My homage to iTunes 10 has been transcoded and extruded into another iteration! A collaboration with Alex Myers. You can hear, see and 3D print it at your own great expense in the forthcoming Run Computer, Run exhibition, Rua Red, Dublin.

DANIEL ROURKE + ALEX MYERS Daniel Rourke is a writer and artist. His work explores error, noise and kippleisation through words, sounds, performance and whatever ideas are to hand. He is one half of GLTI.CH Karaoke, an experimental performance platform exposing the course of accidents, temporary lyrical disjoints & technical out-of-syncs. Daniel writes regularly forRhizome.org and Furtherfield.org. He is currently undertaking a practice-based PhD in Art and Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. machinemachine.net / twitter @therourke Alex Myers makes artgames to explore how accidental meaning/anomalous discourse emerges by breaking rule-based game spaces to disrupt player expectations and concepts. He is an Assistant Professor and Director of Game Studies at Bellevue University. Alex has exhibited at NP3 in Groningen,Nikolaj Kunsthallen in Copenhagen, Lab for Electronic Art and Performance, Berlin, Interaccess in Toronto, FACT in Liverpool, and LACDA in Los Angeles. www.alexmyers.info / twitter @aandnota

Craig Venter spins increasingly ubiquitous metaphor: "The digital and biological worlds are becoming interchangeable"

"All living cells that we know of on this planet are 'DNA software'-driven biological machines comprised of hundreds of thousands of protein robots, coded for by the DNA, that carry out precise functions," said Venter. "We are now using computer software to design new DNA software."

The digital and biological worlds are becoming interchangeable, he added, describing how scientists now simply send each other the information to make DIY biological material rather than sending the material itself.

Was reading about microchips that are designed to allow a few mistakes (known as 'Sloppy Chips'), and pondering equivalent kinds of 'coding' errors and entropy in biological systems. Can a fair comparison be made between the two? OK, to setup my question I probably need to run through my (basic) understanding of biological vs silicon entropy...

In the transistor, error is a bad thing (in getting the required job done as efficiently and cheaply as possible), metered by parity bits that come as standard in every packet of data transmitted. But, in biological systems error is not necessarily bad. Most copying errors are filtered out, but some propogate and some of those might become beneficial to the organism (in thermodynamics sometimes known as "autonomy producing equivocations").

Relating to the article about 'sloppy chips', how does entropy and energy efficiency factor into this? For the silicon chip efficiency leads to heat (a problem), for the string of DNA efficiency leads to fewer mutations, and thus less change within populations, and thus, inevitably, less capacity for organisms to diversify and react to their environments - leading to no evolution, no change, no good. Slightly less efficiency is good for biology, and, it seems, good for some kinds of calculations and computer processes.

What work has been done on these connections I draw between the biological and the silicon?

I'm worried that my analogy is limited, based as it is on a paradigm for living systems that too closely mirrors the digital systems we have built. Can DNA and binary parity bit transistors be understood on their own terms, without resorting to using the other as a metaphor to understanding?

Where do the boundaries lie in comparing the two?

Letting microchips make a few mistakes here and there could make them much faster and more energy-efficient.

Managing the probability of errors and limiting where they occur can ensure that the errors do not cause any problems. The result of a mathematical calculation, for example, need not always be calculated precisely—an accuracy of two or three decimal places is often enough. Dr Palem offers the analogy of a person about to cross a big room. Rather than wasting time and energy calculating the shortest path, it’s better just to start walking in roughly the right direction.

Genetic information storage and processing rely on just two polymers, DNA and RNA, yet whether their role reflects evolutionary history or fundamental functional constraints is currently unknown. With the use of polymerase evolution and design, we show that genetic information can be stored in and recovered from six alternative genetic polymers based on simple nucleic acid architectures not found in nature [xeno-nucleic acids (XNAs)]. We also select XNA aptamers, which bind their targets with high affinity and specificity, demonstrating that beyond heredity, specific XNAs have the capacity for Darwinian evolution and folding into defined structures. Thus, heredity and evolution, two hallmarks of life, are not limited to DNA and RNA but are likely to be emergent properties of polymers capable of information storage.