Art and Cosmotechnics

Description:

This book opens the way to rethinking technology beyond Gestell, by exploring the obscure paths of the experience of art.

— Augustin Berque, author of Thinking Through Landscape

Following closely on the heels of Recursivity and Contingency (2019), a masterful treatise on cybernetics and German Idealism, Art and Cosmotechnics attempts to excavate once more the speculative role the arts might play in fostering experimental modes of philosophical and scientific thought.

— Los Angeles Review of Books

it can be said that the ontological and cosmotechnical operation proposed by Yuk Hui in his book Art and Cosmotechnics provides some essential conceptual tools for structuring and articulating a concrete proposal for the revision and reconsideration of Western knowledge and culture… From this point of view, and alongside a certain reinterpretation of French phenomenology – in this case that of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, but also that of Michel Henry, Henry Maldiney and Mikel Dufrenne –, Hui seems to overcome the empirical tendencies characteristic of an increasingly widespread post- phenomenological approach to technology and to bring the transcendental, phenomenological and genetic dimensions of technical and aesthetic experience back to the centre of the debate profoundly and innovatively.

—I castelli di Yale

Art and Cosmotechnics is a must-read…to unlock the transformative potential of art vis-à-vis technologies.

—Neural Magazine

Yuk Hui has played a key role in creating a framework within which current art-historical discourse regarding this vital subject can thrive.

—Leonardo

Art and Cosmotechnics presents itself as a ingenious articulation of Hui’s main philosophical influences, culminating in an original and elaborate proposal about central themes in the history of thought. [Arte e Cosmotécnica se apresenta como uma engenhosa articulação das principais influências filosóficas de Hui, culminando em uma original e elaborada proposta acerca de temas centrais na história do pensamento.]

—Cadernos PET Filosofia

In light of current discourses on AI and robotics, what do the various experiences of art contribute to the rethinking of technology today?

Charting a course through Greek tragic thought, cybernetic logic, and the aesthetics of Chinese landscape painting (山水, shanshui— mountain and water painting), Art and Cosmotechnics addresses the challenge to art and philosophy posed by contemporary technological transformation. How might a renewed understanding of the varieties of experience of art be possible in the face of discourses surrounding artificial intelligence and robotics? Departing from Hegel’s thesis on the end of art and Heidegger’s assertion of the end of philosophy, Art and Cosmotechnics travels an unfamiliar trajectory of thought to arrive at a new relation between art and technology.