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amberConference09

Uncyborgable
amberKonferans09

siborglastramadklarmzdan msnz?
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Index
06 Introduction Part One: (un)Cyborgable 12 Chris Gray. Uncyborgable: Paradox and Possibilities 117 19 Stelarc Zombies & Cyborgs: The Cadaver, the Comatose & the Chimera Part Two: Mediated Bodies 26 Elif Ayiter. Body in Code: The (Cybernetic) Sojourn of the Embodied Avatar 30 Angeliki Malakasioti. Aspects of fragmentation and self-experience. Towards a dissection of the digital body. 34 Drs. Pieter Coussement, Dr. Michel Demey, Prof. Dr. Marc Leman. Coming from the Heart. Part Three: Bodies & Avatars 42 K.J. Karoussos. My Beloved Avatar 47 Joff Chaffer. The Performer As Avatar As Performer As Avatar. 51 Joana Fernandes Gomes. HOME: a Look Inside an Algorithmic World. 56 Can Fakioglu. Third Pill for Modern World. Part Four: Interactive Spaces & Wearables 62 Michel Guglielmi, Hanne Louise Johanssen. Digital Choreographies: Designing Reactive Spaces and Artefacts. 66 Veroniki Korakidou, Aris Bezas, Antonis Psaltis. Cyberthesia: Cross-Media and Cross-Modal Abstractions for Real-time Performative Animation Part Five: Cyborg As Cultural Construct 76 Lucia Ayala. Astronomical Cyborgs in the 18th ct. From the miracloscope to the elastic man in Kindermanns universe and other examples. 82 Lanfranco Aceti. What Language Does the Cyborg Speak? Culture, Ethnicity and Nationality as part of the Language of the Cyborg. 88 Eduardo Abrantes. Night Vision - mediated perception of invisibility 92 Niall Cosgrave.Cinematic Cyborgs: The West, Japan and the Politics of Representation Part Six: Cyborg As Other 100 Bengi Basaran.Change of the Female Image in Science-Fiction & Cyberpunk Literature Yukihide Endo. The Representation of the Other in a 105 Surreal Horror Movie: From Hostile Confrontation to Productive Synergy Between Self and Other 112 Part Seven. Micro-organisms and Bio-art Tagny Duff. Living Viral Tatoos? Bugra Karabey. Clashes of the brain Waves: A Cyber Musical Duet Between a Plant and a Human Being

Introduction
(un)Cyborgable?
Zeynep Gndz, Nafiz Aksehirlioglu

The notion of the cyborg (cybernetic organism) explores the literal and figurative integrations of the human body and technology. A hybrid concept, cyborg links the organic and non-organic and raises questions concerning human corporeality and subjectivity. In the same vein, the field of Art and Technology also elaborates on the transforming and emerging human and addresses the questions of who and what we may become as a result of our increasing engagements with technology. Based on the recent technological developments and their incorporation in the social, cultural, and political domains, amber09 explores how these changes may make us rethink the notion of the cyborg. The main objective here is to examine these changes on a corporeal level and to re-visit the consequences of exposing and augmenting our bodies with digital technologies. Second, the conference aims to explores the body and its relationships in the social and cultural domains, the asymmetrical structures and practices inherent to contemporary societies and to seek possibilities to break these asymmetries in order to achieve a free and equal society. Re-visiting and re-thinking the notion of the cyborg, amber09 asks: Are you (un)Cyborgable? The volume (un)Cyborgable offers a collection of nineteen articles that were presented during amberconference, which took place in Istanbul in November 2009. The contributions to this volume comprise international scholars and practitioners from disciplinary backgrounds as diverse as film and media studies, contemporary art and digital culture, musicology, performance and performance art, and fashion design. The volume is divided into seven sections; each section examines the notion of the cyborg within a certain context. In section I, (un)Cyborgable, Chris Gray, one of the keynote speakers of amberconference 09 re-evaluates the concept of cyborg, a quarter of a century after Donna Haraways famous cyborg manifesto (1985). In his Uncyborgable: Paradox and Possibilities, Gray reflects on the technical, scientific, and social developments since 1985 and pinpoints the fears and desires embedded in the notion of the cyborg as well as the possibilities and limitations of the process of cyborgization. He concludes that cyborgization is part of human evolution and is deeply related to political and ethical concerns that continue to loom large in our age. This is an evolution that is not predestined nor can it be predicted since it is contingent on our common embeddedness in the very technologies of modern civilization. The broad spectrum and the reach of these technologies, ranging from neuropsychiatry to stem cell research, comes out in Grays essay and it becomes evident that it is indeed difficult to define a Self from without the modern technological frameworks that continue to make and unmake us. Yet, for Gray, the question is not whether cyborgization should 6

be resisted. Rather, the question is who will decide on the future directions that cyborgization will take. Following Haraway, he stresses the necessity to take responsibility for our cyborgization, thus, our evolution. Stelarc, the second keynote speaker of amberconference 09, also elaborates on the human evolution via the concept of the cyborg. In his essay Zombies & Cyborgs. The Cadaver, the Comatose & the Chimera, Stelarc describes the body as an evolutionary construction that is capable of adapting to changes in its environment. In fact, for Stelarc the body has always been a prosthetic body, a body that has always been augmented by its instruments and machines. He argues that current digital technologies accelerate the bodys evolution because they blur the boundaries between the technological and the biological. On the basis of various examples of his artistic work, Stelarc illustrates the evolution of the body and shows how the body and its organs are now augmented, expanded, extracted, exchanged, engineered, and inserted. Subsequently, Stelarc concludes that we live in an age of augmented and alternate embodiment in which the body oscillates between virtual systems and mixed realities. We are cyborgs, according to Stelarc, cyborgization is part of human evolution and cyborg is what we have always been and what we have already become. For him, we should accept our cyborgization rather than fearing it. In this sense, Stelarc comes close to Grays claims on the urgent need to elaborate on the various issues raised by the notion of the cyborg. With these two essays, Gray and Stelarc not only give flesh to the theme of the conference but also set the ground for the issues to be explored as part of the (un)Cyborgable. The essays in section II, Mediated Bodies, examine the changing perceptions of the physical body as a result of its mediation through digital technologies. Elif Ayiters Body in Code: The (Cybernetic) Sojourn of the Embodied Avatar and Angeliki Malakasiotis Aspects of fragmentation and self-experience. Towards a dissection of the digital body both explore the connection of the digital to the physical Self. The interrelationship between the Real and the Virtual stands central in Ayiters essay. She focuses on Second Life to tease out the emerging possibilities of the notion of the avatar and to problematize the understanding of a stable and single Self in favor of synthetic agency, multiple selves, and extended corporeality. Malakasioti also problematizes the perception of a single Self within cyberspace. By examining the correlation between the physical and digital self, she argues for a new kind of anatomy and self-experience, which she describes as dispersed, volatile, and in flux. While Ayiter and Malakasioti examine the mediated body in cyberspace, the third paper by Pieter Coussement et al. Coming from the heart: heart rate synchronization through sound offers an investigation of the mediated self within the context of interactive music installations. This joint paper presented by Coussement considers sound installations created with

biofeedback, such as stimuli derived from heart rate, as a new and rich research field that significantly adds to our knowledge on corporeality because it offers innovative modes of mediated self-experience through sounds coming from within the physical self. Section III, Bodies and Avatars extends the theme of the previous section into the context of live performance and installation art. The essays in this section concentrate on specific case studies in which the Real is confronted with the Virtual. Katerina Karoussos in My Beloved Avatar argues that alternative design of avatars with regards to the topology of virtual space and elements such as time, visuals, and lighting may generate crucial differences in our perception of the physical body and space. Joff Chafer in The Performer as Avatar as Performer as Avatar, extends Karuossoss argument to Second Life and explores the boundaries in a virtual context in which the first and second performer share the same space. The confrontation of the real and virtual world is also the starting point of Joana Fernandes Gomess HOME: A look inside this algorithmic world. HOME is a video art installation that is generated by artificial life systems, which, as Fernandes Gomes argues, differ from other types of artificial life systems used in art installation. Rather than maintaining a separation between the actual and virtual worlds, HOME enables a union between the artificial and the human and generates a world in between. Finally, Can Fakioglu, in his essay, Third Pill for the Modern World: Gorillaz Project and Beyond examines the fusion of the real and the imaginary worlds through the case study of the Gorillaz Project, a virtual music band composed of four animated members. Examining the way Gorillaz problematizes the distinction between the real and imaginary, Fakioglu concludes that the integration of new technologies to musical performances creates a new perception that might lead to new forms of artistic representation. The next section, Interactive Spaces and Wearables, addresses the relationship between the body and environment within interactive spaces. The first paper The design of reactive spaces and artefacts by Michel Guglielmi and Hanne Louise Johanessen, co-founders of the design company Diffus, explores how the body and space adapt to each through artistic works created with interactive costumes. They call this type of artistic work costume choreography and argue that it leads to a new type of engagement with the body and space that creates a choreography of sensation. Whereas the first paper of this section focus on the engagement of the body and space by means of biometric sensors, the last paper of this section Cybersthesia: Cross-media and cross-modal abstractions for real-time performative animation, a joint paper presented by Veroniki Korakidou and Aris Bezas, explores how the use of bio-sensors as interface can provide insights for a better understanding of the notion of synaesthesia. Section V, Cyborg as Cultural Construct, examines the notion of the cyborg as a dynamic concept that is shaped by historical, technical, and cultural factors. Lucia Ayalas Surpassing human nature. Reinventions of and for the body as a consequence of astronomical experiments in 17th and 18th centuries and Eduardo Abrantess Night Vision-mediated perception of invisibility explore the impact of technical

prosthesis on the human perception from a historical perspective. With a focus on the 17th and 18th centuries, Ayala discusses a crucial technological novelty of the early modern period in the field of astronomy, namely the invention of the telescope. She explains how such technical inventions constructed an entirely new perception of the World and beyond. While she examines changes in human perception as a result of technical mediation in the 17th and 18th centuries, Abrantes explores these changes in human perception in the digital age. He argues that nightshot mode offered by digital videocameras changed our perception of the visible so that as a result video camera became literally an active technological eye. The contructedness of the cyborg is not bounded by technical factors but entails other domains such as cultural differences and nationality, which are discussed in the last two papers in this section. Lanfranco Aceti in What Language Does the cyborg Speak? Culture, Ethnicity, and Nationality As Part of the Language of the Cyborg, underpins culture, ethnicity, and nationality as crucial factors that shape the understanding of cyborg and stresses the necessity to re-evaluate the utopian assumptions of liberation and freedom that are most often associated with the cyborg. Finally, in Cinematic Cyborgs: The West, Japan and the Politics of Representation, Niall Cosgrave examines the influence of nation and culture on the understanding of cyborg as a hybrid of human and machine. By means of a comparative analysis between Japanese and Western science fiction cinemas, Cosgrave concludes that in comparison to Japanese films, Western science fiction cinema tends to portray the cyborg as a potential threat to humanitys morality. The next section Cyborg as Other is a continuation of the previous section in the sense that it accentuates the constructedness of the notion of cyborg by showing how humans project their fears and desires in their discursive creations. This section consists of two essays. The first, Change of Female Image in Science Fiction and the Cyberpunk Literature by Bengi Basaran, examines the representation of the female in Cyberpunk fiction. Basaran claims that a sea change took place in the image of the female in Cyberpunk literature and cinema. This change signals a new paradigm as well as suggesting how women can master man-made technology to overcome male domination. While Basaran focuses on the issue of gender as a category of the Other, Yukihide Endo, in his paper The Representation of Otherness in a Surreal Horror Movie: the Monstrous Identity of Humanity Revealed interprets otherness through the notion of monstrosity as dimensions of the construction of the Self. Taking the cult movie Tetsuo the Iron Man (1989) as his starting point, Endo first claims that the film shows how the monstrous Other is deeply embedded in human nature. Second, he argues that the film, by showing the confrontation of humans with their monstrous Other, enables a particular mode of co-existence of human self-identity. The final section, Micro-organism and bio art, seeks to establish innovative relationships between humans and living organisms. Bugra Karabeys Clash of the Brain Waves: A Cyber Musical Duet Between a Plant and a Human Being presents a successful example of bio-art that connects a human with a plant by means of Brain Computer Musical Interface (BCMI). In this way, Karabey demonstrates a generative musical platform in which a jam session between a plant and a human is achieved. Finally, Tagny Duff in 7

Living Viral Tatoos? Crises Alert! offers a bold approach to perceive viruses and invites us to imagine an interkingdom of unnatural participations, a term she borrows from Deleuze and Guattari. This inter-kingdom, for Duff, requires another perception of the relationships between humans, animals, and micro-organisms. In her view, this is a perception of a world in which contagion is desired and the viral is accepted as a gift. In conclusion the concept of the cyborg is broad enough to extend the limitations of existing disciplinary frameworks, but specific enough to illuminate a finite set of fundamental concerns that are relevant for interdisciplinary research. By asking the questions whether we are (un)Cyborgable, the conference aimed to re-visit the concept of the cyborg and re-explore its social, cultural, and political import mainly in the light of the rapidly developing digital technologies. However, as is evident, the foci of the conference presentations were not limited to the latter. By creating a forum for scholars and artists from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, the collection (un)Cyborgable presents a broad spectrum of approaches that examine the liberating and limiting aspects of the notion of the cyborg. It also allows scholars and artists from different fields to enter a productive dialogue around shared theoretical and practical concerns.

