Luca Marchetti

Danto’s philosophy of history of art has undergone several transformations. It is possible to distinguish three “phases”: in the first, history is considered an a posteriori construction (see Analytical Philosophy of History). In the second phase, history becomes an internal development within art itself. In this case, with the end of history, art dissolves into its own philosophy (see The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art). In the third phase, history is still an internal development, but now, with the end of history, art and philosophy become independent of each other (see After the End of Art). This essay focuses on two issues: first, on the difficulties of an art history after the end of the history of art; secondly, for what reasons Danto claims that the history of art is ended. Danto has explained the “political” reasons for this choice, namely the attempt to free art from the repressive and disenfranchising moves of philosophy. This essay aims to outline the epistemic reasons: the history of art “must” end, because only on this condition is an essentialist definition of art really possible.

HSimulator is a multithread simulator for mass-action biochemical reaction systems placed in a well-mixed environment. HSimulator provides optimized implementation of a set of widespread state-of-the-art stochastic, deterministic, and hybrid simulation strategies including the first publicly available implementation of the Hybrid Rejection-based Stochastic Simulation Algorithm. HRSSA, the fastest hybrid algorithm to date, allows for an efficient simulation of the models while ensuring the exact simulation of a subset of the reaction network modeling slow reactions. Benchmarks show that HSimulator is often considerably faster than the other considered simulators. The software, running on Java v6.0 or higher, offers a simulation GUI for modeling and visually exploring biological processes and a Javadoc-documented Java library to support the development of custom applications. HSimulator is released under the COSBI Shared Source license agreement.

This essay tries to rethink Benjamin’s notion of “aura” through the consideration of two authors such as G. Didi-Huberman and D. Costello. The aim is not to distinguish between auratic and postauratic (or non-auratic) works of art, but to rethink the problem of aesthetic perception in the age of mechanical reproduction. More specifically, Costello and Didi-Huberman point out the relation between “aura” and “subjectivity”: on the one hand, the intersubjective (and ethical) nature of an “authentic” (i.e., auratic) experience; on the other hand, the presence of the aura nowadays in the “interplay of gazes” between the (subject-)work and the (subject-)spectator. Works of art are indeed characterized by a “two-fold” or aesthetic “transcendence” – they are at once both inside and outside my world – which enables them to resist the reification into reproducible commodity.

Il saggio vuole analizzare se sia possibile parlare di arte contemporanea in termini non meramente cronologici. A questo scopo si avvale del lavoro e delle riflessioni di Peter Osborne, secondo cui l’arte contemporanea deve essere pensata non come un concetto descrittivo, ma come un concetto normativo in grado di giustificare e di rendere possibile il carattere di autonomia dell’arte. Sotto questo profilo, secondo l’autore tutta l’arte contemporanea è arte postconcettuale, poiché oggi la distinzione tra ‘arte’ e ‘non-arte’ non può riposare soltanto su una dimensione estetica, ma deve necessariamente riposare anche su procedure teorico-riflessive (concettuali). Inoltre, non è più possibile configurare una storia dell’arte centrata unicamente sul medium, sulla forma o sullo stile, poiché la natura immateriale, tecnologicamente immaginale e digitalizzata delle pratiche artistiche impone di pensare la dimensione autonoma dell’arte non più attraverso la distinzione (moderna) tra ‘opera’ e res, ma come il darsi finzionale di non-luoghi. Da questo punto di vista, Osborne prova a ripensare la ‘forma’ dell’opera d’arte contemporanea in termini di una paradossale unità distributiva temporale e spaziale. In questo modo, l’unità temporalmente disgiuntiva e il carattere transnazionale (globale) diventano le due caratteristiche principali dell’opera d’arte contemporanea.