Techno-Organic Practices in the Nordic Art

Abstract

Title: Techno-Organic Practices in the Nordic Art. The paper presents recent artistic works from Nordic countries that exemplify a technology-infused mindset that is dominating our (humans) relationship towards natural environment. There is a visible shift from solely hardware- and software-focused new media art works towards practices that include biological matter and natural environment. Roy Ascott has claimed already in 2000: ‘MOISTWARE erodes the boundary between hardware and wetware’ (Ascott 2000). Biotechnology is an engineering discipline that has, in recent decades, entered the realm of the arts. A growing number of artists utilizing technological and biotechnological methods are also inextricably pairing art practices with living matter. Historical antecedents for this type of art can be traced to art that deals with biological or technological matter, for example land art, art that included animals, and digital art works. The art works presented in this paper (including one from the author) are primarily by artists from the Nordic countries and they are concerned of natural environment. The author has named techno-organic practices the type of artistic practices, which include both biological and technological agencies. The exemplary works present the merger of hardware, software and wetware, as well as they point towards a technology-infused mindset that is impacting the emergence of these works. These artists present new types of understandings of nature/natural environment where it is embedded into a dominant technoscientific logic of today's world.