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(un)Cyborgable

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(un)cyborgable
Paradox and Possibilities
Chris Gray

Cyborgable To explore what is uncyborgable we must first understand what is cyborg. A cybernetic organism is any self-regulating (homeostatic) system that includes organic (living, natural, evolved) and machinic (dead, artificial, invented) subsystems. Cyborgization is not limited to systems incorporating human elements. A cyborg can also be a biocomputer (with memory that can die), a transgenic plant (jellyfish genes in tomatoes, for instance), or a cockroach with electrodes in its head controlled by Japanese scientists. (Figure 1. Roboroach) But in many ways, human based cyborgs are the most interesting, whether it is the fantasy of Robocop, a maimed soldier with a sophisticated prosthetic arm, a dead person kept alive with machines awaiting organ harvesting (a neomort or living cadaver) or anyone whose immune system has been reprogrammed by vaccinations. There are many different types and levels of cyborgization. The incorporated living elements (viral, bacterial, plant, insect, reptile, rodent, avian, mammal), the technological interventions (machine prosthesis, genetic engineering, nanobot infection, vaccination, xenotransplant) and the level of integration (mini, mega, meta, mundane) can all vary, meaning that basically an infinite number of possible cyborgs exist, life multiplied by human invention and intervention. (See Gray et al. 2010The Cyborg Database, for examples and discussion of the range of possible cyborgizations.) Cyborg was coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes for a NASA conference to describe systems that integrate organic (biological) and artificial (machinic) elements together into a self-regulating (homeostatic) whole, such as astronauts modified for space. (Figure 2. NASA Cyborg Plan) While this remains the technical meaning, the word has come to stand for the broader idea that advances in technoscience are allowing a deep integration of evolved organisms, especially humans, into machine systems while at the same time machines and programs are being incorporated into human and other bodies. The homeostatic integration of evolved and invented entities depends on communication and information processing. Cyborg technologies are developed out of humancomputer interaction projects in the military and medicine, but also in space exploration and industry. The military implications are fundamental. The ideal of the man-machine weapon system and the conviction that information is a force multiplier has meant that cyborgization is a crucial strategy (Gray 1997, 2005). Medicine is also changing profoundly, from birth (Dumit and Davis-Floyd 1998) to the different cyborg deaths. This infomedicine model is a dominant paradigm not just in prosthetics but also in other therapeutic interventions from immunizations to gender reassignment to genetic engineer12

ing. The future development of genetics, materials research, computing, and other nanotechnologies means cyborg technologies will increasingly modify humans in a process of participatory evolution. While millions use the internet, where every user is a temporary cyborg, and billions have been immunized, cyborgization is little known nor understood. Much of the most interesting theory is actually found in science fiction but there is also a growing body of literature from critical and cultural studies, catalyzed by Donna Haraways famous Manifesto for Cyborgs (1985). Her argument that cyborgization mandated a deeper engagement with the politics of technoscience and a challenge to simple dichotomous epistemologies has resonated broadly through many fields and disciplines, particularly gender studies. The politics of cyborgization is a subfield of its own, as in Cyborg Citizen (Gray 2001), Our Posthuman Future (Fukyama 2002) and Citizen Cyborg (Hughes 2004). There is also a growing literature about being cyborged, the best of which are from the wearable computer pioneer Steve Mann (2001) and the cochlear ear implant recipient Michael Chorost (2005). It is impossible to stay current on the cyborgization of the

Figure 1. Roboroach

human. Increasingly intimate machinic-biological interfaces and interventions are transforming us every day. A constant cycle of technological and scientific breakthroughs in informatics, genetics, prosthetics, neurosciences, humanmachine interface design, bioinformatics, genetic engineering, psychopharmacology and many other areas, is transforming us in a perpetual and permanent technoscientific revolution. There are more scientists and engineers alive right now than in all the rest of human existence combined. And they have better technology.

Evolution and Cyborgization Can this process be stopped? Not short of apocalypse. Why? Because cyborgization is overdetermined. Overdetermined is academic shorthand for something that has more causes than it needs. When one looks at cyborgization in the 21st Century, we see that many cultural sites are focused on producing cyborg systems because of their own dynamics. In medicine, cyborgization is driven by desires to cure, to restore, and to live longer if not forever. The military relentlessly pursues cyborgization to gain advantage in logistical, tactical and strategic realms. Business also invents new cyborg relationships in its pursuit of advantage. In culture, where the cyborg originated in ancient myths from India, China, and Greece, new cyborgs are continually being imagined through art and popular culture as humankind wrestles with the implications of our continual transformation. (Figure 3. Ren Cyborg) When something is overdetermined, it is helpful to look for the causes of the causes. Behind all different cyborg projects we can see the same dynamic: evolution. Humans have evolved to be a transformative species. To gain reproductive advantage, to achieve the dominance over the rest of nature that we have, we continually transform our environment and we transform ourselves. Our ability to make mental models of the way things are and predict what may be is what allows us to imagine the world, and ourselves, as different and to make it so. Why? It begins with asking, Who are we? What is this animal called human? Homo sapiens sapiens. Wise? So wise we need to say it twice? Hardly. True Homo sapiens is yet to come, let alone sapiens sapiens. Homo ludens? Playful humans? Sometimes, but no more than we are wise. Karl Marxs Homo faber? That makes some sense; humans are indeed makers. And it starts with making stories, making culture, making sense of the world, or at least enough to manipulate it, to foster fire, to kill at a distance, to notice the powers of the moon and sun. From there, from planning the hunt and the barbecue, it is just a hop skip and

Figure 2. NASA Cyborg Plan

Just this year, scientists have continued to perfect infecting people with new inheritable genes, drone/human systems became a key weapon system in the war against Al Queda, new vaccines were created to reprogram our immune systems (especially against the inevitable pandemic our recent biological success portends), DARPA launched yet another revolution in prosthetics (wars are always good for artificial limb research), the web spread, computers (as links to the net, as photo and text systems, as access to mass media) became even more intercompatible and ubiquitous and tiny, nanotechnology advanced as did neurotechnoscience in its quest for perfect lie detectors, and eventually, mind reading, and mind control technologies, and on and on. There is now talk of saving the planet from ourselves by cyborging Gaia. The hope is that directly intervening in massive climate change consciously, instead of doing it unconsciously with our wastes and our lusts as we have for the last 200,000 years, will turn out better. We shall see. Certainly, this will make the whole mutilation-prosthetic dance of using tech to cure the problems of tech an integral part of our biosphere. Technoscience produces a mutilation on nature so it is called on to craft a new prosthesis, which is a further mutilation, which then needs new fixes. We are attaching ourselves to a succession of smaller, more powerful, and more seductive music/communication/calculation/memorialization technologies. These devices and our cars and our houses and our network software take over large parts of our daily mental work, making mundane cyborgs: icyborg.

Figure 3. Ren Cyborg

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a jump to selling insurance, going to the store, and barbecue. Of course, now there are 9 billion of us, and many of us have really nice caves and theres the car thing and the war machines and television and satellites and vaccines and prosthetics and genetics and So where did we come from? We evolved. Evolution is a process that is too complicated to explain in one coherent narrative. Evolution is a process that is evolving. Evolution manifested us and we perpetuate it. Still, what is evolution? There is something. It reproduces and adapts. There is selection. Repeat infinitely. Seems simple enough, but in the details of this simple process there is incredible complexity. Darwin identified two forms of selection: natural and artificial. Natural selection is the synthesis of chance and necessity generating increasing complexity out of oneness/nothingness/energy. Matter to particles to atoms to molecules to compounds to stars to planets and solar systems and, sometimes, life. Life, a tangled bank through time that fills the Earth. Artificial selection is human action on other organisms. 20,000 years ago a wolf lurked by the fire and was lured in by warmth, food, and interaction. Now we have Mexican Chihuahuas and English mastiffs. We have corn and roses and kittens and lemon basil. We have patiently worked on nature to make of the tangled bank our garden. We now see that there is also self-selection. In the last 10,000 years, self-selection has produced an incredible rate of change in the human brain. But evolution is not just biological. The same forces of chance/reproduction and necessity/selection work on nonliving matter and, with stranger feedbacks, on culture. It isnt a simple dialectic, it is a cyborg epistemology of thesis, antithesis, prosthesis, synthesis, in different progressions. Evolutions complexity is beyond any explanation we can have for it because, among other things, evolution is evolving. The clearest, and most important way this is happening is through human ingenuity, the integration of organic (evolved, alive) and inorganic (invented, mechanic) systems: cybernetic organisms, cyborgs. Among the most interesting of these cyborgs are us. By modeling the world we can plan not just to deal what will come, but also to shape the future by modifying ourselves and the world. This modeling, this theorizing about the world and explaining it and trying to control it, started with each other. We are social animals and our success has been because of that. Once we evolved culture, tamed fire, and invented tools (the first prosthesis) we were on our way to today. Homo Cyborg And today, where are we on our way to? Well, maybe apocalypse (climate change, weapons of mass destruction, pandemic), but maybe on to Homo cyborg. Or more likely, many types of genetically engineered cyborgs: for the sea, for space (the original excuse for inventing the word), for 14

Figure 4. BorgPol

fun. The posthuman is not just a literary or a cultural studies trope; it is a biological reality in the making. To be effective in the world we need models of the world and we need to act on them. Unfortunately, as indeterminate as the world is we tend to believe absolutely. Cyborgization runs head on into many old belief systems but of particular interest are the belief systems it spawns. The Extropians are on one extreme of a spectrum of faith in science. Their central sacrament is that the Singularity (when computer intelligence becomes self-aware) will soon come and artificial intelligence will become so powerful that we could live forever with its help although it probably will exterminate, or maybe just keep us around as pets. The other end of this rainbow isnt the Luddites, it is the neo-primitives. These entropians arent just the green anarchists and animals-over-people groups, but also all fundamentalists who believe the Rapture of 144,000 to heaven is nigh, for they also see a quick end to civilization and a massive die off of humanity. All these end times visions, climate collapse, nuclear war, singularity, rapture, are symptoms of how perilous our times are. (Figure 4. BorgPol) But waiting for disaster is creating it. We have to evolve a sustainable existence. The Luddites werent against technology, for the tech they had mastered and that framed their

its major sources is fear. There are many examples of such willful readings of the Cyborg Manifesto, but two of the most revealing are the Adbusters spoof manifesto and Bill McKibbens discussion in his best-selling: Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. McKibbens reading is the more subtle. He characterizes The Cyborg Manifesto as a clever argument, with appeal. (2003 194-5) But what is it a clever argument for? For Selektion, Nazi-style eugenics, an idea he attributes to the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk and to Haraway. (italics in original, p. 193) While this is the biggest leap he makes, other jumps abound. According to McKibben, Haraway finds man and woman...natural categories, but cyborgization will deconstruct them. And, politics, he explicitly claims, is also rendered irrelevant in the view of the cyborgologists, since Cyborgology gave up on the old ways of building a just society (the bumper stickers, the endless meetings...) and substituted a technological end run. (pp. 194-5), a claim that is contradicted by the text, and Haraways life as an activist. Linking Haraway to masculinist fascism and its crude, horrific, attempts to remake humanity reveals more about McKibbens fears than about anything she Haraway actually wrote. So it is intriguing that The Cyborg Manifesto hoax promulgated by Adbusters (a slick neo-Situationist magazine and collective in British Columbia) starts with a graphic of intertwined DNA and swastikas. No explanation is offered, just the image. This is quite an incongruous design choice, considering the pretense that this manifesto was written by militantly pro-cybogization thinkers looking to convince. Even if one were to call for eugenics (positive or negative), one would hardly do so by invoking the Nazis.

Figure 5. Cyborg Hermaphrodite

social relations was what they were defending. They were master craftsmen of the handloom, once the pinnacle of technological sophistication. Independent contractors, they brought wool that their children processed into fibers, that the women spun into thread, which they wove into cloth. Some capitalists realized that with semi-automated weaving machines run by women and children (whose nimble little fingers were particularly helpful in keeping the machines running) would produce cheaper cloth. Yes, it destroyed families, shattered communities, unemployed men and was dependent on child labor, but those costs did not show on the bottom line. The weavers smashed some of the new frames, this was made a capital crime, and capitalism marched on. But the perspective of the Luddites survives. Everywhere, people resist technological change in favor of sophisticated technological systems with different social relationships. The activists who pull up genetically modified potatoes and who march and petition and sue to resist GM foods are likely to practice biodynamic gardening, which is based on a wide body of empirical, often scientific, research and practices. So, our cyborgization is overdetermined, even Luddites can be cyborged. Cyborgization isnt just driven by the desire to be well and live longer through cyborg medicine, but to master war with human-machine weapon systems, to maximize productive potential with better interfaces and integrations, to live in the sea or in space, to fulfill our wildest fantasies. But there is resistance to cyborgization, and one of

Figure 6. Darth Vadar in Istanbul

The little 3 X 4 manifesto pamphlet (without page numbers) was stapled into the center of the Adbusters magazine, which is quite widely distributed. It is without authors, but it starts by acknowledging For their inspiration and unswerving devotion to the spirit of this manifesto Donna Haraway along with Howard Bloom, George Gilder, Kevin Kelly, Ray Kurzweil, Pierre Levy, Hans Moravec, Nicholas Negroponte and Stelarc. This is quite a diverse group with many different takes on cyborgization. A number of these 15

people have not written about cyborgs at all, just generally about computerization. Does the list imply that all of these authors have inspired contemptible attitudes toward technology and human-machine developments, attitudes which themselves border on hoaxes? Next follows a transcript of an on-line chat, where the various authors are only identified by their city (Palo Alto, Mexico City, Sydney). The text itself runs through a number of categories starting with You are already a cyborg and ending with The weak have paranoid fantasies.

