No. 1 (2018): Dolly and the other Prometheus: images and challenges of the s.XXI

In 1968, Philip K. Dick invited us to think about the possibility that androids could dream of electric sheep, opening under our feet a disturbing abyss (and alluding to the formulation of M. Mori ^[1][1] in his famous essay of 1970). ) that grips us from the possibility of feeding and giving new life to the classic myth of Prometheus. Three decades later, on February 22, 1997, Ian Willmut and Keith Cambell of the Roslin Institute discovered that, if so, these artificial sheep would not have to be mechanical or electrical; they could be of a domestic race like Finn Dorsten, i.e. they could all be clones like Dolly.

"Dolly and the other Prometheus: images and challenges of the s.xxi" is the title with which, the editorial team of Umática magazine, aspires to inaugurate this new space for academic discussion and dissemination of research results related to areas of creation, art, and visual culture.

It is a questionable title and, therefore, sufficiently controversial to provoke a debate on the different theoretical, ethical and social implications of technological transformations as a systemic factor of categorial destabilization. Among other implications, it triggers the need for a constant reconceptualization of basic notions that, for obvious reasons, do not seem to have to be redefined -such as, for example, the very notion of image- revealing the artificial character of a construction of reality that Unforeseen and unpredictable changes us as subjects. Somewhat alarmingly, it is said, for example, that the aforementioned technological transformations provoke a "desocialization" of interpersonal relationships that are linked to the vertiginous spectacularization of the individual in intelligent systems and devices, and that also re-introduce new forms of domain and technological construction - social and imaginary - of all of us in this civilization of the image.

The main objective of this first issue has been to collect a series of contributions made by researchers and creators in the different arbitrated formats that the journal offers (ie research or review articles, creation projects or visual essays) whose focus and development serves to fuel a critical debate on the disciplinary interconnection between science, art, and technology.

This first issue therefore includes works related to the broad spectrum of challenges [technological, ethical, sociological, conceptual, etc.] posed - today, and, predictably, tomorrow - by the diverse spectrum of the developments in the production and uses of images: from images used to make the plans of the underground chambers of a pyramid, to orientate oneself in the Moscow metro or to illustrate a work about photosynthesis, to images generated in a autonomous by an interactive device or the daily production and mass dissemination of self-photos (Selfie). From the RealDolls, the robots designed by the company Boston Dynamics (bought four years ago by Google), etc., to the paintings of Juan Francisco Casas or the works of Ron Mueck, for placing us now in the field of Art. From a certain point of view, such transformations also confront us the challenges derived from the impact of the new developments of the Theory of Images on the academic disciplines that have traditionally taken over the study of the evolution of images - i.e. the History of Art, the "Semiotics of images", etc.

Umática labels itself as a research space "on analysis and creation of the image" and, therefore, one of our general purposes - and also of this number in particular - is to explore ways that can relativize the semiotic approach of the images to understand the phenomena that shape our visual culture.

[1].?Mori, Masahiro (1970). Bukimi no tani (?????) The uncanny valley. Energy, 7 (4), 33–35.