Daniel Beatty García
I am a writer, editor, and researcher with experience in cultural and commercial spheres, and degrees from Oxford, King’s College London, and the London School of Economics. My work explores how emergent technologies and cultural trends trouble our conceptual
paradigms. I am currently writing my PhD on organism-machine analogies in philosophy and biology, at University College London. This site samples my writing; for my editorial and collaborative work you can write me an email or see my CV.
The Inner Purpose of Waterlilies
As children my sister and I spent many afternoons in
Oxford’s botanical gardens. She liked the dry air of the cactus room, I the
mountain flowers and herbarium, but best of all, we agreed, was the tropical
greenhouse. Its deep, shaded pool was filled with tadpoles, and on the surface
were waterlilies so large I longed, so I remember, to climb onto their raftlike
pads. In the Amazon, a plaque reads, the leaves of the Victoria amazonica –
the largest of any plant – can grow to three metres in diameter; Oxford’s,
perhaps half that, still seemed broad enough to hold my weight. Smooth flesh
above, but ridged and richly-patterned as Gothic stonework below, patterns, the
plaque continues, that inspired Charles Paxton’s design of the Crystal Palace
in London in 1851, the same year the Water Lily House was built in Oxford. And
indeed Paxton, a renowned horticulturist, had discovered the strength of the
lilies’ ‘natural engineering’ upon finding his daughter Annie floating on a
leaf of an amazonica he had cultivated.
Read a longer excerpt
Philosophy PhD
image NORTH EAST
PURE PSYCHIC AUTOMATA
Giger vs Sorayama: Requiem
Would you fuck a robot? Obviously not C3P0, but what about a hot one? The question has been most forcefully posed by Hajime Sorayama, a Japanese artist and erotic illustrator. Sorayama's best-known series, Sexy Robot, centres on the figure of the Gynoid. Gynoids are female androids, and in Sorayama's pictures they are also sado-masochists, silver bodies and silver chains glinting.
Read more032c issue 36
Article
image SORT STUDIO
Monstrous Thoughts: Philosopher EUGENE THACKER on the “New Golden Age of Horror”
When René Descartes, sitting in his armchair in Leiden in 1641, invites his readers to meditate alongside him, you get the sense he could do with the company. The Meditations are considered the founding text of philosophical rationalism, but on a psychological reading of the “radical doubt” that follows, the primary motor of Descartes’ project is paranoia. The cloaked men in the yard might be robots, his senses deceptive, and, most famously, everything a dream from which he is only just awakening. All of which culminates in a thought experiment. Descartes asks himself whether it’s possible that he’s being deceived by an evil demon – a character he lifts from theology, but which we’d now tend to associate with the horror genre.
Read more032c
Interview
image PROOF OF STAKEWork Descriptions: Proof of Stake
Beecoin is a project by artists, biologists, engineers, programmers and bees.
As the meme has it, bees are dying globally at an alarming rate.
Their hives might be perfect networks, but as open systems
they’re susceptible to the anthropogenic destruction of their
habitats. Beecoin speculates a blockchain-based solution.
Read more
Work descriptions for an exhibition about technology, ownership, and blockchain technology at Kunstverein Hamburg, curated by Simon Denny
image PAUL MASON
The Last Optimist of the British Left: An Interview with PAUL MASON
As Britain Brexits, prospects for a better future seem to recede. But Paul Mason, last optimist of the British Left, will have none of it: a Clear Bright Future (Mason’s title, Trotsky’s words), he says, is almost within our grasp.
Read more032c
Article
image ESTHER CHOI
Confinement Kitchen: Feast On Your Modernist Heroes With ESTHER CHOI’s Le Corbuffet
Turtle soup, Aylesbury duckling, and lobster sauce: László Moholy-Nagy’s 1937 menu for a dinner in honor of Walter Gropius was a cut above the average meal in interwar London. What’s striking about the menu is not just that it sounds gross. It also drips with privilege. Food, like pretty much everything in the United Kingdom, is a marker of social status, and the Bauhaus banquet was no exception.
Read more032c issue 37
Article
image GIGCOGamifying Resistance: SPEKWORK’s Political Video Games
Gigco is a response to gamification – as Spekwork explain, “the use of strategies adapted from video games in order to make people work longer and harder.” But if you want to resist gamification, why gamify resistance? I met the collective at a gaming convention in Berlin to find out.
Read more032c
Interview
Product Review: The HOKA ONE ONE tor Ultra Hi WP
What boots should you be wearing in the anthropocene?
What we have here are the Hoka One One Tor Ultra Hi WPs in burnt olive/smog green, with tractor tread soles and waterproof uppers for when The Flood comes. These snaps were taken on my annual Day Out In The Countryside, but I’m going to be wearing them every day in town, too. Wearing walking boots all the time in a city – especially olive drab ones – gives you that very 2020 eco-friendly virtuecore vibe. Maybe you’re trying to take the trade union you belong to in a new, greener direction. Maybe you’re running for local government on an environmentalist platform, exposing the misdeeds of the local factory owner and demanding a transition to sustainable energy. Pop these on and next thing you know they’re making an eco-thriller biopic of you starring Adam Driver.
Read more032c
Prod. Review