the green maize of a billiard table. You rape Isis, Madonna, Donna Haraway. It is disconcerting to see how quickly sex turns to rape in the minds of the real authors of the Manifesto. Can one doubt that fear and powerlessness drive these fantasies? Yes, the next line grants that: You get fucked by Pan, Christ, Foucault, the Devil himself. But it seems an afterthought...and still only the males fuck; the females get fucked. Does this also apply to writers and readers, especially of spoofs? These are fascinating readings, channeled through fear for intimidation. It isnt as if Haraway doesnt herself see many dangers in cyborgization, but for those in terror (or feigning terror) of the cyborg, the actual dynamics of cyborgization, and any agency humans might have while experiencing it, are apparently irrelevant. They read her as saying we must accept our dehumanization instead of noticing that she explicitly refuses such a capitulation and even nurtures an ironic dream for something more. She calls for exploding simplistic dichotomies about staying human vs. mechanization, and instead engaging with technologies. The cyborgization=fascism readings are, of course, political readings as all readings are. But they are of a particularly instrumentalist sort, one that denies other readers any credit for subtlety or discrimination. Fear is a crude, but incredibly potent, motivator, as post-911 political developments around the world show. (Figure 6. Darth Vadar in Istanbul) The Uncanny and the (un)Cyborg The fear that is so clear in the Adbusters spoof will certainly limit, and shape our ongoing cyborgization. Fear will help mark out uncyborgable areas. To use this fear effectively, and our fear is an evolved response, we should analyze exactly where our fear of cyborgs comes from. Of course, much of it is a knee-jerk response to the new and to what we dont understand. Healthy impulses but only until we reflect on the new and learn what it offers, then the fear becomes justified (think weapons of mass destruction) or not. Maybe caution will be the wise course. Deeper is a terror that our very identity, our very autonomy, will dissolve in intimate machinic relationships. While this borg scenario may some day be possible, for now the threats of cyborgization are much more mundanetoo much power to the powerful, an extended death instead of more life, or seduction by techno-glitter with much time wasted. Something else must be driving our fear and perhaps its origins can be found in the uncanny. As Freud and others have noted, it is the mix of the known and the unknown that creates such tension in the uncanny. Vampires, zombies, cyborgsthey are like us but not. We arent just afraid of the uncanny, we are drawn to it. It is part of the reaching out that humans do in order to control what is around us. To much fear and we cease to explore, to change. (Figure 7. Bigbod) Thus, most people in our postmodern era are only intermittently afraid, and they find some accommodation with ever-expanding technoscience within this nexus of human/ machine integration--witness the love of cars, the love of sporting tech, boys and their toys, sex machines, and all the other organic-machinic systems with which we construct our self/selves and our environments.

Figure 7. Bigbod

Although replete with wild philosophical speculations (Matter is obsolete) and absurd technological claims (immortality, curing all diseases, real AI, hardwiring humans and machines intimately, are all almost here) many readers agreed with it enthusiastically. The on-line discussion of the Adbusters Manifesto was quickly swamped with a thousand posts, pro and con. Very few readers realized it was a hoax, a spoof in Adbusters terms. Sincere manifesto or not, one would like to ask the actual authors why one of the first major claims it made about cyborgization was that it would lead to incredible sex. Early on, there is a long detailed account of telesex with an electronic bodystocking (it fits as snugly as a condom marking both the readers and the audience as male): ...you run your fingertips over your lovers body and miles away, an array of effectors is triggered, in just the right sequence, at just the right frequency, to convey the touch, the feel, the passion, exactly the way you intended. This leads to a volcanic orgasm for as long as you can stand the pleasure. But it isnt over. Apparently, after having wonderful sex with someone you love, what the targeted audience of this Manifesto most wants to do is surf back in and choose a virtual partner from a limitless menu. So You take Helen of Troy against 16

Still, the fear raises the question: Should cyborgization be resisted? And the answer has to be Yes, often., but not always. Cyborgization can be used to dehumanize, to disempower, to create ever more efficient systems of control and killing which are seductive in their efficiencies and aesthetics. (Figure 8: War Metropolis) But it also can help us fulfill quite legitimate desires: for justice, for beauty, for health, for pleasure, for knowledge. The choices we make about our cyborgization are political choices, whether driven by fear, the desire for justice, or aesthetics. They are limited by our culture, of course, but also by the technical limits of cyborgization itself, the technoscientific processes that make it possible. Cyborgs are systems and all systems, of being and of knowing, are profoundly limited. This is seen most clearly in formal systems. Kurt Gdel showed that the mother of all formal systems, mathematics, is profoundly limited because it is necessarily incomplete, or paradoxical, or both. (Both isnt yet proven but it seems most likely.) He did this proof by making a perfectly legitimate mathematical algorithm from the famous paradox of Greek philosophy about the Cretan liar. If a Cretan tells you he always lies then is that a lie? As it turns out, the mathematics prove that mathematics cannot be perfect. Alonzo Church and Alan Turing used the same trick to show that an infinite computer inevitably is incomplete, or has paradoxes, or both.

of the biological by us. The great cyberneticist Gregory Bateson has pointed out that a system cannot know itself. At the best it can make a map, a model, but the map is never the territory. The tension between needing to believe in our stories, our models, our maps, and yet realize that they are not reality will never disappear. We need to embrace it, not repress it for the repressed returns as irrationality or worse. What is uncyborgable? By definition, parts of every cyborg have not been cyborged, that is the paradox at cyborgs heart. Always biological, at least in some small way. When machines totally replace the biological that will be a robot and the cyborg will be gone. But that is very far away from today. As long as there are cyborgs, the organic will survive. Fear, and desire, and other human emotions and choices will set limits on cyborgization, as will the very nature of

Figure 8. War Metropolis

From physics we know that the observer always affects the system being observed, which is known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. And since the observer-system is always changing (being observed itself, for example, when we ponder it), no system can be fixed. An implication of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is the Bayesian Paradox: to know the position of an electron means one cannot know its path, or vice versa. In other words, we cannot know everything, to know some things means not to know others. Any non-trivial cyborg system is out-of-control in the sense that it cannot be controlled from outside, it has selfregulation, homeostasis. This is one of a number of insights from complexity theory on the unpredictable, uncontrollable, unmodifiable, aspects of complex systems, including all biological ones. Even if artificial (machinic, genetic, nano) become a million times more complex and sophisticated, there will always be technological limits to the replacement

Figure 9. Goddess

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systems and the realities of technology. But as an expression of human nature, our morphing, moding, messing around with our environment and ourselve, cyborgization is going to continue and deepen. (Figure 9. Goddess) So the issue isnt if well be cyborged, but how and who will decide. As Donna Haraway proclaimed a quarter of a century ago we must take responsibility for our cyborgorization. We must take responsibility for our evolution. Otherwise, somebody else will. The Borg of the Star Trek universe are a good warning. If we dont chose participatory evolution with cyborg family values our future will not be guided by ourselves or even the blind hand of chance. Instead, tomorrow will be molded by the vulgar fist of governments, corporations and other authoritarian systems that in service of their short term ends will warp us into nightmares. Here the Borg are wrong. Resistance isnt futile, it is fertile. Evolution is a series of revolutions and now we are the revolutionaries. It is evolve, or dieoff. Note: The idea of the uncyborgable was put forward by the organizers of Amber 09 and it formed the basis for a short article I wrote for the magazine Literal, published in Spanish and English. That article was the frame for my keynote talk at the Amber 09 conference and, in turn, parts of both are incorporated into this new essay, which also draws on an essay written with Steven Mentor, Cyborgs, Masculinidad, Manifiestos y Cambio Social published in Spanish in Cultura digital y movimientos socials, Igor Sabada y Angel Gordo, eds, Madrid: Catarata, 2008, pp. 125-148.

References
Chorost, M. (2005). Rebuilt: How Becoming part Computer Made Me More Human. New York: Houghton-Miffin. Dumit, Joe. and Robbie Davis-Floyd, (eds). (1998). Cyborg Babies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fukyama, Francis. (2002). Our Posthuman Future. New York: Ferrar Straus & Giroux. Gray, Chris Hables. (1997). Postmodern War: The New Politics of Conflict. New York: Guilford, London: Routledge. Gray, Chris Hables. (2001) Cyborg Citizen. New York/London: Routledge. Gray, Chris Hables. (2005) Peace, War and Computers. New York/London: Routledge. Gray, C. H. et al. (2010). The Cyborg Database. http://www.cyborgdb.org Gray, C. H. with Mentor, S. & Figueroa-Sarriera, H., (eds). (1995). The Cyborg Handbook. New York: Routledge. Haraway, Donna. (1985). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s. Originally published in Socialist Review, republished in Haraway 1989. Hughes, James. (2004) Citizen Cyborg. Boulder, Colorado: Westview. Mann, S. (2001). CYBORG: Digital Destiny and Human Possibility in the Age of the Wearable Computer. Toronto: Doubleday Canada. McKibben, Bill. (2003). Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, New York: Henry Holt and Company. Illustrations Figure 1. Roboroach pencil by Joshua Gray Figure 2. NASA Cyborg Plan rendered by Corey Grayson Figure 3. Ren Cyborg pen and ink by Bob Thawley Figure 4. BorgPol collage by Chris Hables Gray Figure 5. Cyborg Hermaphrodite pen and ink, by Bob Thawley Figure 6. Darth Vader in Istanbul photo by Chris Hables Gray Figure 7. Bigbod collage by Chris Hables Gray Figure 8. Warbot collage by Chris Hables gray

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Figure 9. Cyborg Goddess collage by Chris Hables Gray

Zombies & Cyborgs

The Cadaver, the Comatose & the Chimera.
STELARC

Issues of identity and alternate, intimate and involuntary experiences of the body, as well as the telematic scaling of experience, are explored in recent performances. Technology is inserted and attached. The body is invaded, augmented and extended. Virtual-Actual interfaces enable the body to perform in electronic spaces. . What becomes important is not merely the bodys identity, but its connectivity- not its mobility or location, but its interface. The stomach sculpture is an object inserted into the stomach cavity. It is actuated by a servo motor and a logic circuit tethered to a flexidrive cable. It opens and closes, extends and retracts and has a flashing light and a beeping sound. The stimbod software makes possible the remote choreography of the body using a touch-screen interfaced muscle stimulation system. In the fractal flesh performance, people at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Media Lab in Helsinki and the Doors of Perception Conference in Amsterdam, were able to access and actuate the artist in Luxembourg. exoskeleton is a pneumatically powered six-legged walking machine actuated by arm gestures. hexapod is a more compliant and flexible 6-legged walking robot and although it looks like an insect, it will walk like a dog. The extra ear is a proposed project to surgically construct an ear that if connected to a modem and wearable computer, becomes an internet antenna able to transmit real audio sounds to augment the local sounds it hears with its actual ears. extra ear- 1/4 scale is an small replica ear grown with human cells. A partial life entity awaiting prosthetic attachment to the body. movatar is an inverse motion capture system an intelligent avatar that will be able to perform in the real world by accessing and actuating a body, whereas in previous performances the artist has attached prosthetic devices to augment the body. Now the body itself becomes a prosthesis possessed by an avatar to perform in the physical world. And prosthetic head is an embodied conversational agent that speaks to the person who interrogates It with real-time lip syncing and facial expressions. Zombies and Cyborgs The body is an evolutionary architecture that operates and becomes aware in the world. To alter its architecture is to adjust its awareness. The body has always been a prosthetic body, one augmented by its instruments and machines. There has always been a danger of the body behaving involuntarily and of being conditioned automatically. A Zombie is a body that performs involuntarily, that does not have a mind of its own. A Cyborg is a human-machine system There has always been a fear of the involuntary and the automated. Of the Zombie and the Cyborg. But we fear what we have always been and what we have already become. Surface and Self: The Shedding of Skin As surface, skin was once the beginning of the world and

simultaneously the boundary of the self. But now stretched, pierced and penetrated by technology, the skin is no longer the smooth and sensuous surface of a site or a screen. Skin no longer signifies closure. The rupture of surface and skin means the erasure of inner and outer. An artwork has been inserted inside the body. The Stomach Sculpture- constructed for the Fifth Australian Sculpture Triennale in Melbourne, whose theme was site-specific work- was inserted 40cm into the stomach cavity. Not as a prosthetic implant but as an aesthetic addition. The body is experienced as hollow with no meaningful distinctions between public, private and physiological spaces. The hollow body becomes a host, not for a self but simply for a sculpture. As interface, the skin is obsolete. The significance of the cyber may well reside in the act of the body shedding its skin. Subjectively, the body experiences itself as a more extruded system, rather than an enclosed structure. The self becomes situated beyond the skin. It is partly through this extrusion that the body becomes empty. But this emptiness is not through a lack but from the extrusion and extension of its capabilities, its new sensory antennae and its increasingly remote functioning. Fractal Flesh Consider a body that can extrude its awareness and action into other bodies or bits of bodies in other places. An alternate operational entity that is spatially distributed but electronically connected. A movement that you initiate in Melbourne would be displaced and manifested in another body in Rotterdam. A shifting, sliding awareness that is neither all-here in this body nor all-there in those bodies. This is not about a fragmented body but a multiplicity of bodies and parts of bodies prompting and remotely guiding each other. This is not about master-slave control mechanisms but feedback-loops of alternate awareness, agency and of split physiology. Imagine one side of your body being remotely guided whilst the other side could collaborate with local agency. You watch a part of your body move but you have neither initiated it nor are you contracting your muscles to produce it. Imagine the consequences and advantages of being a split body with voltage-in, inducing the behaviour of a remote agent and voltage-out of your body to control peripheral devices. This would be a more complex and interesting body- not simply a single entity with one agency but one that would be a host for a multiplicity of remote and alien agents. Of different physiology and in varying locations. Consider a task begun by a body in one place, completed by another body in another place. Or the transmission and conditioning of a skill. The body not as a site of inscription but as a medium for the manifestation of remote agents. This physically split body may have one arm gesturing involuntarily (remotely actuated by an unknown agent), whilst the other arm is enhanced by an exoskeleton prosthesis to perform with exquisite skill and with extreme 19

