Transhumanist themes in 'Caprica'

Fans of the television series BATTLESTAR GALACTICA will want to see the the CAPRICA series, not sure when it will be screened in Australia. Sounds like the writers have certainly seen STRANGE DAYS (Kathryn Bigelow, 1995). For a overview see article:

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/3202/

Body types and features

Thanks to Steve for this link to free software download called Daz Studio 3, easy to mix geometry (what they call morphs) together to combine body types and features, geared to beginners.
http://www.daz3d.com/i/software/daz_studio3?_m=d

CLONES + Melbourne Fringe Event

http://www.takeoffyourskin.com/

Thoughts on Nina Sellars/Joanna Zylinska exhibition

I viewed Solid States/Liquid Objects an exhibition by Nina Sellars and Joanna Zylinska at Shifted Gallery in Richmond today. First thoughts were that both exhibitions were very slick. What I mean by this is that the objects were highly developed, refined and elegant.
However, although Sellars inverse camera obscuras were seductive as objects in themselves and the multiple images of a small light globe projected onto the gallery wall, was quite beautiful in their intricate simplicity, I found the notion of body viscera, or human nervous system that was represented as digital circuit board (painted onto the gallery wall) bereft of any sense at all of the human body. Indeed, if Sellars intended to show the relationship between light and matter then she failed miserably. Likewise, although her intention in the darkened gallery space was to create the feel of an anatomy lecture theatre ‘in which observers direct their gaze forwards, towards a cadaver in the centre of the room’ (Catalogue essay: Dr Melissa Miles) this was not clear nor the need for multiple camera obscuras, when one, single unit could have been used to state something that was painfully obvious, that is, that light is necessary as a medium of exposure or revelation. If her intention was to show that light or energy is vital to communications and imaging technologies, and has reduced the physicality of the human body in some cases, to data - part of an extensive electronic system, reduced to schematic of a circuit board, or pure information, then even this too is passé. Perhaps I just didn't get it!
On the other hand, Joanna Zylinska photographs captured the movement and fluidity of human bodies in everyday spatial environments, reminding us that life represented through the medium of light/photography, although fleeting and vulnerable is pure energy. Unfortunately her 'binary – zeros and ones' photograph has had so much currency over the past decade, used by many artists and discussed at length by Sadie Plant in her Zeros + Ones : Digital Women + the New Technoculture. New York: Doubleday, 1997. I was left feeling that these two bodies of work had been ‘speaking to each other’, but something had been lost in translation.
Julie Clarke ©2009

Addendum to previous post

My title for this lecture is based on my observation that a tripartite does occur in Stelarc’s work however, I’m in no way alluding that there is any symbolic significance attached to the number three by Stelarc, instead the word tripartite refers to either the biological/synthetic/virtual body or the multiple/fragmented and dispersed body that occurs through the collision of the human body with communication and biomedical technologies.

STELARC: Tripartite: Multiple, Fragmented & Dispersed

I'm going to be delivering a lecture with powerpoint presentation on the way that artists are intersecting with science and medicine, with an emphasis on the work of Stelarc. The lecture isn't until early October however my working title is:

STELARC Tripartite: Multiple, Fragmented and Dispersed.

Key areas covered:
Biological/polyethylene - Extra Ear: Ear on the Arm
9 casts of arm (glass, aluminium, bronze)
Mural chromogenic print (large-scale self-portrait)- Digital to Analogue.
Tissue-engineered Partial Head Project
Cloning, tissue engineering, Fragmentation, Posthuman, Primates

Other artists/images relevant to discussion:
Steve Haworth, 3D sub-dermal implants
Orlan - cartilage 'horn' impants in forehead
Nancy Burson's Evolution II
John Isaacs’ Untitled (Monkey) (1995)
Lisa Roet Primate Hands (2002)
Patricia Piccinini’s Big Mother (2005)
Connie Culp (first US face transplant from female cadaver, 2009)
Isabella Dinoir, cadaver face transplant (France, 2005)

Unsubscribed from Extropy email list

I've unsubscribed from Extrophy email list because so far all the posts are purely self-promotional. Not that there is anything wrong with that, it's just that I subscribed because I thought there might be some interesting discussions. Maybe I'll try them again in a few months.

What is this self?

What is this essential self that we are being? Isn't this self continuously shifting, changing, metamorphosing into something else. Is it not continually under construction and in danger always of collapsing, depending upon the circumstances. Not only that, but doesn't this self that we are being, threaten the so called self of the other, exposing them also to risk or harm in the very collapse of our own fragile modulation. Can we really be said to have a self at all if it cannot be anchored either within our body or indeed in any space? What then is this self?

