What is Biomedia?

Abstract

provides the most in-depth engagement with the sciences of cybernetics and information theory, all these studies highlight the linguistic, conceptual, and metaphoric exchanges between cybernetics and molecular biology. The point in this essay is to acknowledge this important work, but to also move beyond the preoccupation with rhetoric and ask how contemporary biotech transforms the trope of a genetic "code" in a range of processes (wet-dry cycles in pharmacogenomics) and artifacts (genome databases, DNA chips, lab-grown tissues).

Coding the biodigital child: the biopolitics and pedagogic strategies of educational data science

“…He terms this 'biomedia' . Thacker (2004) suggests the concepts of 'encoding' , 'transcoding' , 'decoding' and 'recoding' to make sense of the coded corporeality of biomedia. in technical terms, encoding refers to the process of translating data from one format to another; in biomedia, data is seen to be amenable for extraction from bodily matter and having been encoded, to being transcoded across different media and formats.…”

Technology and affect: Towards a theory of inorganically organised objects

“…There is a variety of existing work on technology and affect (Parisi, 2013, Hansen, 2004, Clough, 2008, Thacker 2004. This literature is divided on whether affects can be differentiated according to their status as either natural or technical.…”

Open Variety Rights: Rethinking the Commodification of Plants

“…Of course, the problem is that there is little indication that the life sciences are interested in an approach that would seek ‘to optimize, enhance and renormalize what counts as biological’ in society (Thacker , 76). This would be looked upon by later generations as a tragedy; not one that is about the frustration of innovation that slows down, but one that is about the unrealized potential for an ‘open source society’ (see Hardt and Negri , 337–40).…”

“…On the other hand, the patenting of DNA increasingly coincides with its expression as a digital or electronic form of information that is derived from living materials and that ‘can be acted upon and interacted with in ways that would not otherwise be possible’ (Parry , 65; see also Pottage ). Alongside the legal status of DNA as a ‘composition of matter’, there are massive amounts of information in biological databases and, increasingly, the representations of DNA are mediated by the usage of informatics artefacts and informatics ways of thinking about life and nature (Haraway ; Thacker , ).…”