Interact or Die!

Title: Interact or Die!
Author: Various
Editors: Arjen Mulder, Joke Brouwer
Issued: 2007
Genre: Interdisciplinary theory
Language: English
Type: Paperback, illustrated, full color
Pages: 220
Dimensions: 16 x 23 cm
ISBN/EAN: 978-90-5662-577-1
Design: Joke Brouwer

With: Sean B. Carroll, Alberto Toscano, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Michael Hensel, Eva Jablonka, Noortje Marres, Brian Massumi, Detlef Mertins, Arjen Mulder, Lars Spuybroek, Gilbert Simondon.

Interaction is a defining characteristic of every living being. Bodies and objects build connections, form networks, and then, through interaction, achieve organization, structure, memory and heredity. The only selection criterion for interaction is whether it works, that is, whether it is operational. Interactivity is on the one hand a method of bringing something into being – a form, a structure, an organization, a body, an institute, a work of art – and on the other hand a way of dealing with it.

Interact or Die! takes an interdisciplinary approach to its theme. It contains a series of interviews with leading biologists in the field of evolutionary developmental biology (“evo-devo”) and with architects and art historians in the field of bioconstructivism. It also features a series of outstanding essays on interactive art, interactive politics and interactive philosophy.

Interact or Die! received the 2008 Media.Art.Research.Award from the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute and Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria.

“There is no information in the genes or in the environment unless it is interpreted by the organism.”

Essays And Interviews

• Joke Brouwer and Arjen Mulder: Interact or Die!
• Sean B. Carroll: The Genes and Switches for Animal Forms
• Eva Jablonka: Information Is Everything That Can Be Interpreted
• Arjen Mulder: The Excercise of Interactive Art
• Brian Massumi: The Thinking-Feeling of What Happens
• Jeanne van Heeswijk: Empathy as a Radical Act: An Argument for Scripting the City
• Detlef Mertins: Where Architecture Meets Biology
• Lars Spuybroek: The Aesthetics of Variation
• Michael Hensel: Absolute Convolut-o-rama
• Noortje Marres: There Is Drama in Networks
• Alberto Toscano: Technical Culture and the Limits of Interaction: A Note on Simondon
• Gilbert Simondon: Technical Individualization