Extropy discussion on transhumanism

Cool - I've just found a short discussion about my book The Paradox of the Posthuman: Science Fiction/Techno-Horror Films and Visual Media on the extropy chat site:

http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2009-July/052341.html

I've just subscribed to the Extropy chat-email list. For those who didn't know Extropianism is primarily about improving the human, it supports rationalism & optimism & promotes the use of various technologies in order to optimize the potential of human growth, evolution & activity. I've subscribed so that I participate in a discussion that is to me still very contentious.

a strange idea perhaps

A strange idea perhaps, but what if you discovered that the person that you were having amazing conversations with in virtual space, was not a flesh and blood person at all, but an avatar - just bits of sophisticated information, linked to a psychology and language program that read within your words, your needs and desires and generated responses, particular to you, that you fell in love with. Poets and writers have for a long time understood the power of language and its ability to transport us to another time and place, with this in mind, do you continue to have conversations with the avatar knowing that you are virtually 'talking to yourself', do you acknowledge that the discussion, although self propogating may be a vehicle for exploring your inner self and your creativity, or do you cut off all conversation with the avatar, which is, after all, not-human?

After writing this post this morning I found sound interesting articles that address reality and fantasy in virtual space:

http://www.digra.org/dl/db/05097.11067

http://www.murray-gordon-consulting.com/Reality_and_Fantasy_in_Online_Groups.htm

http://www.transparencynow.com/virtual.htm

Two hearts

I read somewhere once, I don't remember when, that women have two hearts - their own and that of their unborn child. But I imagined, whether pregnant or not, women have two hearts, one that beats for them and one that beats for another. Sometimes they beat in unison doubling the woman's passion for life and love, at other times the separately beating hearts, disturb and disrupt the organism, and like a screeching bird create a sound that pierces the universe.

Reframing Darwin: evolution and art in Australia

Reframing Darwin: evolution and art in Australia is an exhibition at the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne, curated by Professor Jeanette Hoorn, School of Culture and Communication. The exhibition runs from 12 Aug 2009 to 01 Nov 2009.
http://www.art-museum.unimelb.edu.au/art_exhibitions_detail.aspx?view=149&category=current
I saw the exhibition today and was amazed by the beautiful watercolor paintings, drawings, book illustrations and various other artifacts. It's a must see for anyone interested in Darwin's legacy.

Synthetic Life

Thanks to Simon Park for this link:

Is it now a crime to be poor?

Is it now a crime to be poor? According to the New York Times it is:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/opinion/09ehrenreich.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/crimreport/crimreport_2009.pdf

And begging in Melbourne is a punishable offence, attracting 12 months imprisonment.
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/consol_act/soa1966189/s49a.html

I find it increasingly disturbing that people living in poverty or those with mental or physical disabilities are perceived (like criminals) as less than worthy or less human! Are we still in a eugenic phase - trying to rid the human population of undesirable traits.

Human/bacteria hybrids

Since the human body contains about a hundred trillion bacteria with their own genetic material, '...from the invisible strands of fungi waiting to sprout between our toes, to the kilogram of bacterial matter in our guts.., we are best viewed, according to the writer of this article '...as walking "superorganisms" highly complex conglomerations of human cells, bacteria, fungi and viruses'. Indeed the human may be considered a human/bacteria hybrid - an opportunistic parasite housing other opportunitistic and often dangerous parasites!
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2004/10/65252

Bruce Sterling speaks of our concerns about bacteria, in his novel Schismatrix (1985). When Kitsune meets Abelard she realised that, ‘Bacteria still swarmed through his body’ (1985:38) and ‘She never told him about the antibiotic pills and suppositories that she took, or the painful antiseptic showers. She didn’t want him to know he was contaminating her. She wanted everything between them to be clean’ (1985:39). Kitsune was a particular kind of Shaper in this world divided into Shapers & Mechanists. She said:

They took my womb out, and they put in brain tissue. Grafts from the pleasure centre, darling. I’m wired to the ass and the spine and the throat, and it’s better than being God. When I’m hot, I sweat perfume. I’m cleaner than a fresh needle, and nothing leaves my body that you can’t drink like wine or eat like candy (1985:34).

When Nora Mavrides met Abelard she worried that she did not kill him before he got too close, because ‘His skin, his breath, his teeth, even his blood seethed with corruption’ (1985:73). Shapers found bodily fluids obnoxious for they were altered to live without bacteria. Cockroaches played an important part in the ecosystem of the Ren Consensus spacecraft where they lived.