speed. A body capable of incorporating movement that from moment to moment would be a pure machinic motion performed with neither memory nor desire.... Stimbod What makes this possible is a touch-screen muscle stimulation system. A method has been developed that enables the bodys movements to be programmed by touching the muscle sites on the computer model. Orange flesh maps the possible stimulation sites whilst red flesh indicates the actuated muscle(s). The sequence of motions can be replayed continuously with its loop function. As well as choreography by pressing, it is possible to paste sequences together from a library of gesture icons. The system allows stimulation of the programmed movement for analysis and evaluation before transmission to actuate the body. At a lower stimulation level it is a body prompting system. At a higher stimulation level it is a body actuation system . This is not about remote-control of the body, but rather of constructing bodies with split physiology, operating with multiple agency. There would be actions without expectations. A two-way tele-Stimbod system would create a possessed and possessing body- a split physiology to collaborate and perform tasks remotely initiated and locally completed- at the same time in the one physiology. Extreme Absence and the Experience of the Alien Such a Stimbod would be hollow body, a host body for the projection and performance of remote agents. Glove Anaethesia and Alien Hand are pathological conditions in which the patient experiences parts of their body as not there, as not their own, as not under their own control- an absence of physiology on the one hand and an absence of agency on the other. In a Stimbod not only would it possess a split physiology but it would experience parts of itself as automated, absent and alien. The problem would no longer be possessing a split personality, but rather a split physicality. In our Platonic, Cartesian and Freudian pasts these might have been considered pathological and in our Foucauldian present we focus on inscription and control of the body. But in the terrain of cyber complexity that we now inhabit the inadequacy and the obsolescence of the ego-agent driven biological body cannot be more apparent. A transition from psycho-body to cyber system becomes necessary to function effectively and intuitively in remote spaces, speeded-up situations and complex technological terrains. Can a body cope with experiences of extreme absence and alien action without becoming overcome by outmoded metaphysical fears and obsessions of individuality and free agency? A Stimbod would thus need to experience its actuality neither all-present-in this-body, nor all-present-in-that-body, but partlyhere and projected-partly-there. An operational system of spatially distributed but electronically interfaced clusters of bodies ebbing and flowing in awareness, augmented by alternate and alien agency. Parasite: Event for Invaded and Involuntary Body A customized search engine was constucted that scans, selects and displays images to the body- which functions in an interactive video field. Analyses of the JPEG files provide data that is mapped to the body via the muscle stimulation 20

system. There is optical and electrical input into the body. The images that you see are the images that move you . Consider the bodys vision, augmented and adjusted to a parallel virtuality which increases in intensity to compensate for the twilight of the real world. Imagine the search engine selecting images of the body off the WWW, constructing a metabody that in turn moves the physical body. Representations of the body actuate the bodys physiology.The resulting motion is mirrored in a VRML space at the performance site and also uploaded to a Web site as potential and recursive source images for body reactivation. RealAudio sound is inserted into sampled body signals and sounds generated by pressure, proximity, flexion and accelerometer sensors. The bodys physicality provides feedback loops of interactive neurons, nerve endings, muscles, transducers and Third Hand mechanism. The system electronically extends the bodys optical and operational parameters beyond its cyborg augmentation of its Third Hand and other peripheral devices. The prosthesis of the Third Hand is counterpointed by the prosthesis of the search engine software code. Plugged-in, the body becomes a parasite sustained by an extended, external and virtual nervous system. Exoskeleton A six-legged, pneumatically powered walking machine has been constructed for the body. The locomotor, with either ripple or tripod gait moves fowards, backwards, sideways and turns on the spot. It can also squat and lift by splaying or contracting its legs. The body is positioned on a turn-table, enabling it to rotate about its axis. It has an exoskeleton on its upper body and arms. The left arm is an extended arm with pneumatic manipulator having 11 degrees-of- freedom. It is human-like in form but with additional functions. The fingers open and close , becoming multiple grippers. There is individual flexion of the fingers, with thumb and wrist rotation. The body actuates the walking machine by moving its arms. Different gestures make different motions- a translation of limb to leg motions. The bodys arms guide the choreography of the locomotors movements and thus compose the cacophony of pneumatic and mechanical and sensor modulated sounds. Hexapod What is explored is a walking architecture that exploits gravity and the intrinsic dynamics of the machine to generate dynamic locomotion. By shifting body weight and twisting and turning the torso, it is possible to initiate walking, change the mode of locomotion, modulate the speed and rhythm and change its direction. The body becomes the body of the machine. The machine legs become the extended legs of the body. It is a more intuitive and interactive system that does not function through intelligence but rather because of its architecture. It is a more compliant and flexible mechanism. It looks like an insect but walks like a dog- with dynamic locomotion. Hopefully, this hybrid human-machine operation will initiate alternate kinds of choreography. It is 5 metres in diameter and weighs about 250 kgms. Muscle Machine The fluidic rubber muscle actuators eliminated problems of

friction and fatigue that was a problem in the previous mechanical system of the Hexapod robot. The rubber muscles contract when inflated and extend when exhausted. This results in a more reliable and robust engineering design. The body stands on the ground within the chassis of the machine, which incorporates a lower body exoskeleton connecting it to the robot. Encoders on the hip joints provides the data that will allow the human controller to move and direct the machine as well as vary the speed at which it will travel. The action of the human operator lifting a leg lifts the three alternate machine legs and swings them forward. By turning its torso, the body makes the machine walk in the direction it is facing. Thus the interface and interaction is more direct, allowing an intuitive human-machine choreography. The walking system, with attached accelerometer sensors generates data that is converted to sounds that augment the acoustical pneumatics and machine mechanism operation. Once the machine is in motion, it is no longer applicable to ask whether the human or machine is in control as they become fully integrated and move as one. The 6-legged robot both extends the body and transforms its bipedal gait into a 6-legged insect-like movement. The appearance and movement of the machine legs are both limb-like and wing-like motion. Extra Ear Having developed a Third Hand, consider the possibility of constructing an extra ear, positioned next to the real ear. A laser scan was done to create a 3D simulation of the Extra Ear in place. Although the chosen position is in front of and beside the right ear, this may not be the surest and safest place anatomically to position it. Alternatively, the ear could be constructed on the forearm and repositioned later. But this would also require microsurgery to guarantee blood flow. Rather than the hardware prosthesis of a mechanical hand ,the Extra Ear would be a soft augmentation, mimicking the actual ear in shape and structure, but having different functions. Imagine an ear that cannot hear but rather can emit noises. Implanted with a sound chip and a proximity sensor, the ear would speak to anyone who would get close to it. Perhaps, the ultimate aim would be for the Extra Ear to whisper sweet nothings to the other ear. Or imagine the Extra Ear as an internet antennae able to amplify RealAudio sounds to augment the local sounds heard by the actual ears. The ear is not only an organ of hearing but also an organ of balance. To have an extra ear points to more than visual and anatomical excess. It also points to a re-orientation of the body. Extra Ear-1/4 Scale With the assistance of Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr of the Tissure Art & Culture Project, Symbiotica and a German Lab, a 1/4 scale replica of my ear was grown using human cells. It was exhibited at Galerija Kapelica in Ljubljana in May, 2003. The ear was cultured in a micro-gravity bioreactor and was fed nutrients every 3-4 days. It is planned that the cartilage underpinnings of an ear would be grown using my bone-marrow cells and then implanted beneath the skin of the forearm. This would result initially in only a relief of an ear, but with the cutting and lifting of the ear flap and the construction of an ear lobe a 3D ear would be structured on the arm. This would only require the assistance

of a cosmetic surgeon, making it more possible to realize. Other 1/4 Scale replicas of my ear were grown for the Clemenger Contemporary Art Award at the Ian Potter, NGV in Melbourne (using mouse cells) and for the National Review of Live Arts, The Powerstation, Midland (using the He La cell line). The concern is not with the pathological and the monstrous, but with alternate anatomical architectures. The 1/4 Scale Ear is a partial life form awaiting to become a prosthetic part of the body. Extra Ear: Ear On Arm An extra ear is presently being surgically constructed on my arm. A left ear on a left arm. An ear that does not hear but transmits. A facial feature has been replicated, relocated and rewired elsewhere. Excess skin was created with an implanted skin expander in the forearm. By injecting saline solution into a subcutaneous port, the kidney shaped silicon implant stretched the skin, forming a pocket of excess skin that was used in surgically constructing the ear. When electronically complete it will form part of a distributed bluetooth headset. I will be able to speak to the remote person through the Extra Ear but will hear the sound of the person speaking to me in my mouth. If my mouth is closed only I will be able to hear them. If I open my mouth and someone is close by, they will hear the sound of the remote person from within my mouth. Movatar - An Inverse Motion Capture System Consider a computer entity, a virtual body or an avatar that can access a physical body, actuating it to perform in the real world. If the avatar is imbued with an artificial intelligence, becoming increasingly autonomous and unpredictable, then it would be an AL (Artificial Life) form performing with a human body in physical space. With an appropriate visual software interface and muscle stimulation system this would be possible. The avatar would become a Movatar. And with appropriate feedback loops from the real world it would be able to respond and perform in more complex and compelling ways. The Movatar would be able not only to act , but also to express its emotions by appropriating the facial muscles of the its physical body. As a VRML entity it could be logged-into from anywhere- to allow your body to be accessed and acted upon. Or, from its perspective, the Movatar could perform anywhere in the real world, at anytime with a multiplicity of physical bodies in diverse situations and remote locations. Prosthetic Head The aim was to construct an automated, animated and reasonably informed if not intelligent artificial head that speaks to the person who interrogates it. The PROSTHETIC HEAD project is a 3D avatar head that has real-time lip synching, speech synthesis and facial expressions. Head nods, head tilts and head turns as well as changing eye gaze contribute to the personality of the agent and the non-verbal cues it can provide. The Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) are about communicative behavior. With a vision or sensor system, The Prosthetic Head will also be able to acknowledge the presence and position of the physical body that approaches it. And eventually be able to analyze the users tone of voice and emotional state. The ECA will be a 21

much more seductive agent when it can compliment you on the color of your clothing and comment on the smirk on your face. Notions of intelligence, awareness, identity, agency and embodiment become problematic. Just as a physical body has been exposed as inadequate, empty and involuntary, so simultaneously the ECA becomes seductive with its uncanny simulation of real-time recognition and response. Initially I had to make decisions about its data-base and whether it would be a pathological, philosophical or flirting head. In recent years Ive had an increasing amount of PhD students requesting interviews to assist in writing their thesis. Now I can reply that although Im too busy to answer them, it would be possible for them to interview my head instead. A problem would arise though when the Prosthetic head increases its data-base, becoming more informed and autonomous in its responses. I would then no longer be able to take full responsibility for what my head says. Partial Head The Partial Head project has developed from completing the Prosthetic Head and the Extra Ear- 1/4 Scale. The aim now is to not only grow an ear, but also small replicas of the artists mouth, nose and eye using primate cells. This will be a partial portrait, partially living but not quite yet human. That is it is human in form but primate in substance. These facial architectures will be grown over polymer scaffolds, in a cluster, contained within a self-sustaining drip system of nutrients within an incubator. A micro camera will monitor the growing facial features and the image is both projected in the space and uploaded to a website. A digital counter indicates the number of growing cells. Whereas the Prosthetic Head can be seen as an interactive digital portrait, the Partial Head is a biotech but partial portrait of the artist. A face in fragments. Walking Head A 2 m diameter 6-legged autonomous walking robot. Vertically mounted on its chassis is an LCD screen imaging a computer generated human-like head. The LCD screen can rotate from side to side.The robot has a scanning ultra-sound sensor that detects the presence of a person in front of it. It sits still until someone comes into the gallery space- then it stands, selects from a set of movements from its library of preprogrammed motions and performs the choreography. It then stops and waits till it detects someone else. The robot performs on a 4 m diameter platform and its tilt sensor system detects when it is close to the edge and backs off, walking in another direction. The Walking Head robot will become an actual-virtual system in that its mechanical leg motions will actuate its facial behaviours of nods, turns, tilts blinks and its vocalizations. Other possibilities include the robot being driven by its web-based 3D model with a menu of motion icons that can be pasted together and played. The robot is pneumatically actuated. Second Life/ Second Skin Avatars Have No Organs is a performance where the artists avatar performs on its SL site. The avatars arm gestures and lip movements are actuated by the sounds of the Prosthetic Head speaking behind it. The sound actuated limb motions of the avatar are counter-pointed by the coded movements 22

of it attached mechanical arm. In recent SL performances, the avatar performs with its clone within an installation of pulsing ears and animated words. Their doubled choreography is sometimes synchronized and sometimes counterpointed. Their scripted limb movements mimick the involuntary limb movements generated by the muscle stimulation system. The Cadaver, The Comatose & The Chimera We are living in an age of excess and indifference. Of prosthetic augmentation and extended operational systems. An age of Organs Without Bodies. Of organs awaiting bodies. There is now a proliferation of biocompatible components in both substance and scale that allows technology to be attached and implanted into the body. Organs are extracted and exchanged. Organs are engineered and inserted. Blood flowing in my body today might be circulating in your body tomorrow. Ova are fertilized by sperm that was once frozen. There is the possibility now that the skin cells from a female bodies can re-engineered into sperm cells. The face of a donor body becomes a third face on the recipient. Limbs can be amputated from a dead body and reattached and reanimated on a living body. Cadavers can be preserved forever with plastination whilst comatose bodies can be sustained indefinitely on life-support systems. Cryogenically suspended bodies await reanimation at some imagined future. The dead, the near-dead, the un-dead and the yet to be born now exist simultaneously. This is the age of the Cadaver, the Comatose and the Chimera. The chimera is the body that performs with mixed realities. A biological body, augmented with technology and telematically performing with virtual systems. The chimera is an alternate embodiment. The body acts with indifference. Indifference as opposed to expectation. An indifference that allows something other to occur, that allows an unfolding- in its own time and with its own rhythm. An indifference that allows the body to be suspended with hooks into its skin, that allows an inserting of a sculpture into its stomach and that allows a ear to be surgically constructed and stem-cell grown on its arm.

