This issue of Second Nature focuses on issues raised by the Super Human Symposium held in Melbourne, Victoria at the BMW Edge at Federation Square on 23 – 24 November 2009. The journal publishes most of the papers and projects presented at the symposium and extends the discussion with independent projects, reviews and articles. Super Human Revolution of the Species was an international event comprising a symposium, an exhibition, master classes and a public talk investigating collaborative art and science practices and their relationship with the human body. The event was inspired by the 150th publication anniversary of The Origin of Species, Darwin’s evolutionary treatise.
Darwin’s epic five year journey around the globe observing natural phenomena gave rise to ideas of the process of natural selection, that is, the genetic success of individuals of the species that best fit in with their current environment, with change arising through genetic differentiation and environmental pressures. From documenting species such as cirripedes to giant tortoises and mockingbirds, Darwin was able to galvanise the dialogue around what it is to be human. Evolution. Now, today, we have the next revolution – the development of the human race through artificial selection or artificial enhancement. Darwin may well be turning in his grave. He understood artificial selection to be amoral. However, 150 years ago the laws of genetics were not understood, the Industrial Revolution had just begun. Differences within species were observed but not accounted for. Science was in its infancy. Artists had not begun to explore beyond the impression. Now, through the use of art and science, perhaps we can begin to understand where the human race is heading.
The Super Human events focussed on collaborations between artists and scientists and the impact that these investigations have on what it means to be human, now and into the future. What does being ‘superhuman’ mean to us individually and to the future of humanity? Superhuman can mean a being with powers beyond the established norm for humans or it can refer to an enhanced being through genetic modification or cybernetic modification. Perhaps it’s just someone who’s better than the rest of us? Is this Darwin’s natural selection at work? Or is the pursuit of becoming super-human through artificial extensions and modifications moving us further away from the essence of what it means to be human? Or is this just another step in the evolutionary path for humans? These are interesting questions.
In order to find answers, the Super Human Symposium addressed three themes – Augmentation, Cognition and Nanoscale Interventions – asking the questions:
How do scientific and artistic bodies of knowledge intersect with human, social bodies?
Does art serve simply as a representational tool for the sciences or is there more to the picture than that?
Does research into bodies and their systems offer an insight into aesthetics, or is it confined to the purely functional?
This issue of Second Nature captures some of the thoughts, ideas and projects of the many artists, academics and scientists who contributed to the Super Human Symposium.
The research paper New Visual Paradigms in Medical Representations of the Body, by Dr. Dolores A. Steinman and Dr. David A. Steinman, recognises the importance of artists in the maturation cycle of new medical investigation techniques and technologies. By making a connection between the representation of scientific data and artistic trends, artists provide fresh approaches in visualisation, thus improving the communication of more detailed data.
Similarly, Dr. Michelle Barker suggests the quadratura work of the artist Andrea Pozzo as a framework to gain a better understanding of perception in relation to active user participation in new media art. Barker argues in her paper, The Consequences of Embodied Perception for New Media Arts Practice that in order to un-frame the media art experience for the user and enable a more enactive perception, the creation and reception contemporary media arts needs to be contrasted with the enactive understanding of visual perception embedded in quadratura work of the Baroque domes.
A very different user experience is presented in Professor Kathryn A. Hoffmann’s paper, Wandering in the Company of Skeletons: Imaginaries of the Body Across Anatomy and Art. Hoffmann presents a cross section of objects and bodies that show a range of presentation styles and effects based on human and animal cadaveric material, extending their life after death in the shape of artistic pursuits of haunting beauty and mesmerising terror. The works suggests ways in which science, art, literature, and history could be combined to create new interdisciplinary exhibits and new intellectual itineraries for the public.
The combination of science with art has also resulted in the concept of the Cyborg, a term first used in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline in an article about self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space. Joe’s Cyborg and Other Posthuman Curiosities by Renee A. Davis describes the Cyborg as a posthuman being who, evolved beyond recognition, supersedes the present human. However, to bring it back into a Darwinian context, Davis sees the Cyborg as just another step in evolution of the species.
However, before we all become cyborgs we need to see how we get along with the artificial half. Mari Velonaki, David Silvera Tawil and Dr. David Ryes’ paper on Engagement, Trust, Intimacy: Touch Sensing for Human-Robot Interaction describes the use of electrical impedance tomography for the implementation of a sensitive artificial surface that is analogous to human skin. With the artificial skin, the group of researchers seek to understand how far social constructs and taboos in relation to intimate human interaction such as touch extend to physical engagement with robots.
Similarly emotional, engagement with a machine has been investigated by Tina Gonsalves, Nadia Berthouze and Matt Lacobini in the The Chameleon Project. This project investigates how users synchronize their own emotional states with a visual display of emotional expressions. To this end, the team developed an interactive video display of “emotional expression portraits” that register changes in facial expressions, voices and postural changes. In order to elicit an emotional response from the viewer, the video installation interactively selects an empathically appropriate sequence from a comprehensive video library in response to the viewer. The Chameleon Project acutely demonstrates the social importance of emotional expressions and the transfer mechanism of emotions that mediate social interaction.
Another subtle transfer mechanism of emotions that mediates social interaction is a person’s body language. Danielle Wilde in her paper Swing That Thing… moving to move: Extending our expressive and poetic potential describes the use of real and virtual extensions to encourage people to experiment and explore their corporeally-driven expressive potential. The author introduces a suite of works that draw on particular virtual extension technologies that create immersive mixed-reality experiences.
