Wetwares: Experiments in Postvital Living (Theory Out of Bounds, V. 24)

250 Pages·2003·0.74 MB·English

by  Richard Doyle

Wetwares
Edited by
Sandra Buckley
Michael Hardt
Brian Massumi
24 Wetwares: Experiments in Postvital Living Richard Doyle
...UNCONTAINED
23 Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed William E. Connolly
22 Globalizing AIDS Cindy Patton
BY
21 Modernity at Sea: Melville, Marx, Conrad in Crisis Cesare Casarino
20 Means without End: Notes on Politics Giorgio Agamben
THE
19 The Invention of Modern Science Isabelle Stengers
18 Methodologies of the Oppressed Chela Sandoval
DISCIPLINES,
17 Proust and Signs: The Complete Text Gilles Deleuze
16 Deleuze: The Clamor of Being Alain Badiou
INSUBORDINATE
15 Insurgencies: Constituent Power and
the Modern State Antonio Negri
14 When Pain Strikes Bill Burns, Cathy Busby, and Kim Sawchuk, Editors
13 Critical Environments: Postmodern Theory and PRACTICES OF RESISTANCE
the Pragmatics of the “Outside” Cary Wolfe
12 The Metamorphoses of the Body José Gil ...Inventing,
11 The New Spinoza Warren Montag and Ted Stolze, Editors
excessively,
10 Power and Invention:
Situating Science Isabelle Stengers in the between...
9 Arrow of Chaos:
Romanticism and Postmodernity Ira Livingston
8 Becoming-Woman Camilla Griggers
7 A Potential Politics: PROCESSES
Radical Thought in Italy Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt, Editors
6 Capital Times:
Tales from the Conquest of Time Éric Alliez
5 The Year of Passages Réda Bensmaïa
4 Labor of Dionysus: OF
A Critique of the State-Form Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
3 Bad Aboriginal Art: Tradition,
Media, and Technological Horizons Eric Michaels
2 The Cinematic Body Steven Shaviro
1 The Coming Community Giorgio Agamben HYBRIDIZATION
Wetwares
Experiments in Postvital Living
Richard Doyle
Theory Out of Bounds Volume 24
UniversityofMinnesotaPress
Minneapolis • London
Copyright 2003 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted,
in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without
the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Doyle, Richard, 1963–
Wetwares : experiments in postvital living / Richard Doyle.
p. cm. — (Theory out of bounds ; v. 24)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN0-8166-4008-4 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8166-4009-2 (pbk. : alk paper)
1. Artificial life. 2. Life. I. Title. II. Series.
BD418.8 .D69 2003
113'.8—dc21
2002155306
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
The University of Minnesota
is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Amy and Jackson
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Chapter 0. Welcome to Wetwares™, N.0 1
Chapter 1. Representing Life for a Living 19
Chapter 2. Simflesh, Simbones:
At Play in the Artificial Life Ribotype 43
Chapter 3. Disciplined by the Future:
The Promising Bodies of Cryonics 63
Chapter 4. “Give Me a Body, Then”: Corporeal Time-Images 89
Chapter 5. “Remains to Be Seen”: A Self-Extracting Amalgam 101
Chapter 6. Uploading Anticipation, Becoming Silicon 121
Chapter 7. Dot Coma: The Dead Zone of Media and
the Replication of Family Values 145
Chapter 8. “Take My Bone Marrow, Please”: The Community
in Which We Have Organs in Common 173
Chapter 9. Wetwares; or, Cutting Up a Few Aliens 181
Chapter 10. Sympathy for the Alien: Informatic Ecologies and
the Proliferation of Abduction 193
Notes 217
Index 233

Acknowledgments
even the most schematic transcript of the voices and impulses that have
contributed to the production of this book would take longer to write than the book
itself, so, dear readers, let the impossible compression begin.
Various allies have helped keep the Doyle going and periodically
becoming, including, but not limited to, Celexa, Wellbutrin, Goya Espresso, Spring
Creek Watershed, Rothrock State Forest, and McCoy Natatorium. Thanks go to
the National Security State: its idiotic drug war has vastly improved the genetics and
potency of Cannabis Indica and Sativa and its various hybrids. Good work, fellas!
The infosphere has been almost as productive as these more fa-
miliar allies; this book was begun during the first outbursts of the World Wide Web,
whose exponential growth is the locationless prime mover of this paltry production
and its testimony to the body of an emerging ecstatosphere. Forget the global brain
and give thanks to evolution for getting on beyond cognition...
Speaking of forgetting: Sounds have worked on teaching me how
to listen, and some of them have included: DJ Spooky, everybody who has ever turned
a turntable into an instrument of chaotic joy, the recursive sounds of feedback—all
praise Hendrix—the Infernal Chrome Gods and WKPS.
Every one of my students, both undergraduate and graduate, have
hacked UC Berkeley and Penn State into ecologies of learning for all of us: thanks,