“Dissonance, Data, and DNA: Richard Powers’ Orfeo”

Analysis of Richard Powers' "Orfeo" as an nove that addresses the question of the status, role, function of art as communication in the context of biocybernetic environments. The novel explores the relation between art and life and, I argue, problematizes it by both foregrounding and suspending the distinction between life as "the living" and life as "a medium for art", thus encouraging an investigation about the nature, possibilities and limits of aesthetics in relation to life and the living. What does it mean for life to become simultaneously an artistic and a political project carried under extreme biopolitical conditions?