Patients with Traumatic Brain Injury often lose control over parts of their body; however, there is evidence that suggests that the engagement with interactive computer games aids in the process of relearning a lost ability by creating new neural connections in the brain. In this context Jonathan Duckworth and Assoc. Prof. Peter Wilson’s paper, Embodiment and Play in designing an interactive art system for movement rehabilitation, discusses the user’s experience of a system called Elements which focuses on the upper limb movement rehabilitation of such patients. The system challenges the patient with game-like tasks and with abstract tools that promote artistic activity. Patients that have been introduced to the system have regained a sense of agency and control and ultimately a sense of purpose, achievement and happiness. The attainment of a psychological equilibrium is Molly Epstein’s motivation. Epstein’s project Attaining Homeostasis focuses on the relationships that humans form with objects. In her artwork, Epstein examined the design of jewellery-like objects as a means to connect the emotional self to the physical being. In this context the artist discusses devices that were developed to lessen the severity of surgery and jewellery that minimises the impact of physical abnormalities in order to lessen the subsequent emotional damage that people endure.
The design of objects with therapeutic qualities is also the focus of Leah Heiss & Dr. Sarah Morgan’s paper Therapeutic Collaborations, Informing the development of therapeutic nanotechnologies through creative practice. The paper discusses various models of how designers can inform product innovation, user acceptance and efficacy of medical nanotechnologies. Specific examples included drug delivery and water purification devices that were designed as jewellery-based wearables. These projects not only suggested viable alternative methods to attain therapeutic results but also assisted in raising awareness of the specific nanotechnologies in the non-medical public.
Electronic games have long embraced the concept that characters can be modified in order to obtain special abilities. The game Bioshock in 2007 even featured the ability of genetic alteration to provide the player with superpowers that are needed in order to deal with the many challenges and conflicts in the game. The Synthetic Kingdom project by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg showcases a number of works that deal with the design aspects within the emerging field of synthetic biology. Ginsberg introduces the reader to the concept of “The Synthetic Kingdom”, a new branch on the evolutionary tree created by the transferral of desired features to another organism, and to the concept of “Growth Assembly”, which facilitates the growth of product parts, through targeted coding of an organism’s DNA. Ginsberg’s project wittily opens up discussion of the moral and ethical implications of our increasing ability to control our own and other organisms’ biological structures.
In this context, Svenja J. Kratz’s paper, Transformative Transgressions: Biotechnology, Personal Experience, Ethics and Art, describes the challenges of Bioart practitioners who are working with living systems and biomaterials in relation to ethical issues. Kratz states that in this emerging field of Bioart , moral and ethical boundaries are continually in flux and shift in response to new technologies and cultural and social values, as well as personal experience. She concedes that this area that will continue to provoke heated debate in the future and that the only solution is that everyone must continually decide for themself where they draw the line.
Mellifera by Dr. Trish Adams & Dr. Andrew Burrell is a mixed reality Second Life environment that is linked, through a series of interactive devices that create a connection between the real-world and mellifera’s virtual environment, to a series of real-time exhibitions in gallery and museum spaces. Mellifera serves as both artwork and as a central collaborative virtual space for artists dealing with themes relating to self, narrative and corporeality.
In Prosthetic Bodies and Virtual Cyborgs, Kathy Cleland describes the emerging paradigm of a mixed reality experience through the extension of prosthetic digital technologies through which physical bodies extend into the virtual terrain. Cleland, noting recent developments in symbiotic human-computer amalgamations and neuroscience, theorises that it will be possible to experience sensation, agency and affect between offline and online bodies and subsequently create a strong sense of connection and identification with the virtual avatar.
Similarly, artist Reva Stone uses computer-assisted installations in order to examine particular aspects of what it means to be human. In her project Past and Possible Future Selves, she describes several of her installations that deal with issues of human consciousness, cognitive development and memory informed by the broad theoretical context that includes the post-human, the Cyborg and theories of embodiment. Against the Cartesian view in which the mind is separate from the body, Stone seeks to use technology in her installation work to re-establish connections to the physical body by interactively situating the viewers within the installation.
This issue of the journal is also enriched by book reviews by Dr. Nancy Atakan, Paul Callaghan and Gillian Morrison.
In closing I would like to thank, first and foremost, the editor of Second Nature, Shiralee Saul. Shiralee looked after all the submissions for the Super Human Symposium, organised the board of reviewers, and provided several iterations of editorial support towards the final publication in this third edition of the journal. The quality of the journal is a testament to Shiralee’s tremendous contribution. What a “Superwoman”!
This issue would not exist without the Super Human event initiated by A.N.A.T (Australian Network for Art and Technology) and directed by A.N.A.T Program Manager Vicky Sowry with the assistance of Amanda Matulick (Communications & Marketing), Gillian Morrison (Logistics Coordinator), and Ruth Cross (Program Support). The teams’ professionalism and enthusiasm for the event was inspirational and central to the success of both the event and this journal issue. The Super Human Advisory Board provided invaluable input at all stages including a heroic effort in sifting through the multitude of abstracts submitted to select the final line-up.
We are particularly grateful to the Second Nature Editorial Board who have been have been endlessly supportive. The peer-reviewers, mostly drawn from the Editorial Board, have contributed greatly in shaping the final outcomes. They gave expert feedback that was rigorous but unfailingly generous and often leavened with humour, frequently under ridiculously short deadlines.
Recognition and thanks must be extended to John Bleaney, who provided on-call design and layout support and advice.
The Super Human Symposium and its subsequent publication through Second Nature has been financially supported by the School of Media and Communication. In particular we thank Peter James Smith, Lauren Murray and Stephanie Hemelryk Donald for their continued commitment to academic research and its publication in Second Nature journal.
The greatest thanks, however, must go to the writers and artists who have contributed of their best and endured endless software teething problems with patience and humour. I hope to be able to work with you all again in the future.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia.