{"product_id":"alien-agency-isbn-9780262549615","title":"Alien Agency","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn investigation into what happens in creative practice when the materials of art and research behave and perform in ways beyond the creators' intentions.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eAlien Agency\u003c\/i\u003e, Chris Salter tells three stories of \u003ci\u003eart in the making\u003c\/i\u003e. Salter examines three works in which the materials of art—the “stuff of the world”—behave and perform in ways beyond the creator's intent, becoming unknown, surprising, alien. Studying these works—all three deeply embroiled in and enabled by science and technology—allows him to focus on practice through the experiential and affective elements of creation. Drawing on extensive ethnographic observation and on his own experience as an artist, Salter investigates how researcher-creators organize the conditions for these experimental, performative assemblages—assemblages that sidestep dichotomies between subjects and objects, human and nonhuman, mind and body, knowing and experiencing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSalter reports on the sound artists Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger (O+A) and their efforts to capture and then project unnoticed urban sounds; tracks the multi-year project TEMA (Tissue Engineered Muscle Actuators) at the art research lab SymbioticA and its construction of a hybrid “semi-living” machine from specially grown mouse muscle cells; and describes a research-creation project (which he himself initiated) that uses light, vibration, sound, smell, and other sensory stimuli to enable audiences to experience other cultures' “ways of sensing.” Combining theory, diary, history, and ethnography, Salter also explores a broader question: How do new things emerge into the world and what do they do?Acknowledgments ix\u003cbr\u003e Preface xi\u003cbr\u003e Introduction 1\u003cbr\u003e I Resonances 19\u003cbr\u003e 1 Hearing Perspectives 21\u003cbr\u003e 2 From Agency to Practice 40\u003cbr\u003e 3 Green Belts in Goethe ’ s City 41\u003cbr\u003e 4 Stories Told of Sonic Reals 50\u003cbr\u003e 5 Four Ears, or Listening as Making 53\u003cbr\u003e 6 Can Architecture Hear? 62\u003cbr\u003e 7 Hearing View 65\u003cbr\u003e 8 Affects and Atmospheres 80\u003cbr\u003e 9 Tuning 83\u003cbr\u003e II Cellular Vitality 85\u003cbr\u003e 1 A Living Machine? 88\u003cbr\u003e 2 Suspicions of a Wet Kind 92\u003cbr\u003e 3 Experiments in a Lab at the End of the World 94\u003cbr\u003e 4 The Tissue Culture Point of View — Part I 107\u003cbr\u003e 5 Techniques for Immortality 113\u003cbr\u003e 6 The Tissue Culture Point of View — Part II 116\u003cbr\u003e 7 Surface Tensions 119\u003cbr\u003e 8 The Tissue Culture Point of View — Part III 121\u003cbr\u003e 9 A Tutorial on Muscle Cell Energetics 124\u003cbr\u003e 10 Where the Art Is .   .   . 126\u003cbr\u003e 11 The Tacit Knowing of Tissue 127\u003cbr\u003e 12 A Revealing School Seminar 136\u003cbr\u003e 13 Goals and Purposes 138\u003cbr\u003e14 Tissue Culture Hands On 141\u003cbr\u003e15 Life ’ s Triumph in the Dish 150\u003cbr\u003e16 Eight Failed Experiments in Substrate Sketching 152\u003cbr\u003e17 Reflections on Bare Life at the Bench 155\u003cbr\u003e18 Collagen Trials While the Clock Ticks 157\u003cbr\u003e19 Suspension 162\u003cbr\u003e20 Is Life in Bodies? 163\u003cbr\u003eIII Sensorium 167\u003cbr\u003e1 Limens 169\u003cbr\u003e2 Mediations of Sensation 170\u003cbr\u003e3 Three Tensions 176\u003cbr\u003e4 Four Seminars in Sensory Experience 178\u003cbr\u003e5 Translation and Enactment 188\u003cbr\u003e6 Atmospheres Unveiled 190\u003cbr\u003e7 Technologies of the Senses 193\u003cbr\u003e8 Seeding Alter 195\u003cbr\u003e9 How to Invoke the Cosmos 201\u003cbr\u003e10 Experience Near-Far 210\u003cbr\u003e11 The Missing Sense 211\u003cbr\u003e12 The Conditions of Sensory Assemblage 214\u003cbr\u003e13 Displace 225\u003cbr\u003e14 “ Death, Limbo, and then Heaven down the Hall ” 228\u003cbr\u003e15 Is Sense in Culture? 235\u003cbr\u003eConclusion: Is the World a Laboratory? 239\u003cbr\u003eAfterword by Andrew Pickering 243\u003cbr\u003eNotes 247\u003cbr\u003eReferences 273\u003cbr\u003eIndex 297Chris Salter is an artist, Professor of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University, and Codirector of the Hexagram network for arts, culture, and technology. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eEntangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eAlien Agency: Experimental Encounters with Art in the Making\u003c\/i\u003e, both published by the MIT Press.","brand":"The MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304946421989,"sku":"NP9780262549615","price":50.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780262549615.jpg?v=1767721236","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/alien-agency-isbn-9780262549615","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}