Viral Behaviors: Viruses and Viral Phenomena Across Science, Technology, and the Arts

In a new era of global virology that requires novel methodologies to improve the comprehension of viruses and viral phenomena, Viral Behaviors explores the cultural, material, and artistic significance of viral agents.

Across a rich variety of case studies stemming from different areas of interest-covering literature, the graphic arts and scientific visualization, as well as performance, installation and bioart-this book asks whether embracing the complexity of viruses, rather than obsessively measuring, dissecting, or precisely mapping their parts and manifestations, may provide new methodological directions in the intersection of scientific thinking and artistic practice.

The book examines the struggles and successes of science and technology to tame the elusive nature and behavior of viruses, and the potential of art-based and cross-disciplinary collaborations to better communicate their complex making and intense entanglement with the world at large. Combining perspectives from art, philosophy, science and technology, it places biological and informational viruses alongside each other, revealing that, while the two types of agents affect the world in very different ways, their histories and manifestations contain surprising similarities that speak to a cultural continuum.

Viral Behaviors unravels the extraordinary mobility of viruses across disciplines, and their intersection with all aspects of culture, rather than their import within one specific disciplinary realm. It shows how the numerous attempts by artists, scientists and professionals to tackle, represent and appropriate viruses, and their intricate dynamism, can lead to new nuanced and sophisticated understandings of these substances and their related phenomena, and reveals the contribution of non-measurable or non-traditional practices in their construction and dissemination.

Roberta Buiani is assistant professor at New College, University of Toronto, Canada and directs the ArtSci Salon at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, Toronto, Canada. She is a Scholar in Residence at Sensorium, Centre for Digital Arts and Technology and a research associate at the Centre for Feminist Research, York University, UK.