Acknowledgements The Muscle Stimulation System circuitry was designed by Bio-Electronics, Logitronics and Rainer Linz in Melbourne with the box fabricated by Jason Patterson. The graphical interface was done by Troy Innocent at Empire Ridge with the assistance of Tim Ryan. The Stomach Sculpture was constructed by Jason Patterson in Melbourne. The Fractal Flesh, Ping Body and Parasite software was developed by Gary Zebington, Dmitri Aronov and the Merlin group in Sydney. Exoskeleton was completed by f18 as part of Stelarcs residency in Hamburg City, coordinated by Eva Diegritz from Kampnagel. Jason Patterson constructed the Extended Arm manipulator. F18 in Hamburg constructed the Motion Prosthesis. Rainer Linz, Damien Everett and Gary Zebington developed Movatar. Hexapod is a collaboration between the Digital Reseach Unit, Nottingham Trent University and the Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems Group, Cogs at Sussex University. The project team included Barry Smith (Project Coordinator), Inman Harvey (Robot Designer), John Luxton (Engineer) and Sophia Lycouris (Choreographer). With the Muscle Machine Dr. Philip Breedon (facct, tntu) was the Development and Project Manager, and Stan Wijnans (dru, tntu) developed the sensor technology with v2 and did the sound design. This second stage of the project was funded by the ahrb, the uk. The first performances in London were done at Gallery 291 on the 1st June, 2003.The 1/4 Scale Extra Ear was a collaboration with tc&a (Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr of SymbioticA). The Prosthetic Head was done with the assistance of Karen Marcelo, Sam Trychin and Barrett Fox from SF. Rainer Linz produced the stelarc (amplifed body) and Fractal Flesh (internet performances) audio CDs. The Humanoid audio cd was a collaboration with Chris Coe (Digital Primate) and Rainer Linz (Ontological Oscillators). Gary Zebington is the Webmaster for Stelarcs site. Daniel Mounsey has constructed Stelarcs Second Life site.

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Mediated Bodies

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Body in Code
The (Cybernetic) Sojourn of the Embodied Avatar
Elif Ayiter ayiter@sabanciuniv.edu

Abstract This paper will attempt to address the immaterially material aspect of cyborg as the body in code, (Hansen, 2003) i.e., the avatar as a 3 dimensionally embodied being in virtual worlds. Intrinsically bound up with cybernetics, cyborg as a self-regulating human-machine system culminates its activity in the manifestation of feedback loops: D. S. Halacy, one of the earliest users of the term cyborg has pointed out that the feedback loop inherent in the system would be the one that resides in the relationship between inner space to outer space as an abstract interim space which forms a bridge between mind and matter. This bridge-space acquires relevance of significant proportions when it comes to the creative process involved in the realization of the 3 dimensionally embodied avatar since this is a being whose very identity is decided upon by its creator. As such, the creation of avatars and alt avatars as personas and identities of a person and the bridge-cyborg state inherent in this process, would seem to be one of the most open areas of creative activity today: We are in a position to re-create our selves and many multiples and facets of our selves, interacting with others, indeed becoming firmly enmeshed in a virtual social life, complete with joy, sorrow, friendships, loves, losses, gains and rivalries in a 3 dimensionally immersive world, whereby we spin input into the feedback loops of our psychic system(s) both Real and Virtual. An examination of the creative processes involved in creating a bodyin-code/cyborg 3D avatar, with a survey of related literature from cyberpsychology, cyberanthropology and metanomics will form the bulwark of this paper. Background Synthetic Agency In his book Exodus to the Virtual World economist Edward Castranova predicts that a migration of considerable proportions from the physical realm to three dimensional, online synthetic worlds is to be expected within the next few decades. The anticipated outcome would be a demographic landslide of significant enough socio-economic impact to constitute a need for compelling changes in political, social, cultural and economic strategies not only in the virtual but also the physical realm (Castranova, 2007). As opposed to a discrete, one way migration, as would be the case in population shifts in the physical world, the anticipated migration would be of a continuous nature, with migrants switching back and forth between the physical and the synthetic world. If, during this ebb and flow of time allocation more and more hours of activity become appropriated by the virtual world the physical world would suffer the consequences primarily through the loss of rev26

enue generated by the consumption of (physical) goods. However, equally impactful would be the loss of interest and attention towards (physical) socio-cultural occurrences, events and policy. By looking at the current health indicators of virtual economies, the earnings of which can readily be translated into physical currencies such as the US Dollar, Castranova predicts that if a sufficiently large number of players migrate to virtual pastures the consequences upon physical economies, and by extension socio-political structures, will be powerful enough to instigate fundamental changes in (physical) public policies as well as a re-examination/re-definition of (physical) socio-cultural mechanisms globe-wide. Furthermore, Castranova sees this as a more than likely occurrence when viewed within the economic theory of human time use, the allocation of attention and the attractiveness of virtual worlds within its context, as well as the growth in the gaming industry coupled with the emergence of ubiquitous technologies. Since creative practices are inextricably intertwined with the socio-cultural milieu within which they flourish, it would follow that vast change, not only in terms of the actual creative output itself, but especially and more importantly in terms of the contextual premises within which this creative output is generated should also be expected. The body-in-code Avatars are the all important, if not indeed sole agents of virtual social interaction since their inhabitants both consciously and unconsciously use them in ways very similar to their material body (Damer et al, 1997). They can be endowed with a wide range of physical attributes, and may be customized to produce a wide variety of humanoid and other forms. Furthermore a single person may have multiple accounts, i.e. alts and thus be represented through multiple identities in a synthetic world. Given that they visually portray an inhabitant and allow visual communication, Suler contends that avatar appearance is crucial for identity formation as well as attaining Presence in virtual worlds (Suler, 2007). While Presence is defined as a sense of being there in a mediated environment (IJsselsteijn, 2000), an illusion of non-mediation in which a user no longer perceives the display medium as a separate entity (Lombard, 1997, or a place visited, rather than a place seen (Slater et al., 1999); Mantovani and Riva challenge the notion that experiencing a simulated environment deals with the mere perception of its objective features; instead proclaiming that presence in an environment (real or simulated) means that individuals can perceive themselves, objects, as well as others not only as situated in that external space but as immersed in a sociocultural web connected through interactions between objects and people (Mantovani, Riva, 1999). The significance

of full engagement with external agents, be they animate or inanimate, in the attainment of presence finds further resonance in suspension of disbelief, a definition originally coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the early 19th century, placed in conjunction with what Castranova defines as practical presence or practical immersion, i.e., presence/ immersion attained solely by means of social engagement. A rewarding overview of the literature on the avatar within the context of embodiment comes from Benjamin Joerissen (Joerissen, 2008) who directs us to the co-relation between the ideological affinity of the avatar and the human body: Drawing upon Plato, as well as the Sanskrit meaning of the word avatar itself, he points out that within these doctrines the human body itself can be identified as the disparaged, earthbound hybrid carrier/avatar of higher, divine, i.e., non-physical attributes. In a play upon McLuhans famous statement Joerissen continues to say that if soul is indeed form, the body is then the medium within which form becomes corporeal and as such the body becomes the very message which it carries. However, according to Joerissen, a recent, post-Cartesian shift in the attributes with which an avatar is endowed is also noteworthy: In the world of trans-humanist discourse the avatar is no longer the belittled, lesser manifestation of the higher form but rather the upload of a perishable, mortal physicality into the mundus possibilis of a virtual, non-corporeal space; an agent in the realization of a cybernetic platonic state (List 2001) wherein technology may overcome the shackles of mortality. According to Joerissen viewing avatars as mere representational agents in virtual realms has become increasingly problematic over the past decade. Instead a holistic approach which weaves together the human handler, the representation thereof and the medium within which this representation materializes seems to be called for: In describing this hybrid actor whose virtual sojourn is a two way experience which can have profound influences on the human behind the keyboard, Joerissen quotes Yee: Just as we choose our self-representations in virtual environments, our virtual self representations shape our Real Life behaviors in turn. These changes happen not over hours or weeks, but within minutes. (Yee, Bailenson, 2007) Drawing his conclusion Joerissen quotes Mark Hansen (Hansen, 2006) who points at a deep reaching biological/ corporeal moment embedded within the virtual experience: Whilst placing the digital experience itself within the sensory organs of the biological body, Hansen ascribes a third element to digital embodiment, speaking of a body submitted to and constituted by an unavoidable and empowering technical deterritorialization, a bodyincode, which can only be realized in association with technology, and which, in its turn, can lead to unexpected self-perceptions in the human handler. Indeed Hansen endows this novel constellation with the capability of increasing the field of influence of the human operator as an embodied being. Thus, Hansen predicts a re-definition of the potential of the biological body through virtual embodiment. Creating Avatars Art and Experience Much inspiration as well as clarity of purpose has been attained from reading John Dewey on the experiential

qualities of aesthetics and art. In as synthetic a world as the metaverse of Second Life where the bulk of art work presented is still housed in designated art spaces, such as galleries or museums, Deweys concern for the separation of art work from its experiential functions seem to be well founded, given the suitability of virtual worlds for an indepth reexamination of the role of artistic output in (virtual) society. Drawing attention to the modernist practice of relegating art work to rarefied but sterile repositories where they pursue an existence essentially cut off from everyday usage and appreciation, as would indeed be the case with museums, Dewey draws attention to cultures, ancient as well as contemporary, where aesthetic appreciation is inextricably bound with day to day usage, saying that we do not have to travel to the ends of the earth nor return many millennia to find peoples for whom everything that intensifies the sense of immediate living is an object of intense admiration, adding that the present task at hand is to restore continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and the everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are universally recognized to constitute experience, thus elevating art work from its current state of being the provider of mere transient pleasurable excitations into once again becoming the powerful carriers of experience. The Alt Avatar Although the avatar has been the subject of considerable inquiry; alt avatars do not seem to have received an equal amount of attention: Boellstrof (2008) points at the social alt who is used to embody an alternative selfhood, in which the more fundamental personality of the real person is still driving in the background but filtered through a different surface persona. The concept of an alt however, only makes sense when it is placed in juxtaposition to a main avatar. Typically, but not invariably, a main avatar is designed to look like or at least be the idealized version of the Real Life persona behind the keyboard while the social avatars can manifest in vastly different shapes, sex and human as well as non-human attributes, to the extent where residents can refer to their alt avatars as a costume or a mask, emphasizing the difference between their Real Life selves and the alternative persona they projected through the alt avatar. Indeed the major reason why adding voice to Second Life was so controversial was the issue of identification which voice would inevitably bring to the fore. Thus, it would seem that the issue of concealment is a factor in the explorations of alternative selves where the most of the alt accounts in Second Life are concerned. Deviating from the above described issues of concealment usually associated with alts, the alt avatars of alpha.tribe are all fully acknowledged by their human handler, given that they have not been created in search of anonymity, privacy or role-play involving external relationships; but as an aid to investigating the nature of her own psychic gestalt. Although there is indeed considerable role-play, this does not usually involve outside agents but is more or less in the nature of a solitary pursuit or a single person game, the ultimate aim of which is to break down preconceptions and 27

behavioral ruts pertaining to what is perceived as a whole and undivided creative identity, projected as a recognizable personal signature manifested in creative output. alpha.tribe A designer/artist, as well as an art educator, the author wished to investigate whether the consistency of the creative self is in fact a given and whether indeed it might not be challenged. The creative output of a virtual fashion enterprise in Second Life is the visual context through which this primarily self-observational study is being conducted: alpha.tribe is a fashion-design collective operated by 5 alt avatars, of both sexes, human as well as non-human, have pooled their resources in the operation of a design enterprise, within which each alt pursues his/her own line of creative inquiry, culminating in different lines of output. As such, alpha.tribe is one of a series of experiments conducted by the artist/author, the ultimate aim of which is the construction of a series of behavioral assignments which will form the backbone of an educational strategy in an online virtual world, based upon a real world precedent, developed and practiced in the 1960s, by Roy Ascott, known as the Groundcourse. A salient aspect of Ascotts methodology in the propagation of behavioral change and stimulating creative processes is Role Play, as well as pure play, or frivolous play (Sutton-Smith, 2001). Sutton-Smith (2001) considers play to be a powerful tool in the construction of identity, as imaginary play in art and literature; as the self in play from the perspective of individual psychology; and the frivolous as a deconstruction of play. And, in its essence alpha.tribe is an elaborate dress-up game. Although the creation of the alt identities of the avatar Alpha Auer has been spread over a period of two years; as a business alpha.tribe was founded only recently. 5 avatars are actively involved in the fashion business today: Grapho Fullstop, whose design queries involve complex textures evoking the dark and the secret; Alpha Auer, whose investigations follow the geometrically precise; Xiamara Ugajin, who specializes in flora; Amina Diavolo, whose interests lie in the creation of loose and unstructured apparel and Alpho Fullstop, the creator of hybrid creatures. None of these keywords have been premeditated, but have emerged over a period of time. Instead what has been employed by the artist/author is a method of diligent self observation, where she has attempted to evoke a second order cybernetic structure in which she has become an observer of the system that she is. These observations have witnessed much lively debate between the 5 avatars, which indeed at times have resulted in hefty altercations. These are documented on the 3 blogs as well as the 2 Flickr feeds which the artist/author keeps and demonstrate how Alpha has been accused of plagiarism, and indeed the user of slave labor by her alt avatars throughout an emergent process of creative self-definition. Indeed one of the avatars, Amina Diavolo, is a newcomer who has joined the enterprise when a novel strain of output which could not be easily categorized within the existing design briefs was discovered residing within the creative make-up of the artist. Thus, it is by no means certain that alpha.tribe will remain as the creative domain of only 5 creative entities. The artist has many more currently inactive alt avatars, which are waiting to emerge from the databases of Second Life as and when they are needed; 28

