A silicone jellyfish with a rat’s heart, a drone that smells using the antenna of a moth, wearables made from cultured human skin, an AI-populated digital snack bar in the metaverse. These projects and many more offer a mind-bending, head-turning vision of the future that Madeline Schwartzman demonstrates is just around the corner.
Curated from new developments in synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, robotics, engineering, biology, and art, this broad-ranging survey demonstrates the myriad ways in which our perception of what it means to be alive has dramatically changed. Where do we draw the new lines? Are there any boundaries we should not cross? And what if?…? By examining these new “beings,” Alive maps out a vision of new partnerships, uncanny hybrids, and collaborative intelligences, as science fiction rapidly becomes science fact.
Book cover: Adapted from “Analog Electronic Songbird” (2018), by Kelly Heaton.
Reviews
An exciting encyclopedia of weird scientific projects that explore what it means to be alive, perfect for anyone curious about what it will mean to be a human in the future… Schwartzman is an extraordinary curator… Thought-provoking [and] well-designed.
— BookPage (starred review)
Madeline Schwartzman brings together scientific research, AI, design, and art to explore the flourishing menagerie where the distinction between living and non-living is blurred… [Her book] contains essential reflections on the need to expand our views of what it means to be alive in a world where hybrid beings are being manufactured, engineered or bred… Alive is a brilliant book. Pop and profound. Humorous and thought-provoking. It strikes a balance between lightness and an urgent call to integrate ethics into computer and life sciences.
— We Make Money Not Art
Contributors
Madeline Schwartzman
Author
Madeline Schwartzman is an artist, writer, filmmaker, architect, and educator who explores human narratives and the human sensorium through all of the above mediums. She is also the author of See Yourself Sensing and See Yourself X.
Edward Ashton
Foreword By
Kelly Heaton
Cover Design or Artwork By
