TABOO - TRANSGRESSION - TRANSCENDENCE

Blood, a complex mixture of cells, plasma, and platelets, courses through the intricate systems of living organisms, ensuring their survival or signaling their potential dysfunction or demise. Historically, blood has transcended its biological role to serve as a potent symbol in religious rituals and artistic expression, embodying themes of sacrifice, survival, and transcendence. Similarly, in the 21st century, data flows have emerged as the lifeblood of digital ecosystems, underpinning the function of social, economic, and technological structures. This paper examines the parallel significance of blood and data as vital flows, exploring how both serve as existential regulators and cultural symbols.

The biological flow of blood, as reflected in contemporary artistic and digital representations, echoes the existential dynamics of survival and transformation. Artists in the 20th and 21st  century depict or use blood to address issues such as human vulnerability, societal sacrifice, and technological transcendence, mirroring broader themes in digital culture where data flows sustain and reflect collective human activity. Data, like blood, is both a sustainer and a symbol: it fuels the operation of complex systems while simultaneously raising ethical and existential concerns about dependency, control, and the consequences of disruption. The interplay between biological processes and digital networks highlights the interconnectedness of life systems, with blood and data symbolizing the vitality and fragility of existence in both physical and virtual realms.

Moreover, blood’s symbolic resonance is paralleled by the conceptual gravity of data in modern digital cultures. Just as blood rituals once connected communities to existential questions of life, death, and the sacred, the flow of data today governs the collective mind, shaping identities, behaviors, and global economies. The "algorithmic turn" in contemporary societies highlights how data not only sustains but also exerts control, raising questions of surveillance, ethical governance, and societal dependence on information parallel to blood's biological role as both a carrier of life-sustaining nutrients and a harbinger of disease or mortality. Both flows thus embody a paradoxical duality: they are essential yet precariously vulnerable to disruption.

By juxtaposing these two vital flows, this paper situates the biological essence of blood and the digital essence of data within broader artistic, philosophical and anthropological frameworks. Through an interdisciplinary lens drawing on digital humanities, and contemporary art, it underscores their shared role as indispensable regulators of life and death, both in human bodies and in modern societies. Understanding the cultural and practical implications of these flows invites deeper reflections on humanity’s relationship to life-sustaining systems, whether organic or synthetic, and emphasizes the urgent need to address vulnerabilities in both natural and artificial networks that threaten their continuity.