The Work of Art in the Age of Biocybernetic Reproduction

Abstract

The life of images has taken a decisive turn in our time: the oldest myth about the creation of living images, the fabrication of an intelligent organism by artificial, technical means, has now become a theoretical and practical possibility thanks to new constellations of media at many different levels. The convergence of genetic and computational technologies with new forms of speculative capital has turned cyberspace and biospace, the inner structure of organisms, into frontiers for technical innovation, appropriation, and exploitation—new forms of objecthood and territoriality for a new form of empire. In AI, Stephen Spielberg registers this change by telling a story about the invention of an image that is, quite literally, a "desiring machine." David, the contemporary answer to Pinocchio, is a robot boy with dreams and desires, and with an apparently fully elaborated human subjectivity. He is programmed to love and to demand love, a demand that becomes so obsessive (he is in competition with his real human "brother" for the love of his mother) that he is rejected and becomes an orphan. To the question, "What do pictures want?" the answer in this instance is clear: they want to be loved, and to be "real."