LIFE: A Transdisciplinary Inquiry

LIFE: A Transdisciplinary Inquiry examines nature, cognition and society as an interwoven tapestry across disciplinary boundaries. This volume explores how information and communication are instrumental in and for living systems, acknowledging an integrative account of media as environments and technologies. The aim of the collection is a fuller and richer account of everyday life through a spectrum of insights from internationally known scholars of the natural sciences (physical and life sciences), social sciences and the arts. How or should life be defined? If life is a medium, how is it mediated? Viewed as interactions, transactions and contexts of ecosystems, life can be recognized through patterns across the sciences, including metabolisms, habitats and lifeworlds. The book also integrates discussions of embodiment, ecological values, literacies and critiques, with bioinspired, synthetic and historical design approaches to envision what could constitute artful living in an ever-evolving, interdependent world. The volume foregrounds systemic approaches to life, drawing on a wide range of disciplines and fields, including architecture, art, biology, bioengineering, chemistry, cinema studies, communication, computer science, conservation, cultural studies, design, ecology, environmental studies, information science, landscape architecture, geography, journalism, materials science, media archaeology, media studies, philosophy, physics, plant signalling and development, political economy, sociology and system dynamics. This is the second volume in the MEDIA • LIFE • UNIVERSE Trilogy. It follows and builds upon the 2021 collection MEDIA: A Transdisciplinary Inquiry ISBN 9781789382655

Table of Contents:
Preface to a Trilogy Introduction Genealogy ‘Life, Nature and Systems’, Fritjof Capra ‘What is Life?’, Mark A. Bedau ‘Why Life Cannot Be Defined’, Carol E. Cleland Information and Ecologies ‘Propagating Organization: An Enquiry’, Stuart Kauffman, Robert K. Logan, Robert Este, Randy Goebel, David Hobill and Ilya Shmulevich ‘Friends, Neighbours and Enemies: An Overview of the Communal and Social Biology of Plants’, Roza D. Bilas, Amanda Bretman and Tom Bennett ‘The Conceptual Ecology of the Human Microbiome’, Nicolae Morar and Brendan J. M. Bohannan Enactions and Values ‘From Life to Mind’, Mark L. Johnson ‘Metabolism and Drift’, Thomas Nail ‘From ALife to No Life: On Mediatic Contexts of Life and Death’, Jussi Parikka Ecomediations and Education ‘Media and Information Literacies for a Living World: Engaging with a Cyberist Era’, Divina Frau-Meigs ‘Journalistic Learning and Intentional Teaching with Technologies: STEM and Rural Communities’, Ed Madison ‘Dirtying Ecocinema Studies’, Salma Monani and Stephen Rust Syntheses and Biodesigning ‘System Dynamics, Machine Learning and Structural Validation’, William Schoenberg and Jeremy Swartz ‘Life from the Edge of Synthetic Biology’, Pier Luigi Luisi ‘Templating Life: DNA as Nature’s Hard Drive, Version 2.0’, Mél Hogan and Tessa J. Brown Artful Lives and Metaliving ‘Aqueous Mediums, Urban Architectures, Anadromous Being’, Brook Muller ‘Satoyama and the Art of Rural Regeneration’, Diane Durston ‘Metaliving’, Jeremy Swartz Appendix: Exhibition • Experience • Nature Notes on Contributors Index

About the Author :
Jeremy Swartz is the founder of Metamedia @ UofO, curator and co-director of the What is...? series, courtesy research associate in Media Studies at the University of Oregon, and adjunct assistant professor in Communication at Southern Oregon University. He is co-editor of MEDIA: A Transdisciplinary Inquiry (Intellect/University of Chicago Press 2021) with Janet Wasko.   Janet Wasko is a professor in Media Studies and Knight Chair in Communication Research Emeritus at the University of Oregon. She is the author or editor of 23 books including MEDIA: A Transdisciplinary Inquiry (Intellect/University of Chicago Press 2021) with Jeremy Swartz, Understanding Disney: The Manufacture of Fantasy, 2nd ed. (Polity 2020).

Review :
'An incredibly accessible collection of essays that link “natural, cognitive, and social systems” in an attempt to expand the definition of life beyond the biophysical and explore new intersections of culture and biology. [...] As an environmental communication scholar, documentary filmmaker, musician, and activist, I consistently found myself marveling at the revelations contained in these chapters. The essays in this volume will make excellent additions to both graduate and undergraduate courses in environmental communication, media studies, environmental science, environmental humanities, philosophy and beyond. In a world that is facing a number of “wicked problems,” all connected in some way to the ecological crisis, this volume helps us to recognize the limits of our previous models that have shaped so many of our disciplines and look to emerging research that reveals our interconnections – and interdependence. There are big challenges ahead and we need new modes of inquiry if we have any hope of solving our global problems. The transdisciplinary, systems thinking and system science mode of inquiry found in these essays offers us a model of how to respond to the current crisis, expand the strength of our disciplinary work, help students learn more holistically, and translate our work into accessible forms that engage publics and contribute to a deliberative process of solution seeking. I give this book 5 green thumbs up!' ‘Tolle Lege — though rarely apropos, this stunning book meets the criteria. Destined to be a classic, it revolutionizes communication studies. The impressibility of life systems is imagined globally through sophisticated research. Instead of marginalia and augmented scholasticism, these profound essays teach us innovation and gravitas’. ‘Undertaking an ambitious intellectual journey, this volume traverses realms of material cultures and lifeworlds, ecologies and symbolic systems, ethics and being. It delves into our deeply mediated world that is nonetheless embedded in nature and embodied in life forms large and small, while addressing some of the most meaningful and existential questions facing humanity, the planet and beyond’. ‘The editors ask us to zoom both in and out to see how we consider life itself, with eye-opening implications for understanding communication and its possibilities. As biofabrication and artificial intelligence become entwined with human existence, the questions are urgent, timely and fascinating’. ‘Extending perspectives from media and communication research into life sciences, this second collection in the transdisciplinary series both widens and deepens the reader’s understanding of information as, at once, a material and a symbolic phenomenon’. ‘In the early 21st century, a philosophy of openness marks, embraces and encourages exploration, collaboration and synthesis across traditional boundaries. This journey encourages us to rethink our relationship with the natural world and challenges us to see life as an intricate dance of interactions, transactions and contexts’.