*Navigation:* [[Receptor (Process)]] *Project Folder:* Receptor *Resources:* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgTYIlniHTQ - -- # Stelarc HYPER-HUMANS - human body - age of instruments and algorithms - MEAT METAL AND CODE - IN THE AGE OF INSTRUMENTS AND ALGORITHMS, A LIVING BODY CAN NOW BE PHYSICALLY PROBED AND ELECTRONICALLY DISSECTED, AND ITS GENOME MAPPED. ITS MALFUNCTIONING ORGANS AND AMPUTATED LIMBS REPLACED BY ARTIFICIAL AND 3D PRINTED PARTS. ITS MUSCULATURE AND SENSES ARE AUGMENTED, AMPLIFIED AND EXTENDED BY MACHINES, SENSORS AND COMPUTATIONAL SYSTEMS. THE BODY HAS BECOME A CONTEMPORARY CHIMERA OF MEAT, METAL AND CODE. A HYPER-HUMAN THAT BECOMES MORE THAN THE SUM OF ITS HYPER-LINKS. - third hand - not as a sign of lack, but symptom of excess - AT A TIME WHEN THE INDIVIDUAL BODY CAN BE THREATENED EXISTENTIALLY, BY FATALLY BEING INFECTED BY BIOLOGICAL VIRUSES, WHAT BECOMES APPARENT NOW IS THAT THE HUMAN SPECIES IS CONFRONTED BY THE MORE PERVASIVE, INVASIVE ONTOLOGICAL RISK OF INFECTION BY ITS DIGITAL ENTITIES AND VIRAL ALGORITHMS. - In this age of body hacking, gene mapping, prosthetic augmentation, organ swapping, face transplants, synthetic skin, what it means to be a body, what it means to be human and what generates aliveness and agency becomes problematic. In the spaces of proliferating Prosthetic Bodies, Partial Life and Artificial Life, the **body has become obsolete.** - FRACTAL & PHANTOM FLESH WE ARE HAUNTED BY PHANTOMS ONLINE. **WE ARE OUR DIGITAL DOPPELGANGERS.** THE BODY EXPERIENCES ITSELF AS ITS DIGITAL PHANTOM. PHANTOM NOT AS PHANTASMATIC BUT AS PHANTOM LIMB. **TO OTHERS ONLINE THE BODY APPEARS FLICKERING ON AND OFF, AS DIGITAL NOISE, AS A GLITCH IN BIOLOGICAL TIME.** - NEITHER BIRTH NOR DEATH - IF WE CAN ENGINEER AN ARTIFICIAL WOMB AND BRING TO BEAR A HEALTHY CHILD THEN LIFE WOULD NOT BEGIN WITH BIRTH. AND IF WE CAN REPLACE MALFUNCTIONING PARTS OF THE BODY WITH STEM CELL GROWN ORGANS, 3D BIO-PRINTED AND ARTIFICIAL PARTS **THEN WE NEED NOT DIE A BIOLOGICAL DEATH.** SO HOW DO WE DEFINE HUMAN EXISTENCE AS NEITHER BEGINING WITH BIRTH NOR ENDING IN DEATH? **IN FACT WE WILL NO LONGER DIE BIOLOGICAL DEATHS. WE DIE WHEN OUR LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS ARE SWITCHED OFF.** - third ear - earth growths its own blood supply, living on its own, microphone inside - THERE WAS ALWAYS A GHOST IN THE MACHINE - NOT AS A VITAL FORCE THAT ANIMATES BUT RATHER A FADING ATTESTATION OF THE HUMAN - IN THE LIMINAL SPACES OF PROLIFERATING PARTIAL LIFE, SYNTHETIC LIFE AND MACHINE LIFE, **THE BODY HAS BECOME A FLOATING SIGNIFIER. AN EMPTY SIGNIFIER. THE BODY IS NO BODY.** - WITH MULTIPLE AND HIGH-FIDELITY HAPTIC FEEDBACK LOOPS OF INTERACTIVITY BODIES BECOME END EFFECTORS FOR OTHER BODIES IN OTHER PLACES AND FOR MACHINES ELSEWHERE. - The dead, the brain dead, the partially living, the yet to be born, the prosthetically augmented, and synthetic life all now share a material and proximal existence, with other living bodies, intelligent machines and executable and viral code. The realm of the digital is the realm of flattened ontologies. **The body individually achieves planetary escape velocity but the human can no longer achieve escape velocity from the machinic and digital realm.** - CONTINGENT & CONTESTABLE FUTURES. A FUTURE IS NOT A FUTURE IF IT IS NOT THE UNEXPECTED - -- - understanding the body, traditionally with yoga, meditation.. - his performances with sensory deprivation, body itself was highly inadequate - desire to somehow AUGMENT it —> with technology - new information, understanding, paradigms - if we dependent ONLY on our sensory experience, then this would be very limited - biological body has LIMITED LIFE SPAN - very culnerable, easily damaged, easily infected by organisms you cannot even see (initially) - do we accept the biological status? (in heideggerian sense) - status que of the body - my moving, breathing, experience, physiology – DEGRADES MY BODY - alternatively the body dies - we can accept this poetically, but it is not necessary to accept the biological status quo - -- - alternative cyborg constructs - typically imagined as medical military traumatized body with replacement parts - nanotech –> possibility od RECOLONIZING human body with micro , nano scaled bots.. could inhabit our systems - future technology could be invisible - -- - phantom flesh - we do transition from the idea of telepresence to idea of tele-existence - pyschological distance and experience between bodies (or machines) colapses –> so you became end defector of body anywhere else - haptic devices development - machine masculature - -- - situatness of the body - you are emboded in you gender, culture - what is interesting – we can have people now as post-operative transgendered bodies - we can adjust out experience - we have this language problem - when we begin to objectify - but we are looking at physiological phenomenological body in the world - it is not important was happens in my head but between us - embodiment - constitues the experience with the world and relation ship with others - -- - FUTURE IS ALREADY HERE, BUT IT IS NOT EQUALY DISTRIBUTED (Gibson) - -- - artists – we cant be the first to acces new technologies, *but we cen certainly be the first to hack technologies, to use them in different unexpecet ways* —> CONTINOUSLY PROBLEMATIZE TECHNOLOGY, what body is and how it operates in the world - -- - if i can see with your eyes and you can hear with my ears, and both can have the sense of touch of each other – we become this **one extended electronic body** (not 2 seperate) .. new intimacy ? - electronically merged bodies - explore future scenarious - -- - forget what he just said and start your own journey - hack the technology - generate unexpected uses - alternative research - problematize what we consider and affirm as social and ethical morals - KEEP GENERATING QUESTIONS