resistance and rejection from representatives of dogmatic or ‹nostalgically› oriented positions, since instability can be triggered by the querying of the classical notions of truth, reality, objectivity, transcendence, autonomy, or originality. These conservative positions conform with those of a consumer society fixated on objects and their symbolic-economic, strategically articulated values (authenticity, originality, expensiveness). The contradiction of contemporary pluralism reveals itself in this area: one demands unrestricted access to new technologies yet at the same time avoids accepting, or refuses to accept, those radical changes resulting from the cultural integration and use of these very technologies. The deconstruction of traditional artistic values and their aesthetics evidently began at the center of art itself the instant its methods were added to those of digital technologies.

If wishing to paraphrase the basic idea of artificial life, according to which the computer is to the researcher that which nature was to the classical natural scientist, one might say that the current digital and telematic systems are to the artist in the role of

researcher that which the laws of perspective were to the Renaissance artist, namely far more than purely a set of instruments, since they influenced the premises and the conception of art itself, along with its aesthetics.

As a system, therefore, art is closer to science than ever before, and contemporary science, which is concerned (like endo-physics) with necessity and contingency, is becoming the science of the possible, investigating not only how the world is, but also how new models of the world might most efficiently and plausibly be generated with computer-assisted media (hence the proposition of endo-aesthetics). Perhaps such an expansion of personal experience of the world will enable us to better understand what significance and consequences action has for our own environment, and to exercise modesty and tolerance while playing our part in constructing social ‹realities.›

Translation: Tom Morrison