If it weren’t for the roaches, the Ren Consensus would eventually smother in a moldy detritus of cast-off skin and built-up layers of sweated and exhaled effluvia. Lysine, alanine, methionine, carbamino compounds, lactic acid, sex pheromones: a constant stream of organic vapours poured invisibly, day and night, from the human body (1985:55).

Julie Clarke© 2009

Absent body

The body is absent.

But what of the interior of the boot that contains the unique imprint of the person's foot and traces, not only of their bodily fluids & discarded skin cells, but also of their peculiar & rarified journey!

These boots were left near the moat at the National Gallery of Victoria in January, 2009.

My references for this image:

Christian Boltanski (France) installation work with discarded clothing

Joseph Beuys (German), performance & reference to animal origin of clothes

Domenico de Clario (Italian/Australian) performance/installation work with clothes

Meret Oppenheim (German), especially 'The Couple' 1956

Photo: Julie Clarke, 2009

Form & color

I've been here before...
across from the steps...
the large, white columns...
steady legs...that hold...
not like mine...
now...
I'm almost...
too tired...
to notice the bodies...
that disappear up the steps ...
and into the small glass doorway.
I've been here before...
when things...
blur...
into something...
quite...other than...
what they are.
Everything...becomes...
just form & color...

Dr Rachel Armstrong

You've just got to check out the achievments of this amazing woman - medical doctor, sci-fi writer, researcher, collaborator, artist

http://www.rachelarmstrong.me/

One species devouring another

One species, attracting & devouring another, happens all the time (humans eat plants and animals). But there is something strangely perverse in a plant devouring a rodent, because generally plants produce their own food. The apparent transgressive act of a plant using flesh eating enzymes to break down the body of the rat that has wandered into its domain appeals to me on some level!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article6799283.ece

Photography as surveillance?

I suppose that taking photographs of people is a form of surveillance, but it's not dispassionate, it is not about tracking their movements so that they can be found at another time, it's not about intruding into their lives or providing a means of identification for other surveillance purposes. But, something IS identified, something noticed, something explained in the taking of the photo. It is about using the image of the other outside oneself to say something about human life, it is about a reflection of self, it is about coming to terms with the other, who is almost always over there, even though they might be inherently within oneself! An intimacy & connection is formed, briefly, fleetingly, however, this touching of another through the lens is one-way transaction - me to them & they will never know! Of course, sometimes I am noticed & there is an instant in which we are both aware that we are being watched, kind of like when you are taking a photo of yourself - I'm watching you, watching me!

Life

Julie Clarke - Twelve Polaroid photographs of a severed pig’s trotter on red satin fabric, linked together with long strips of red satin ribbon.

Exhibited in Life (Curated: Shaun Wilson), Public Office Stairwell, West Melbourne, Victoria, Australia - August/October, 2000.

This image should be considered in relation to two earlier posts of mine, namely 'Zoonosis' and 'Artificially Produced Evolution'.

Less than Human?

I suppose that I should have been more specific in my last post about the TV series The Last Enemy. Of course, I am a little concerned about ubiquitous technology & its obvious infringements upon our privacy, but I was more interested in the fact that Stephen thought that he had become 'less than human' because he had a chip implanted under his skin.

Several times in the last episode the director used a close up shot of a hypodermic needle being inserted under a patient's skin & again when Stephen was attempting to remove blood from Yasim (an obvious metaphor of his desire to sexually penetrate her), which shows that technology is not perceived as polluting when it is only a short term invasion of the body stratum.

Given that medical prosthesis have been used in the body to replace body parts & this has become quite commonplace over the past four decades, why do we still worry about the purity & ontological integrity of the human body?

Surveillance/The Last Enemy

The Last Enemy (a five part episode series BBC - screened here on ABC1) finished last night.

Stephen Ezard (Benedict Cumberbatch) a mathematician, who has returned to the UK for his brother's funeral, is co-opted into the TIA (Total Information Awareness surveillance database system, set up by the UK government concerned with illegal immigration and terrorism). He becomes involved in a political cover-up that surrounds a rogue batch of vaccine that has caused a deadly virus. However, the final episode reveals that in fact the deaths are caused not by a virus, but by a bio-tag which is ethnicity specific, in that it affects Arabs, but not Caucasians.

The bio-tag is implanted under the skin of individuals and is the size of a small grain of rice. The government official rationalizes the implants by stating that we would no longer have to carry credit cards, door keys, bank books or any other form of identification, since all our personal information would all be coded onto the bio-tag & can easily be updated. Michael, who discovers that he also has been tagged, declares that he is 'less than human' and that the sacredness of his body has been violated.

The Last Enemy reveals how much, we as a society have come to rely on technology & surveillance in order to feel safe. But do we feel safe? If our safety is dependant upon us having to be tagged in order to become part of a complex surveillance system, this means that our lives - our bodies & our privacy are in fact no longer our own.