i.e., as and when furhter creative strains are discovered within the one creative identity. Cyborg Bridges: Creative Activity for Behavioral Change A pertinent result of creative activity in a synthetic world, when considered in relationship to the avatar, is the behavioral change the created effectuates upon the creator. Yee and Bailenson have reported upon the relevance of the physical attributes of the three dimensional avatar, finding that both the height and the attractiveness of an avatar in an online environment are significant predictors of the players performance. However truly startling is also the finding that according to The Proteus Effect, not only does the appearance of the virtual body change how dyads interact with others in the online communities themselves; but this effect is indeed powerful enough to be carried through to subsequent face-to-face interactions amongst the physical handlers of the avatars participating in the experiment (Yee, Bailenson, 2007). Roy Ascotts Groundcourse, with its emphasis on behavioral change, utilized the creation and enactment of new personalities as an integral part of the educational process. A personality is a thing comprised of many layers of complexity, comprised of a gamut of attributes, ranging from intelligence and temper to genetic make-up. However, based upon the importance which cyberpsychologists place upon the physical attributes of the avatar the author has focused her current area of interest to the creation of visual identities and indeed multiple visual identities all belonging to one human handler as the visual manifestations of the diverse facets of the human persona: A previous exercise based upon a concept borrowed from Robotics, The Uncanny Valley, conjoined with Kristevas definition of The Abject, has been the subject of a prior publication (Ayiter, 2008). The second experiment, alpha.tribe, addresses the ability of splitting the (visual) creative identity through physically divergent manifestations of one human, taking cues from the literary tradition of noms-de-plume and heteronyms into a visual domain of creativity. A novel, third addition to the series in which visual identity will be investigated from a synthetically genealogical standpoint is currently being deliberated upon. Conclusion In Exodus to the Virtual World Castranova alerts his readers from the onset that the book is of a speculative nature. However, after this opening statement he continues on to list the scientific instruments by which he is constructing his model. Given the solidity of his assessment tools as well as his academic expertise in economics and public policy, it would not be too imprudent to regard his predictions as anything other that informed deliberations, which it might behoove his readers to take into serious consideration: Even if his cogitations come to bear fruit only partially, humankind may find themselves living in a vastly altered world, or indeed in multiple worlds, synthetic and real simultaneously. We may find ourselves in a social milieu where the bulk of recreational time, if not indeed work hours, are spent in fantastical, frivolous, playful and fun activity; where economic demand and supply are shaped by parameters

that are currently being forged in online synthetic virtual worlds. Returning full circle to the days of the pre-industrial revolution designers and artists may find themselves to not only be the conceivers but also the crafters and merchants of their own creative output; an output whose intrinsic descriptors, function and usage may be vastly altered to those of the present day. One of the emergent forms of creative endeavor finds its predecessors in the noms-de-plume of 18th and 19th century French and English literature, specifically in cases such as Mark Twains or Lewis Carrol/Charles Dodgsons where the literary double has been evoked to handle an incongruence of output, which would in fact point at an ability of fragmenting the creative identity. Avatar Art/Avatar Systems The construction of identities rather than externalized objects; indeed the construction of pantheons comprised of multiple selves and persona through synthetic agency, whereby second order self-observational systems in fulfillment of Halacys cyborg-bridge are evoked may well turn out to be a major field of creative inquiry of the synthetic future.

References Ayiter, E. (2008). Syncretia: A sojourn in the uncanny valley. New Realities: Being Syncretic Consciousness Reframed: The Planetary Collegiums IXth International Research Conference, Springer, Edition Angewandte, Wien Ascott, R., Shanken. E. (ed) (2003). Telematic embrace: Visionary theories of art, technology, and consciousness. Berkley, California: University of California Press. Pg 102 -107 Ayiter, E. (2008). Integrative art education in a metaverse: ground<c>, Technoetics Arts, Volume 6. no 1 Pg 41 53. Takatalo, J. (2002). Presence and flow in virtual environments: An explorative study. University of Helsinki. http://www.tml.tkk.fi/ Opinnot/T-111.080/2003/takatalo_presence%20and%20flow.pdf Retrieved on 03/04/2009. Mantovani, G., Riva, G. (Oct 1999). Real presence: How different ontologies generate different criteria for presence, telepresence, and virtual presence, presence: teleoperators & virtual environments. Vol. 8 Issue 5, p540, 11p. Yee, N., Bailenson, J. N., Urbanek, M., Chang, F., Merget, D. (2007). The unbearable likeness of being digital: The persistence of nonverbal social norms in online virtual environments, cyberpsychology & behavior. 10, 115-121. Yee, N., Bailenson, J.N., & Ducheneaut, N. (2009). The proteus effect: Implications of transformed digital self-representation on online and offline behavior. communication research, 36, 285-312. Joerissen, B. (2008). The body is the message. Avatare als visuelle Artikulationen, soziale Aktanten und hybride Akteure, Paragrana, Volume: 17, Issue: 1 Hansen, M.(2006) Bodies in code: Interfaces with digital media. New York: Routledge

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Aspects of fragmentation and self-experience.

Towards a dissection of the digital body.
Angeliki Malakasioti Architect PhD Candidate, University of Thessaly, Greece Email: angeli-ki@live.com

Introduction my aspect is one of molting... Doubtless my changes are matched by your own. You. But you are a person, a human being. I am a silicon and epoxy energy enlightened by line current. What distances, what chasms are to be bridged here? (Racter (W.Chamberlain), 1984) Hypothesizing that this study does not need to be developed under the deliberately communicational title Aspects of fragmentation and self experience - towards a dissection of the digital body, it could be also referenced as the ruminations of cut and inland experience - in propinquity of a diagnosis of the info skinner body or as other pseudoaccidental phrases like anterior fissure, impromptu headfulness and necropsy of the data processor coalescing. The example of the title inditement in the context of this essay constitutes an informational surmise of computer mediated data loops. These circular structures involve the two phases of fragmentation and composition, both taking place in the blurred humane and mechanical environment, thus, to put it in a different way, in the integrated mental and digital space. The phrases above which were partially produced through the use of a computer mediated poetry creation software (a project realized by Eugenio Tisselli, CAP 2006), are used to introduce the conundrum of the noetic space that is constructed in the interstitial area between disintegration and synthesis procedures. This area offers a site of individual construction, where an immaterial aspect of cyborgian ontology is discussed, attempting to define the notion of the digital self through the cyberspace spectrum or, in other words, the sense of selfhood of the electronically projected and technologically immersed human being. The study is aiming at a conceptual configuration of the idea of the digital body, which can be prospectively undertaken through experimentations with notions of embodiment of the digital self, as this research evolves in the future. There are multiple philosophical and psychological approaches concerning the self in the physical world. On the one hand, there is the stimulating mind-body dualism which acts as a fluctuating dipole concerning embodiment and corporeality. On the other hand, there is a plethora of studies describing the self as dismantled and dislocated. The fact that these studies are extended in relative theories concerning digital environments is very intriguing. Thus, this concept does not cease to evolve at the level of disarticulation, but it impels the emersion of the contemporary description of human identity in the context of a technologically determined present. 30

Fragmentation The sociologist Bryan S. Turner discusses the function of the embodied self in the context of social interaction, suggesting that it bridges the gap between identity and physical specification and co-ordination. Anthony Elliott describes Turners idea: The body is something we are, we have and we do in daily life; the body is crucial to an individual subjects sense of self, as well as the manner in which the self relates and interacts with others (Elliott, 2001). Turners approach refers to a great extend to Michelle Foucault, borrowing the phrase technologies of the self, which refers to the techniques the subject invents in order to pose himself as an object to be controlled and regulated, though the development of atomistic tools (Foucault, 1988). Foucaults idea was also used by Mark Poster in order to describe the self through the idea of Superpanoticon, which focuses on the influence of contemporary communicational technologies and immanent surveillance systems. In correspondence with the Panopticon architectural idea for prisons, developed by Jeremy Bentham, the communicational contact between the subject who is looking and the object being seen is disturbed. The individual is flowing on the restless and immanent information of the internet panopticon, resulting in a sense of destabilized data saturation and disintegration (Elliott, 2001). This process is fragmenting oneself, creating successive states of inverse or disrupted perceptual panopticons. Fragmentation is also important in Richard Sennetts theory, in which he mentions characteristically: A pliant self, a collage of fragments unceasing in its becoming, ever open to the new experience (Sennett, 1998). Postmodern critics of selfhood emphasize on this aspect, describing that the role of technology is mirrored back into the self structures, resulting in tumult. Talking about the mirror as a fragmentation process, one is unavoidably directed to the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and his notion of the morselated (fragmented) body. His approach is developed through the known mirror stage, the crucial moment of infancy at which the subject identifies itself as an object in his reflection. The experience of the digitally projected individual constitutes a relative process of decentered and disembodied ego formation, a kind of reflection which is inserted as a speculum aspect of self. Lacan suggests that after the mirror stage, there is a constant underlying sense of loss and absence which is ventured to be balanced by the identity formation. Images of castration, emasculation, mutilation, dismemberment, dislocation, evisceration, devouring, and bursting open of the body. (Lacan, 2001) The ego protects the self from experiencing fragmentation, through the crea-

tion of narcissistic, illusionary structures of coherence. The cyberspace acts as an artifice, a digital reflector, and sometimes as a rearview mirror mechanism, sending back selfinformation of the analog environment and vice-versa. This unconscious inhibition of the fear of a fragmented and chaotic self-image is met according to Lacan at the hallucinatory works of Hieronymous Bosch: This fragmented body, the term for which I have introduced into our theoretical frame of reference, regularly manifests itself in dreams when the movement of the analysis encounters a certain level of aggressive disintegration in the individual. It then appears in the form of disjointed limbs, or of those organs figured in exoscopy, growing wings and taking up arms for intestinal persecutions -- the very same that the visionary Hieronymus Bosch has fixed, for all time, in painting, as they climbed, in the fifteenth century, to the imaginary zenith of modern man, but this form is even tangibly revealed at the organic level, in the lines of fragilization which define the anatomy of phantasy, as exhibited in the schizoid and spasmodic symptoms of hysteria. (Lacan, 2001). Foucault also describes the idea of the alter ego in combination with hysteria. The alter ego relates to the out of body experience, it is detached and the second self reminds of the second life game concept, where notions of presence and absence or here and there are muddled. One could talk about a kind of a contemporary heterotopia of digital and analogical composition, which constitutes an alter topos, inhabited by the alter ego, a place for exploration of memory and identity stratifications. Hysterias symptoms are interesting because the individual invents a new intimate and unique phantasmatic anatomy of his body, regardless of the previously known structure. An ephemeral differentiated somatic map is created and according to Joseph Raulin, this does not happen due to organic factors, but refers to pathology of phantasy (Foucault, 2001). A fetishistic and imaginative anatomy is also referred by Anthony Vidler when talking about the ruptured elements of a persons image under someone elses gaze, in Roland Barthess book A lovers discourse: fragments. the very gaze of a hypothetical lover projected onto the body of the sleeping beloved is as analytical and dissecting as that of a surgeon in an anatomy class. (Vidler, 1994). A kind of cybernetic circuit is created, a system in which the erotic gaze of desire acts as an incision and divulsion tool, while the information and its feedback, in correspondence with the interactivity of other internet users, constitute the assemblage of the idea of self through the incoming responses. This fragility of continuity appears at the basic structures of schizoid psychological disorders. At this point, the juxtaposition of these patients and the inhabitants of cyberspace can prove fruitful as far as their corresponding selfconsciousness symptoms are concerned. Either as a bipolar personality like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or as an infinite personality complex, borrowing the phrase from the book Cyberia by Douglas Rushkoff, the phenomenon of multiplicity is introduced. Rushkoff describes it as a highly dense information loop (Rushkoff, 2002). It is a kind of temporal and qualitative extension of the mirror stage, during which the cyberspace inhabitant is immersed in multiple activities that are otherwise impossible in a physical environment. The individual observes himself producing duplicates, pro-

