Reflections on scripts and life

This editorial introduces issue 23.2 of Technoetic Arts ( TA ), exploring the relationship between scripts and life through six articles examining instruction manuals, genetic codes, algorithmic systems and AI-generated imagery. Beginning with Joseph Beuys’s Wandering Box lithographs, whose titles activate static forms into perceived movement, the editorial establishes scripts as requiring interpretive performance rather than mechanical execution. Drawing on Erwin Schrödinger’s 1944 concept of biological ‘code-script’, the editorial traces how informational metaphors transformed understandings of life from mathematical patterns to readable, executable programmes. The contributions to issue 23.2 examine this productive tension across domains: Lindsay Polly Crisp analyses Michael Landy’s instruction manual for dismantling possessions; G. Douglas Barrett investigates cerebral organoids producing music; Vasia I. Hatzi surveys biomedical imaging art; Vasily Betin proposes ‘Designed Emergence’ for algorithmic creativity; Joshua Wodak examines David Rokeby’s interactive installations; and Sarah-Jane Field interrogates AI aesthetics through Vilém Flusser’s philosophy. Together, these articles map territories where determination meets indeterminacy, revealing how life exceeds the scripts that partially structure it.