In a society that spawned the television series 'Big Brother' - a culture in which millions of people every day share their lives & private thoughts over email, facebook, myspace, blogs & numerous other communications technologies, where shopping centres, universities, workplaces, roads and other public spaces are watched by CCTV systems, where every electronic transaction or communication we make is recorded on some data-base, should we really be worried about the kind of scenario that has been presented in The Last Enemy?

Julie Clarke© 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPPFgHF9VR4
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

Cloud watching

Several times today, for absolutely no reason at all, I watched clouds as they drifted across the sky.

Life and Death

Would we value life if there was no death? Doesn't death give life meaning? There are some who will say that life has no meaning because we die. Does something have to last forever to be meaningful? We value our relationships with people even though those relationships may end. Life must be good for its own sake. Life as actively lived with purpose.

In the context of the posthuman drive to extend our lives through cybernetics and biomedicine, I have to agree with Bruce Sterling, who wrote:

Better to burn in a rush than live 200 years as a mechanistic wirehead. (Schizmatrix, 1985)

Paralysed man's right to die:

http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2009/s2650019.htm

Max More's take on the posthuman:

http://www.maxmore.com/becoming.htm

Julie Clarke (2009). The Paradox of the Posthuman: Science Fiction/Techno-Horror Films and Visual Media, VDM Verlag, Germany.

Multiple selves...

'...I especially entertain the idea of leading simultaneous lives, multiple selves, and indeed, becoming aware of navigating simultaneous passages... going through many doorways as opposed to only the one that commands awareness. It could be said that the psyche is everywhere...' (J. Karl Bogartte - facebook friend)

Have a look at Bogartee's art & ideas, which may be found at the following link:

http://homepage.mac.com/photomorphose/information3.html

Artifice & design

This is a painting that I did of Stelarc's Partial Head project:

http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/partialhead/index.html

Conceptualized from the scanned skin of Stelarc’s face placed over a three-dimensional frame of an Australopithecus (early human) skull, the partial face comprised tissue-engineered eyelids, lips and chin. Suspended between genotype (genetic constitution) and phenotype (physical characteristics) the partial face represents evolutionary progress or regression.

The face might be conceived as a ‘third face’, an(other) face since it represents both the human and not human animal. As a reference to cadaveric face transplant (See: Isabelle Dinoire below), this third face is understood as neither resembling the original person from which it was removed, nor the recipients face. In its dramatic, yet understated representation, the partial and tissue-engineered facial features intimate the deception of our human form based on any biological distinction between the human and animal, whilst paradoxically affirming the supreme role of the human animal in artifice and design. What is being played off here is not only the distinctions between nature and culture, the genetically transmitted and the socially constructed but the differences between genotype and phenotype.

Consider Stelarc's Partial Head alongside:

Orlan's continual transformation of her self image, via surgical procedures & computer imaging technologies

http://www.orlan.net/
Isabelle Dinoire's cadaveric face transplant.
http://www.isabelledinoire.com/

Nancy Burson's computer generated image, Evolution II, 1984

http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/burson_nancy.php

Artificially produced Evolution/Patricia Piccinini

http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/31/Patricia_Piccinini/249/

http://www.crac.org/contextmapp/cyborg.htm

Patricia Piccinini literally demonstrated the long-term affects of xenotransplantion and species alteration in The Young Family (2002). Piccinini’s family cautions against the intrusion of biomedicine into reproduction, and the risks to women who have chosen to avail themselves of new reproductive technologies. Piccinini’s porcine-human chimera evokes Ripley’s clone in Alien Resurrection in that it is more-than-human and less-than-human and as such, it not only effaces the borders between the human, the animal and technology, but also challenges our notions of what it is to be human. Like Alien Resurrection, Piccinini’s The Young Family situates the source of monstrosity in the body of the reproductive female, for as bearer of future generations she carries the burden of recessive genes, which could reproduce mutations. The technology that informs Piccinini’s work and underscores the anxiety expressed in Alien Resurrection may be the cloning of genetically modified pigs whose organs have been designed as ‘human user friendly’ by carrying a gene that inhibits the rejection of the organ by human subjects after it is transplanted.

The work insinuates that animal DNA will integrate with the gene pool of the human species and permanently alter its morphology. The sculpture made from silicone, polyurethane, leather and human hair represents a chimera with human hands, feet and limbs, long porcine ears and facial features, skin with wrinkles, blotches and moles and a torso with multiple nipples, at which three of its offspring suckle. The fourth member of the litter lies on its back and plays with its foot. Positioned, as such it exposes obvious mons pubis or external human female genitalia, doubly alerting us to the significant role of the female in the reproduction of a new species.