liferating and interacting in various contexts. The dissociative identity disorder is a direct parallelism. In this case, there are two or more identities into one person, slipping into each other and resulting in abrupt changes of behavior and perception. There is also a strong reference to the schizophrenia phenomenon. The etymology of the word is interesting since it is denoting the scissure of mind (from skhizein which means to split and phren which means mind) and it also refers to non ordinary or expected states of expression and perception of reality. The disorder, however, that appears closer to the sense of self in cyberspace, is the dissociative depersonalization disorder. It is not based on multiplicity, but the schism exists between the person and its actions. A distance between the self and the subject acting is created and the individual is unable to act or involve himself, losing touch with what is considered real or fake according to his own perception. The idea of digital depersonalization is arising, which is nowadays a nearly consolidated description of human interaction with cyberspace. The person experiences feelings of inexistence or fakery. The slicing of a person, meaning the tmesis of identity by the subject, might well include the corporeal dimension, as far as the out of body experience or virtual space is concerned, as well as the immaterial dimension dealing with the divarication of self in the part that acts and the one that thinks. In the context of the dissociative cases of the depersonalized digital experience, it is worth mentioning Ronald David Laing in his essay the ghost of the weed garden, chapter of the book The divided self: an existential study in sanity and madness. He mentions characteristically the case of a chronic schizophrenic patient, which resembles strongly the idea of the digital self in the context of infinite possibilities of cyberspace. Eventualities are innumerable and as a consequence, the patient can experience almost anything. This results in the prevailing of the plethora of selves, thus the initial identity is evanesced. Therefore, the borders are dissolved, they cease existing or forming the idea of a coherent person. Laing writes: She was a girl possessed by the phantom of her own being. Her self had no freedom, autonomy, or power in the real world. Since she was anyone she cared to mention, she was no one. Im thousands. I am an in divide you all. I am a no un. (i.e. a nun: a noun: no one single person) (Laing, 1999). Depersonalization is often accompanied by the phenomenon of derealization, which can be parallelized with perception in virtual environments. Michael Heim describes the phenomenon of alternate world syndrome (AWS), or alternate world disorder (AWD) (in chronic cases), in his book The metaphysics of virtual reality. Derealization inheres in such cases, since a schism is created between the virtual and the physical reality, the cyber-body and the biological body. The concept of body amnesia is also interesting because it refers to the perceptual interstice amidst the two conditions. The afore mentioned psychopathological symptoms are juxtaposed to the distorted, differentiated perception of the individual interaction with cybernetic spaces, infusing characteristics of subjectivity and fluidity in what can be considered an ordinary ephemeral inhabitance of digital 31

space. The phenomenon of decomposition, or the creation of scissions, constitutes a determinative element of the research. The rift or schism is introduced as a concept, in order to describe the infrathin space between two poles. The perception, and as a consequence, the spatial experience of a person in a digital environment, can be described as schizoid. The individual develops personal mental constructions that are placed in the gap of the schism, like some kind of ephemeral fantasizing scaffold. This cerebral creative process reflects the action of the ego described earlier, which is trying to compile a whole made of the pieces at hand. In contrast with Hegel, who suggests that fragmentation relates to spiritlessness, the person is activated and involved in a process of synthesizing the parts and therefore, a process of consciousness formation. This approach could introduce a description of a cyberspatial web, where a schizoid or schismatic architecture, a schizotopia or a schismatic topiography is evolving. It is related to a bidirectional relationship of subject and experience, where space does not simply pre-exist, waiting for the person to live in it, but in many cases, it is born by the perception of the subject itself and its actions, in conjunction with an aggregate of contemporary imaginative scaffolding structures. These mental structures form a sort of compilation or stitching of the digital experience, in other words, a kind of repetitive dissolution, fusion and coagulation of the two composites: the ones existing as an experience of the self and the ones that are missing. J.G. Ballards book Atrocity exhibition can form a metaphor of cyberspatial construction, since there is no beginning or end and it is entirely structured in abstracts without a specific order of reading. The readers role is determinative, since he is asked to build up his own narrative structure through his reading ramble, filling in the gaps, or inventing the structure of the empty spaces, transforming them into mental solids for himself. Additional to that, the role of a books character appearing as Talbert, Traven, Travis, Talbot, etc. could be described as a cyberspace inhabitant with multiple identities. In this case, there is an underlying schism of identity from the viewers-readers point of view and the assemblage of the pieces by himself as a protagonist of the reading process. Synthesis Considering the concept of assembling and deciphering the meaning of every new composition, one can go back to computer produced literature works. Examples such as the Policemans beard is half-constructed who accidentally writes: Slice a visage to build a visage. A puzzle to its owner. (Racter (W.Chamberlain), 1984) could well describe the idea of synthesis and erection that discloses the fascination of a multiplicity of transient and adventitious conjunctions. Neil Spiller talking about the importance of obliquing in combination with new technologies, he mentions: The choreography of digitally enabled chance allows us to create architecture of blossoming possibility where events are fleeting, exceptional and particular. Each result of reapposition can be characterized by some protean qualities. The word protean refers to the mythic sea-demon Proteus who had the ability to transform into any form he preferred (animal, water, fire, etc.). These qualities of fluidity and perpetual metamorphoses accrue from the constant redetermi32

nation of the parts. The figure of Proteus is correspondent with the initial form, the primary material of the demon, in other words of the digital body, who consecutively gives birth to his other renderings in cyberspace. The poet John Milton uses the form of Proteus in his work Paradise Lost in order to address the consonance of his attributes with the hermetic art of alchemy:
That stone, or like to that which here below Philosophers in vain so long have sought; In vain, though by their powerful art they bind Volatile Hermes, and call up unbound In various shapes old Proteus from the sea, Draind through a limbec to his native form. What wonder then if fields and regions here Breathe forth elixir pure, and rivers run Potable gold

(Milton, 1851) In cases of alchemy, the process of metamorphoses was regulated and constituted as a part of a sum of successional actions, that ostensibly led to the desired result, which was the quest of the Philosophical Stone and consequently the elixir of life or the creation of gold. However, alchemists did not aim at this, but at the ultimate understanding of the function and the enigmas of the universe. It is again a matter of seriate, accidental or not, alterations, distillations and transformations of the materials. The digital user, composes his image in cyberspace, he is immersed in a series of consciousness distillations that lead to his everlasting metamorphoses like a contemporary prima materia, a digital initial matter, in correspondence with the initial matter of Proteus. Focusing exclusively on the factor of accidental montage of fragments and the broad spectrum of creativity this process can involve, one unavoidably approaches the surrealistic game of the exquisite corpse. The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine. The dormitory of friable little girls puts the odious box right. The Senegal oyster will eat the tricolor bread. These are some abstracts of the first games under the name cadavre exquis, during which the participants were writing a text, adding successively a line, without reading the previous ones. In this way, they relished and at the same time, they explored the enigma of morphing an idea that is partially born by chance, without obvious reason. This tactic discloses a kind of collective unconscious of the team. Cyberspace, offering some initial data and stratified levels of interactivity among the users, could be regarded as a game of this kind. A game of fluidity of form and idea, and also, some kind of digital narrative that is written dynamically by all its users. This reminds of Marcos Novak who is approaching cyberspace as a place to be inhabited by imagination. The mutability suggested by an analogy of this kind refers to his concept of liquid space or liquid architectures the digital space that is freely fluctuating and mutating, affecting the experience inside it. The individual is experiencing dissolution in infinite emptiness or in some kind of nothingness. The abstract parts of his experience, and thus, the abstracts of himself, are juxtaposed randomly, montaging the image of a totality or self - a self as an articulate entity attempting to follow the uniqueness of the one and sole body. The filled

gaps between the abstracts are like the conceptual gaps of an exquisite corpse game. They are self-constructed noetic spaces that are affected by personal experience, interactivity, memory and perception. The perceptual experience of the user and the synthesis of the self follow the structures of the Gestalt theory, according to which a few and not so specific elements, even in an abstract form, still have the ability to form the idea of an image. This theory describes that the entire human perception is constituted by the process of perceiving the parts as a well-shaped whole. Most of the times, the person does not even realize that he has acted constructively and complementary during his interpretation process. This mechanism that acts in non-space, appears extensively in the context of digital space as well. The artist Cornelia Parker in one of her works, uses the idea of explosion. In this way, she is adding an interesting comment on interstitial space, the space created between the fragments - what is left intentionally empty, so as to be filled by the viewer. Her work Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991) represents a kind of slow explosion. The space she creates offers an exploded view which creates a vast new space for our own mental activity. This mental space which was initially invisible, can be parallelized with the personal noetic space, and as a result, with immaterial aspects of the individuals entity. The viewer of this piece of work, as well as the cyberspace user, both have the potential to build their own personal constructions which contribute to the formation of their single reality. Towards a new kind of anatomy A crucial question rises, regarding the connection of the self to the digital body. Supposing that cyberspace is a place for consciousness inhabitation and mental activity, this study could go further, exploring how digital self-experience can lead to some ideas about the other body in digital space and how this can be realized as a mechanism that brings together all of its vacillating parts. The aspects of splintering, shuttering and dispersion discussed can be regarded as conceptual organs of the digital body to be explored. This reminds of the Body without Organs of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatari, since this conceptual body deals with aspects of fluidity and immateriality. This attempt could lead to a kind of a volatile anatomical approach that reveals the structures of the immaterial aspects of the fluxionary idea of the cyborg. It is interesting that anatomy as a process resists disintegration and dispersion. The dissections of the entity at issue as well as the attempt to create a whole out of the fragments disclosed by the anatomical surgery, are therefore incisions of the digital body. This dissecting process will aim at revealing ephemeral body maps of external and intimate elements, stitched together to a schizoid cyberspatial landscape.

References: Ballard, J.G. (2001). Atrocity exhibition. Flamingo Modern Classics Bentham, J. (1995). The panopticon writings. by Jeremy Bentham. London:Verso Deleuze G., Guattari F. (2004). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. London: University Athlone Press Ltd. Dennett, D. (1992). Consciousness explained. New York: Back Bay Books Elliot, A. (2001). Concepts of the self. Cambridge: Polity Press Foucault M., Martin H. L., Gutman H., Hutton H. P . (1988). Technologies of the self: A seminar with michel foucault. Cambridge: The MIT press. Foucault, M. (2001). Madness and civilization: A history of insanity in the age of reason. London: Routledge Foucault, M. (2008). Mental illness and psychology. California: University of California Press Hartmann, G. W. (2006). Gestalt psychology: A survey of facts and principles. Montana: Kessinger Publishing Hegel, G. W. F. (1977). Phenomenology of spirit. New York: Oxford University Press Heim, M. (1993). The metaphysics of virtual reality. New York: Oxford University Press Lacan, J. (2001). Ecrits: A selection. London: Routledge Laing, R. D. (1999). The divided self: An existential study in sanity and madness. London: Routledge Lifton, J. R. (1999). The protean self: Human resilience in an age of fragmentation. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press Milton, J. (1851). Paradise lost. New York: D. Appleton & Co Parker C., Ferguson B., Medvedow J. (2000). Cornelia parker. Boston: ICA Boston Racter (William Chamberlain) (1984). The policemans beard is halfconstructed. New York: Warner Software/Warner Books Rushkoff, D. (2002). Cyberia: Life in the trenches of cyberspace. Manchester: Clinamen Press Ltd Sennet, R. (2000). The corrosion of character. New York: W.W. Norton & Co Spiller, N. (2002). Cyber reader: Critical writings for the digital era. London: Phaidon Press Spiller, N. (2006). Visionary architecture: Blueprints of the modern imagination. London: Thames & Hudson Vidler, A. (1994). The architectural uncanny: Essays in the modern unhomely. Cambridge: The MIT press. Wiener, N. (2008). Cybernetics: or, control and communication in the animal and the machine. Montana: Kessinger Publishing http://www.motorhueso.net/cap/ (project by Eugenio Tisselli, CAP 2006) www.psychologia.gr/disorders/diasxist%20.htm (psychology information) http://www.avatarlondon.org (Neil Spiller reference)

33

Coming from the heart

heart rate synchronization through sound
Drs. Pieter Coussement, Dr. Michiel Demey, Prof. Dr. Marc Leman IPEM, Dept. of Musicology Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium pieter.coussement@ugent.be

Abstract This paper encompasses recent art works of the first author, where the use of biometrics, more precise EKG, was explored in the context of interactive installation art. The paper also introduces a series of ongoing experiments, in which the effects of audio stimuli on heart rate is studied. These experiments aim to study if and how the human body copes with attuning to rhythmic stimuli. The used stimuli are derived from peoples heart rate, creating a feedback loop to be used in artistic interactive work. Keywords interaction, biometric, embodiment, heart rate, sound, art Theoretical Background New media vs the mapping problem Art has consistently dealt with mapping problems, although in traditional art they are more related to senses as to sensors. Meaning within an art piece can be regarded as being embedded in the combination of a given sociocultural context, the artists concept and the publics interpretation. How meaning is constructed is a much debated topic in formal and new media art. However in new media art the discussion becomes even more complex when the incorporation of sensor technology and participation of the public is included as valued parameters in the construction of meaning. In sum it can even be argued that the mapping problem (or more appropriate, how artists handle this) is one of the main topics of new media art. Dealing with the creative or artistic way in which meaning is communicated through form or sound might well be the essence of creating art. In interactive art, this mapping problem becomes increasingly complex, seeing that the public is invited to become an equal partner in the construction of meaning. This role is far more than merely fulfilling a role as an interpreter of (artistically) implied meaning. Media theorist Andy Cameron addressed the publics role in interactive media in his presentation Dissimulations, The illusion of interactivity (Cameron, 1998), he states that Interactivity is the ability to intervene in a meaningful way within the representation itself, not to read it differently. Furthermore, in his book The Language of New Media (Manovich, 2001) Lev Manovich differentiates between open interactivity and closed interactivity, the latter referring to a fixed branching structure where the choices of the user define the path they follow. This is to a great extend what Cameron refers to as to read it [the representation] differently. In contrast, open interactivity refers to the use of artificial intelligence, artificial life and neural networks coded into software. At 34

the same time, Manovich warns about using the term interactive media when addressing the post- modern shift towards a physical interaction between the user and a media object. He states that this occurs ...at the expense of psychological interaction.. Therefore, the development of sensor technology and implementation of this technology in interactive art works should be guided away from the object (or interface) towards the experience. Focus should be on humanizing the objects rather than objectifying humans. As a result the author presents a strategy towards natural mapping which can guide future research.

