The idea of artificiality has a pedigree that predates the computer age and advanced technologies. This text is a quest for lineages of the notion of the artificial within mythology, biology, social sciences and philosophy. As a research tool, it allows me to look at the ideas of other beings that go beyond the current technologically-fabulated reality we live in.

Equally, the concept of artificial is not rooted in one field of study alone. Still, it is the foundation and driving force of how the human relates to the rest of the world, how it exists in it, and how agency is assigned to both human and non-human actors. The conceptualisation and application of the artificial are multiple, and I approach those from the defined perspectives of the genealogy as a historical technique. The complexity of the present derives partially from the possibility to consider other forms of knowledge through the unstable definition of unnatural and artificial towards mythological histories and imagination. As a consequence, natural evolution can be accelerated and fictionalised. 

SOFT, HARD, WET – Speculative Genealogy of the Artificial is trying to shift the position of viewing, which always has been human-centred. A way of thinking that presents objects in a flat and equal ontological order to avoid the centralisation of power and dominance of one form of life over another. A world-changing from nature to simulation, from things to information. Though initially as opposites, organisms and machines and humans and animals are all agents in a constant interweaving flow. Artificial life is being produced by Gods and later humans in their ever known attempt to be in power, wanting to live forever and overcome natural limitations.

The text doesn’t answer questions, but instead, it is a statement that creates a territory where my work can play in. Both science and art ask questions to which answers don’t exist yet. A dysfunctional algorithm making love to a salamander doesn’t tell the tale. Of you, the tale is told. Some secrets might remain unknown, but the stories of others must be told. I can imagine how the shock that humanity is currently experiencing can be seen as a positive conspiracy (from the Latin “conspirare” — “breathing together”), through which we establish new models of collective and shared breathing, both with each other and with the Earth which we have long neglected. Because breath is a function and eternal interest, just like science.