Piccinini challenges the hierarchical place of humanity in the human animal divide by creating a tableau and morphological thought experiment in which both human and animal coalesce. By doing so she raises important questions about what is considered to be human. Transgenic technologies and their potential for creating malformed entities as well as the potential of stem cell technology are combined together in Piccinini’s Still Life with Stem Cells, which depicts a young girl sitting on the floor surrounded by amorphous shapes that suggest fragmented and incomplete human limbs or tissue. Their state implies interruption or disturbance to normal human growth producing mutant forms. Indeed, constructed from the stem cells of a body, these organs without bodies may be read as spare parts waiting to be connected to the body, however, in their current form they are virtual entities containing the potential to be part of, rather than disconnected from the body. These forms, which engage with monstrous entities produced through experimental cloning techniques, more directly depict the possible outcomes of differentiated and undifferentiated stem cells. Piccinini’s Nest (2006), should be considered alongside the work of Korean artist Lee Bul, particularly her Live Forever III (2000) and Cyborg Red and Blue (2002), works which suggests the malleability of the human body and its possibility for redesign through genetic engineering and cloning; both artists draws our attention to the possibilities of an artificially produced evolution of the human species. Julie Clarke© 2009

Super Human: Revolution of the Species

Inspired by the 150th publication anniversary of The Origin of Species, Darwin’s evolutionary treatise, Super Human: Revolution of the Species turns the spotlight on collaborations between artists and scientists and the impact these investigations have on what it means to be human, now and into the future. Symposium, Masterclass and Exhibition. Click on title of this post & it will take your to the website for more information.

Blue

Blue (Derek Jarman, 1993)

http://www.evanizer.com/articles/blue.html
Yves Klein: Hiroshima (Anthropométrie 79) 1961.

International Klein Blue

http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=80103

Klein blue powder that I used in a petri dish (above) in exhibition in 1993.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 6 August, 1945.

Koren artist Lee Bul - Cyborg Blue

http://www.crac.org/contextmapp/cyborg.htm

Chris Burden performance Trans-fixed, 1974

Betty Blue (Jean-Jacque Beineix, 1986) France

Blue (Kyriaki Maragozidis, 2009) Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gJZOhZjTRc&feature=channel_page

TIME

Ah!

This is what you do.

You

slow

down

time

and

we

permeate

a different

dimension.

New Age Philosophy

God I hate new age philosophy, which shifts the responsibility solely onto an individual for their circumstances, when clearly there are other social, political & environmental forces in play of which we have no control. You can change the way you feel about your circumstances, but that won't change it! Dreamers have never changed the world, unless they are able to put that dream into action, change occurs through people who are actually willing to get up off their arse and DO something!

Cynthia Verspaget/Adam Fiannaca/IncuBra

My review of Cynthia & Adam's performance IncuBra (2006)
key terms:
corsett, fetish, biomaterials, relic, virtual body, sexuality & desire
may be found on Cynthia's website at:
http://members.westnet.com.au/moth/t_art/ClarkeINCUBRA.pdf

Kathy High/Embracing Animal

In Kathy High’s Embracing Animal (2004) installation, she wore a pig mask as she crawled partially naked and played with a dog. Combined with other elements in the installation, such as ‘…lab coats and animal cages…casts of rats’ heads….test tubes with small LCD monitors playing at the bottom…video loops...that…depict various states of becoming animal, including Lon Chaney Jr. transforming into a werewolf, from the 1941 film The Wolf Man…’ (Nato Thompson, MASS MoCA, Becoming Animal: Contemporary Art in the Animal Kingdom, MIT Press, 2005, p60) her work asks us to think about our use of animals in medical experiments and our close alliances with them. However, High also draws us in the zone of Deleuze and Guattari’s plateau ‘1914: One or Several Wolves?’ A tale of Wolf Man and Sigmund Freud, a scientific cure that is not a cure, a war, the pack, contagion rather than confinement, the multiple rather than hierarchical molar, bodies without organs, intensities. The vampire is evoked in the Wolf Man, because both are hybrids, boundary creatures, which broach the ‘becoming animal’ of the human. High reveals this cleft between human and animal as superficial through the pig mask, which parodies it, but ironically mocks us in the process. Can we really experience being animal through pretense and subterfuge? High appears to reflect Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of ‘becoming animal’; for as Christoph Cox has pointed out: “Becoming animal”, does not mean imitating an animal…but…unlearning physical and emotion habits and learning to take on new ones such that one enlarges the scope of one’s relationships and responses to the world. (Cox, ‘Of Humans, Animals and Monsters, p.23). (Julie Clarke© 2008)

Kira O'Reilly/Interspecies

Kira O’Reilly’s performance Inthewrongplaceness (2006), involved her dancing naked and caressing the carcass of a dead pig. Her performance appeared to broach the subject of our continued reliance upon pigs and other animals for our well being. Pig products are currently used to produce insulin for diabetics and experimental pigs have been genetically modified to carry a human gene, so that their organs, once transplanted into a human recipient would cause no rejection.

