Intended as a branch of synthetic biology, xenobiology aims to design and build non-standard life forms, that is to constructively venture into biological otherness. According to this creative and speculative character, it challenges the principles of synthetic biology itself, which is tied to a fundamentally reductionist approach. Xenobiology does not treat life as a closed code, but rather as a field of ontological innovation; in this sense, it evokes a biosemiotic paradigm that accounts for sense-making and non-anthropomorphic interactions. Xenobiology, however, can also be intended as the “divergent” and most speculative part of astrobiology, namely as a theory of contact with extra-terrestrial life. According to this second meaning, it searches for and speculates on alien biologies. Building on these two meanings, the paper aims to outline a semiotic theory of otherness, or ‘xenosemiotics’, that shifts the focus from communication to morphogenetic information.
The article aims to establish a theoretical dialogue between the work of Alberto Burri, one of the most influential Italian artists of the 20th century, and the late aesthetics of Gilles Deleuze. By drawing on the concept of image outlined by Deleuze in The Exhausted (1992), Burri’s art is conceptualized as the unfolding of a dimension of pure sense that singularizes forms rather than identifying bodies and signs. This ontological “purity” comes from a deep engagement with matter, considered as a plurality of material potencies. In conclusion, the article proposes an original understanding of image as a pre-symbolic zone of ontological collapse.
A neo-cosmological sensibility seems to pervade many of today’s philosophical debates. But what does it mean to conceive of a cosmic totality after Kant and after the entrance of cosmology into the circle of sciences? What does this new sensibility entail and what are its consequences on our thought, sensibility, representations, and artistic practices? This issue aims to address these and other questions from different viewpoints and traditions, with particular attention to the aesthetic implications of the new philosophical cosmologies.
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