\sigma $ -centered forcing, is exactly $\mathsf (...) {S4.2}$. We also generalize this result to other related classes of forcing. (shrink)

Excellent compilation of incidents of irrationality in India with special reference to Tamil Nadu.

There is a consensus among scientists that climate change is an existing, growing, and human-made threat to our planet. The topic is a divisive issue worldwide, including among people of faith. Little research has focused on the relationship between (non)religious belief and climate change. Hence, in Studies 1 and 2, the authors explore the impact of religious/non-religious orientations: intrinsic (religion as an end in itself), extrinsic (religion as a means to an end), quest (a journey toward religious understanding), and non-religious (...) orientation (i.e., atheistic) on consumer attitudes toward the environment, focusing on recycling advertisements with (non)religious cues. Further, in Study 3, we examine the underlying causal mechanism of environmental identity and the moderating effect of political views on consumers’ lack of belief in climate change. The results show that religious people are less committed to the environment and climate change and that atheism positively affects recycling and climate change identity. The findings offer practical implications in that advertising campaigns need to be endorsed by religious leaders and channeled within the confines of the religious institutions they represent. (shrink)