O’Reilly’s performance allowed viewers to touch her flesh as well as the animal whilst she was wearing latex gloves, highlighting perhaps that although close alliances have been established in contemporary biomedicine between humans and animals, protective measures should be deployed so that contagion of dangerous cross-species viruses will not occur.

At several points in the performance when O’Reilly’s body was intertwined with that of the pig there was no way of distinguishing human from animal limbs ( this was also a distinguishing feature of Patricia Piccinini’s piece The Young Family, 2002). O’Reilly’s lively body provided a strong contrast with that of the limp animal, which she animated by pulling it around and propping it up against her body. This emphasized the direct relationship between the death of the animal and the obvious life and energy that she possessed, but also the responsibility that we have towards animals that are killed for our benefit.

When we view Piccinini’s The Young Family and O’Reilly’s Inthewrongplaceness we understand the affinity’s between the human and the animal through bodiment and touch. I use the term bodiment here, rather than embodiment, because as Ralph R. Acampora points out bodiment is ‘…a term that deliberately resists the inner/outer distinction that abides in the more familiar term of ‘embodiment’. Bodiment is relevant to this discussion of the artworks, since it is through the materiality of the creatures (human/animal) that evokes the tactile and direct relationship between each entity.

Julie Clarke© 2008

O'Reilly's performance was executed at Penzance Town Centre, U.K. on 19 August, 2006.
Please see the following link for information about Kira O'Reilly's new performance.


http://www.artscatalyst.org/projects/global/interspecies.html

The Average Face

Thanks to Paul for the following link.

http://www.faceresearch.org/demos/average

Symmetry in nature

Could our desire for perfection of the human form be linked to our latent desire for symmetry, what then of asymmetrical bodies, how do they figure in human evolution?

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/051221_symmetry_nature.html

I'm only happy when it rains

OK, let it be that...a return to another time...it must have been raining then...on the coast of brittany in 1256...

Ethics in Genetic Engineering

Thanks to Cynthia who provided this link and who reminded me of the excellence of ABC Fora - on TV and on the web. See:

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/fora/stories/2008/10/30/2405419.htm

Bladerunner/replicant or hominid?

This post was inspired by something that Werner said this morning about 'accelerated decrepitude' and the film Bladerunner (Ridley Scott, 1982).
I was wondering if you could be genetically modified to be like the replicants in the film Bladerunner - to have superior looks, strength, agility & intelligence, for a limited period of four years & then death, would you choose this, or choose instead to live out the rest of your life as you are - vulnerable and imperfect? I would choose to live the rest of my life as I am, whatever life brings. This is not a question for someone with a terminal illness, it is for anyone who is assuming that they will live the usual lifespan (whatever that is).

Breathing

'back in that silence...listening...to a kind of...breathing...going on...knowing that it wasn't mine and yet...somehow...also knowing that it...most certainly was'.
(Domenico de Clario, A calvinian architecture, 2007 - first octave; fourth chapter: zaira).

Shape shifter

There is a scene in Terminator II:

Judgment Day (James Cameron, 1991) in which the T1000 shape-shifter, shows its fluidity and ability to integrate and take on the property and textures from its environment. It accidently touches the edge of a steel rail and its hand, which looks human suddenly turns into liquid silver and then solidifies. I couldn't help but make this association when I saw Stelarc's silver cast arm with extra ear. Is it only science fiction and speculative art that imagines a future in which we are in a constant state of becoming or have we always had the potential to incorporate and become the other?

LIFE & WHO DEFINES IT!

A renewed interest in the human body, in its embodied, material sense, as well as a concept, emerged within feminist, post-modern and post-humanist frameworks, as well as in the sciences since the nineteen sixties in response to the unparalleled developments in biomedicine and technology in the late twentieth century. Indeed ‘bioethics’, an extension of the Human Rights Movement and ‘medical ethics’ emerged in the nineteen sixties and has enveloped biomedical advancements in a plethora of questions that relate not only to health care and the quality of life, but also who decides what is considered to be ‘life’ and when it is deemed to have begun or ended. Issues such as identity (selfhood), agency (the ability to act and effect change) and autonomy (free will and self-governance) are important in this discussion.

