Eduardo Kac & Avital Ronell: Life Extreme: An Illustrated Guide to the New Life

by Eduardo Kac, Avital Ronell

Humankind has imagined and depicted fantastical creatures since the formation of the first societies. Beasts such as the Chimera, the Golem, the Minotaur and Galatea could be said to be culturally symptomatic. Today, in the twenty-first century, we witness the emergence of a new class of organisms that are first imagined and then--through the agency of biotechnologies--brought to life. What once was myth is today a medium. In Eduardo Life Extreme , Kac, the pioneer of "bio art" who is internationally recognized for celebrated works such as "Genesis" and the fluorescent green "GFP Bunny," has selected 36 new organisms and invited the prominent philosopher Avital Ronell to discover these new beings. The book, published in Dis Voir's new Encounters series, is prefaced by Kac's "Anthroduction" and includes a whimsical taxonomy of taxonomies, offering a unique classification method for future species.

128 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2007

Reviews

[Kevin]

I'm a long time fan boy of Ms. Ronell, so I'm more than willing to be receptive to the (one hopes) productive failures and resistances a text like this will put up, but even so, this is one of the crappiest book designs one could imagine.