Reproductive technologies, which identify genetic disorders by amniocentesis, chorionic villus sampling, pre-implantation diagnosis and cloning technologies raise a number of questions in regards to autonomy, such as whether the freedom of choice in sexual reproduction has been removed by medical screening that determines which embryo is genetically desirable to implant into the recipient mother; and whether women are free to make choices when they are constrained by other issues such as their economic situation, their access to family and community support systems and social and economic pressures to produce a healthy child. Do individuals have autonomy when they may be given partial information when undergoing experimental gene therapy or in medical experimentation? How can individuals make an informed decision when health care professional formulate their language in terms that non-medical individuals do not fully understand? In regards to genomics, we might ask the question: How is our identity affected by the knowledge that we are the carrier of unwanted genetic material that may be passed onto our children, or that our genes indicate that we predisposed to cancer, heart disease and any other number of debilitating or life threatening diseases. How do notions of genetic determinism affect our agency? How much agency does an individual have when life is determined not by the quality of embodiment particular to a person, but a value defined by medicine?

ZOONOSIS

The genetic modification, or ‘humanization’, of pigs could provide an opportunity for animal viruses to fool the human immune system and ‘hide’ inside the human body. German virologist Joachim Denner and others point out that retroviral infections from pigs may recombine with human endogenous retroviruses, leading to recombinant ‘superviruses’ with unknown, and possibly more virulent properties. These could become preadapted for human infection and subsequent human-to-human transmission…. In this vein, some scientists are concerned that xenotransplants could alter the human gene pool, by favoring the evolution of porcine-human chimeras (beings containing the genes of both pigs and humans)(CFRT, 1999).

M. Bucheler and A Haisch also maintain that ‘Like any other retrovirus, PERV can also introduce genes into the host genotype and thus damage the human organism in a hitherto unknown manner’ (2003:550)

The fear of zoonosis has been expressed by those in the biomedical community namely, Murphy (1996), Parry & Horton (2000), Takeuchi & Weiss (2000) Daar (2000), Takeuchi (2000) and Michie (2001). Indeed according to T.L. Platt: ‘… a zoonotic agent might undergo genetic change, through recombination or mutation, generating a ‘new’ organism that might allow it to pose a greater danger to humans’. Zoonosis has more recently been exacerbated by ‘mad cow disease’, ‘bird flu’ (HN51 virus) Human/Swine Flu (H1N1), which has crossed the animal, human, species boundary. Mary Murray, citing Somerville, states:

If it is eventually decided that it is ethically acceptable to go ahead with human trials of xenotransplantation, Somerville suggests that as well as the legal and ethical requirements that govern medical research involving human subjects, because of infective risks, additional ethical and legal requirements might need to be put in place. These might include lifetime surveillance and monitoring; an autopsy at death; and informed consent from recipients, their sexual partners, and their families all of whom might be required to regularly give blood and other body fluids for testing.

Murray further maintains, ‘…anthropological and sociological research suggests that human-to human organ transplantation has the potential to affect the organ recipient’s subjective sense of who they are’ (2006). Consequently, the transplantation of animal organs into the human would change the individual’s concept of themselves. This is partly due to the fact that we place symbolic significance on organs such as the heart and lungs - the most likely organs to be transplanted from animals into humans. Murray argues that animal to human organ transplantation may continue discourses that suggest personality types are linked to certain diseases and recipients of animal organs may be perceived as monstrous. Society, Religion and Technology Project also caution on this point:

If human life and animal life become intermingled, it might be argued that there is a danger of the distinctive moral claims ascribed to human life being undermined. It has been observed by some that the closer one moves animals, in concept, towards humans (so increasing one’s duty of care to animals), the more ready is the danger of treating some humans merely "like animals" (1996)

Julie Clarke 2009.

Human beings are a genetically uniform species!

Well, channel 4 has made the 'what is human' question really simple! Is our humanity really just prefaced on our genetic similarities, our unique sweat gland, our bipedal gait, that we have unreproductive grannies and our proclivity for language & technology usage?

http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/W/what_makes_us_human/topten.html

Humanity

My humanity is mediated by the non-human, the pale white sky behind my kitchen window, the irregular lines on the glass formed from wet & glistening mist that partially obscures the view, the silence, which permeates this one morning - now - here.

Swarm Theory

Kevin Kelly's book 'Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines' , particularly his chapter on Swarm Theory is relevant to my post on the 'face of the other'. You can read it all online at:

http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/contents.php

Inhumanity to animals

Our inhumanity to others is exemplified by our treatment of animals. Thanks to Petra Nolan and Darryl Montreuil for this information.
http://www.peta.org/feat/military/

Dog gives birth to offspring that resembles human

Continuing on with my theme of what is human. Consider this image of a dog with one of its litter that looks a little human. Looking human & being human are still highly contentious issues.

http://english.pravda.ru/photo/report/mutant-3050

Face of the Other

The face of the other is an alien landscape, distorted, distant, it cannot be navigated except through close scrunity. We push up against each other, brushing lightly, accidently; the connection is made & then broken - all is brief. Faces in the crowd collonise & circumvent space with such stealth! Why do we not collide? We manage somehow to voyage through this turbulent sea. We swarm - sometimes not even knowing what is was that drew us here & then, just as quickly we disperse.

What is this human?

What is this human? The figure of an old man with coat & hat in the crowded city, who walks slowly, almost unnoticed by those around him. He stops, for what seems like forever & is captured by something in the shop window. Or is it the figure of the man five decades younger, who appears out of nowhere as pure speed, his arms and chest bare, his eyes closed to the other's quiet contemplation.

Figuring Life

As an addendum to my previous post, you might like to read Margaret Wertheim's 'Figuring Life', which discusses the taxonomy of living things. See:

http://www.speciesoforigin.org/FCKeditor/File/27_wertheim.pdf

Are we all eukarya

If our construction of imaginary animals in the past was to clearly delineate between the human and the not human, then biomedical technologies, which obscure the established boundary between human and animal solicit apprehension about our uniqueness in the face of this change. But our history shows that we have been dependant upon not human animals and this has helped define our humanity. Even though we acknowledge our dependence upon animals - ingestion of their flesh, use of their cells and organs, our genetic similarity to them and their role as companions, it appears, in the context of zoonosis, that we may be more concerned by upholding and preserving human morphology and traditional perceptions of the human as distinctly different to the animal, even though those perceptions are continually eroded. What then is human and animal? Ralph R Acampora maintains 'there are no generic animals roaming the earth, and "pure/perfect" animalness' (2006:9). Might this also mean that there is no such thing as pure/perfect humaness? Are we all just eukarya?

Solid States/Liquid Objects

Speaking of mediation, Monash University is staging a 'Discourses on Mediation' symposium, which will address how information is deployed, mediated and embodied within various disciplines with keynote speakers: Stelarc, Prof. Gary Hall, Dr Joanna Zylinska, Kit Wise, Dr Melissa Miles, Dr Matthew Sellars, Nina Sellars and Assoc. Prof Darren Tofts on Wednesday 19 August 2009. Enquiries to: Nina.Sellars@artdes.monash.edu.au

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Facebook Home: "Fabulous ... Can't wait to participate in this fascinating discussion ... questions I'd like to reflect on are in the material sense of Human ... Do we have a concrete definition of the human race? Do we all have 46 chromosomes? Would all humans pass the Turing test? Does the definition of the human race change in the advent of new technologies? ... these kinds of questions I would love to explore :)"

Biological & digital

Stelarc's re-mediation of actual left arm with Extra Ear into various casts & virtual video of surgical operation, alerts us to the way that the body is mediated by different technologies. What happens to the human body when it is presented like this as partial & fragmented? Is this a commentary on genetic engineering? What, if anything, does this say about the human?

Stelarc talk at Scott Livesey Gallery this afternoon

Stelarc gave an informal talk this afternoon about his recent work. I was impressed by the exquisite nine casts of his arm with Extra Ear (3 glass/3 silver/3 copper), but I was particularly taken with the large scale digital image of his stretched facial 'skin' that was positioned almost flat on the gallery floor. I felt that I could almost step into this strange, almost bizzare landscape, which was simultaneously human and yet not human, familiar and uncanny. Stelarc used a similar image which was reproduced in Meanjin: Portrait of the Artists, however this one was immense & almost cinematic. His ears, which can be seen front on could not be captured in this photograph, but you get the general idea!

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Facebook Rachel Armstrong: "'…and each leg shall be jointed twice and have one foot, and each foot five toes, and each toe shall end with a flat nail… And any creature that shall seem to be human, but is not formed thus is not human. It is neither man nor woman. It is a blasphemy against the true Image of God, and hateful in the sight of God.' The Definition of Man, from The Chrysalids by John Wyndam"

Exterior/Interior

Does changing the shape of our bodies, change the way we think? Are we evolving into something that was previously seen as monstrous.? Might this be our way of acknowledging our inherent imperfections and accepting the imperfections of others? Or is this yet another way that we are attempting to perfect the human body? So many thoughts as I contemplate Stelarc's Extra Ear on his arm (see: Scott Livesey Gallery current exhibition) and the ubiquitous use of cosmetic surgery in our society.