Figure 1. Action-reaction cycle

Interactivity in music and sound art Within music research, interactivity is a well established concept. The process of interactivity is a cyclic process, described as an action-reaction cycle (Figure 1.) in Marc Lemans book Embodied Music Cognition and Mediation Technology. (Leman, 2008) Interaction is made apparent by using the metaphor of how an instrument is built. While playing the instrument, the resulting sound is processed by the human auditory system. A perception is build up in the mind and judged, by undertaking an action the instrument can be changed. This results in a change of the conditions of the instrument and as a consequence this changes the sound produced by the instrument when it is played. Leman extends this idea in his model of musical communication, with the purpose of communicating musical intentionality between listener and performer. This is realized through corporeal articulations, transformed through the use of a mediator. This mediation technology can ideally be perceived as an extension of the body, capable of interpreting the intent of the performer and distinguishing between

various sets of actions. This implies that the mediation technology should be considered no longer merely as an object to which the performer needs to focus his energy, but as an agent, that is on its own capable of interpreting this energy. Interactivity in new media art In new media art, which can include multi sensory aspects and is not only sound-related, the actionreaction cycle or model for musical communication may be less apparent. In his introduction on multimedia environments, Leman proposes to create an autonomous virtual social agent that is able to communicate... [sic], such agents should be able to deal with capabilities of both synthesis and analysis. In order to do so, it is necessary to have a mapping strategy that is deduced from objective measurements, ideally crossreferenced with an analysis of subjective experience. This mapping strategy should also have a more universal nature than a mapping available to the public based solely on the artists decisions. Interactivity and biometrics The availability of a large range of bio sensors at a reasonable cost is fairly new for artists and it is imperative that new mapping strategies are researched. The choice for using a heart rate sensor is very much related to the belief that change in heart rate is an involuntary corporeal function, and thus it should behave on a more subliminal level than responses induced by cognition. Artistic background The experiments are founded on two existing art installations of the first author, the first being LiebesLektion, an (unintentional) responsive work dating from 2003. While the second is an interactive sound-installation called the Heart as an Ocean (Coussement, 2008) (Figure 2.) for LiebesLektion a specially designed contact microphone was used to record the heart rate of two lovers while em-

bracing each other. Every recording made, showed that after approximately 15 minutes the heart rate and phase of the two persons grew very close to each other. Whether or not this was due to the fact that they were physically touching was not investigated further. However, when exhibiting the piece, the publics response to LiebesLektion was striking. Everyone but one who stayed near the installation left the exhibition space relaxed. The one exception being a man with a pacemaker implanted. These findings led the first author to the second installation The Heart as an Ocean in which the heart rate of a participant is transformed into a sounding ocean, thus binding the heart rate and rhythm more subtly to sound. Here also, people had a feeling of getting more relaxed while interacting with the installation. The goal of The Heart as an Ocean, is to generate a natural flow of communication, and the installation was developed to be easily comprehensible as a more complex technical interface could obtrude the intended interaction. The interaction functions more as an affordance. Where objects refer to just those action possibilities which are readily perceivable by a participant. On that account sophisticated explanations should be unnecessary to begin interaction, and user feedback should be based on a strong homogeneity in experiencing. The experience would originate out of a reflection of the state of mind of the person interacting with the installation.

Figure 3: The Heart as an Ocean, diagram

Figure 2. The Heart as an Ocean, exhibited at the new media festival PLUTO, 2009

For this reflection, a synthesized ocean wave is created every third heartbeat. the total of consecutive waves imitates the sound of an ocean breaking on an imaginary shore. The intensity, level, duration and amplitude of each wave are all derived from the heart rate, detected by a Suunto comfort belt, of the person interacting with the installation. Musical parameters are altered in direct relation to heart rate: an agitated person, with a strong and fast heart rate, would generate strong loud and fast waves; a calm person, with a slow heart rate, would generate slow and gentle waves. 35

The effect of a sea breaking on a shore is emphasized by the spatial movement of each wave in a setup with twenty speakers. Each wave starts its cycle randomly at one position and moves through the auditory space using the other speakers. The sound of the sea was initially chosen because of its soothing effect. Water has also played an important role in the spiritual, psychological and physical ablution throughout history. Moreover, the sound of the sea contains all frequency bands and therefore, can be conceived as a type of a white noise signal in space. As a result, surrounding sounds are numbered out, resulting in a very personal auditory space. Throughout the first five to ten minutes the mean heart rate is calculated and delta times between heart beats are compared (to detect if people where straining to affect the installation more by, for example, running). After which the software gently lowers the presented heartbeat and makes a prediction on when the following beat will occur. When the trend of the following heartbeats is as predicted this process is repeated, further lowering the tempo. If not the installation adapts to the participants heart rate again. The installation imposes a different rhythm upon the participant in an attempt to lower that participants heartbeat, relaxing him/her without causing any strain on the body. Previous research Previous research studies in music therapy (Knight et al., 2001) report on the impact of sedative music on anxiety. Wendy E.J. Knight et al. executed a lab experiment with eighty-nine participants, in which the goal was to see whether sedative music prevents stress-induced increases in subjective anxiety, systolic blood pressure and heart rate. The piece selected for the experiment was Pachelbels Canon in D major. Previous studies reported that the piece induced relaxation in many participants. The results of this study suggests that music indeed largely prevents increase of subjective anxiety and heart rate. In fact, in most cases there seemed to be a slight reduction in stress levels. However, whether or not music is classified as being sedative or stimulating has been argued to be an oversimplification (Hodges,1980). Furthermore, Repp and Penel (2003) found evidence that synchronization of movement with auditory rhythms is more common than synchronization with purely visual rhythms. Synchronization can be conceived of as a type of sensorimotor mechanism and is, in principle, possible without paying to much attention to the physical stimulation. The aim of the experiments described in this paper is to investigate if this synchronization is also reflected in heart rate, and investigate if evidence can be found of the soothing effects of sound with non-musical stimuli. The experiments forgo the term music, due to its cultural references, and investigate to what extent sound can induce or effectuate a connections with biological responses. These experiments investigate the physiological responses to sound stimuli and are targeted towards implementation in artistic projects. Experimental Setup Relaxing music is, in general, characterized by slow tempo, repetitive rhythmic patterns and gentle contours. Based on 36

Figure 4. Example of synthesized heart beat

this categorization, we opted to concentrate on the element of repetition in conjunction with slow tempo, and designed a synthetic heartbeat from a sine wave oscillator with both amplitude as frequency modulation. The stimulus is produced as follows. The ADSR envelope shaping the frequency, set at 102.4 Hz, has a sharp attack and a sustain of half of the attack value. Thus keeping the tail of the presented sound at 51.2Hz. The amplitude modulation has an identical attack but has a more gradual decreasing tail. Combining two sounds results in the easily recognizable sound of a heartbeat (Figure 3.) The experiment consists out of 3 consecutive stages of five minutes each. In the course of the first stage, the test subject is listening to the synthesized heart beat, synchronized to his or her own heart rate. Throughout this first stage, the average heart rate of the participant is calculated. In the second stage, twenty beats per minute are deducted from this average over a period of one and a half minutes, after which the heart rate presented normalizes to a slow pulsating rhythm. During the third stage the rhythm increases until it it is synchronized with the heart rate of the test subject. An icubeX wi-microSystem, from the company infusionsystems, is used for sending the data to the computer. Both a BioEmo and a BioBeat are connected to the ADC in order to measure GSR (BioEmo) and the full EKG (BioBeat). The heart rate is derived from the EKG signal, after which it is sent to a pulse train to trigger the audio-synthesis. The BPM that is detected is simultaneously recorded with the EKG and GSR values for further analysis. All the data recording and the sound synthesis is handled by a MAX/ MSP patch. After the experiment each subject is asked to comment on their experience in a short interview. Results The study took place in a quiet room where the 10 subjects were tested individually. The task at hand for them is to sit back in a comfortable sofa and relax while concentrating on the sound. They were told that they would be listening to their heartbeat and that this stimulus would change its rhythm twice.
subjective data

Each of the participants was asked to respond to the following questions: Could you identify the heartbeat you heard as being a part of you? Did you feel like you had to change anything during the experiment to cope wit what you heard?

 Could you clearly differentiate between the consecutive stages Could you describe how and what you felt throughout the different stages of the experiment? All participants except for one reported that the presented stimulus sounded natural. In the first stage of the experiment, they identified with the sound and though it to be a part of them. The people who identified with the sound also reported that the rhythm was mesmerizing, only one of them reported the experience thus far as being stress inducing. She elaborated on this by explaining that this was because she was very concentrated and overwhelmed by what she heard and was not used to sitting still. On the second question, there was a wide variety of answers, with reference to the first two stages of the experiment. Most noticeable was the answer of the participant who could not identify with the sound, he reported feeling compelled to adapt his breathing to what he heard to make the experience more tolerable. There were another three subjects that noticed change in how they were breathing, and reported there breathing slowed down in the transition from the first to the second stage of the experiment. The other six didnt notice any immediate change in behavior. All of the participants outlined the three stages of the experiment without difficulty. In the second stage all participants but one felt detached from the sound, reporting no identification what so ever, describing the sound as just something in the back or noise. One described the second stage of the experiment as being exterior as opposed to an interior feeling in the first and third stage. The transition from the first to the second stage felt strange for some (30%), with people thinking things like what is wrong with me, or what are they doing to me. The transition from the second to the third stage was more worrying to our participants, with 70% of them reporting an apparent reaction. Four participants started breathing faster to calm their heart while the other three simply reported being stressed. During the third stage, all the subjects that felt initially identified with the sound, felt the same level of identification. Most of them found the whole experience calming, although none of them could say with certainty if it was the stimulus or the mere fact that they had a 20 minute break in a comfortable sofa.
objective data

To our knowledge, there are not that many art projects concerned with biometric sensing and biofeedback. The most well known in art history are perhaps the compositions of Alvin Lucier and David Rosenboom. In his Music for Solo Perfomer (Lucier, 1965), for example, Alvin Lucier uses EEG electrodes to detect alpha waves to actuate percussive devices like kettle drums and snare drums, among others. However, it was David Rosenboom that has been the most articulate on the role of systematic change in biofeedback music. His own brainwave analysis software, used for creating self-organizing musical forms being just one example. In On being Invisible, which he composed in 1976-77, the software learns the cognitive processes mapped to his listening over time, thus truly envisioning the concept of creating a feedback loop. He describes On being Invisible as a selforganizing, dynamical system, rather than a fixed musical composition (Rosenboom, 2000) A more recent example is Atau Tanakas BioMuse instrument (Tanaka, 1995), which he plays solo or in Sensorband, an ensemble formed by Edwin van der Heide, Zbigniew Karkowski and Atau Tanaka. The BioMuse is a system that tracks neural signals (EMG), translating electrical signals from the body into digital data and via software to sound. Our prognosis is, that there will be an increasing amount of projects dealing with biometrics, seeing that biosensors become more commercially available. They have already been widely used to interpret the effects of sound (and vision) in both medicine and psychology. Concerning systematic musicology, and to be more precise our research group, the use of biometric for monitoring is still in its early stages. Using biometrics as a means of creating the aforementioned feedback loop is even more in its infancy. The aim of this paper and the discussed research is to create a framework where the physical influences of sound on the human body are explored and documented, in conjunction with qualitative results. This to increase our knowledge about how we encode what into sound, and if it will affect us humans universally. The results of this paper are to no extend conclusive and a larger study need to be done. However the sense of identification with a sounding heartbeat and the lack thereof when listening to a very disassociated heartbeat is a trend we would like to explore further. The feeling our participants had of getting more relaxed when concentrating on the rhythmic pattern of their own heart as opposed to the second transitional stage in which they reported discomfort leads us to believe there is some room to explore this further. In conclusion we acknowledge that the setup of our experiment could be approved upon. Having people exposed to music only on headphones might be a much to limited experience, seeing that we l are responsive to low frequency vibrations with the whole of our bodies and not only with our, specialist, ears. The setup also commenced with people being at rest. There is no clear manner for them to actually direct their actions into getting relaxed, for instance sitting down when being upright or even lying down. The effects should be further quantified in order to make a more firm statement, that is not only of concern in a lab context but is at the same time pointed towards implementations into artistic projects. 37

When analyzing GSR and EKG no conclusive results were found. Although, with a few of the subjects, it seemed that when the heart rate dropped there was a tendency to follow no significance was found, and the results remain inconclusive. The average heart rate did not change according to the setup during the experiment. There was hardly any activity measurable in the GSR signal, which leads us to believe there was no significant raise of stress levels. Discussion

References Cameron, A. (1998). Dissimulations, the illusion of interactivity. Manovich, L. (2001). The language of new media. Cambridge: The MIT press. Leman, M. (2007). Embodied music cognition and mediation technology. The MIT Press. Coussement, P., Leman, M., Demey, M., and DINIZ, N. (2008). The heart as an ocean exploring meaningful interaction with biofeedback. In proceedings of audio mostly. Pg.132134. Gibson, J. J. (1977). The theory of affordances. Perceiving, acting and knowing: Toward an ecological psychology. Pg. 6782. Knight, W., Rickard, N. (2001). Relaxing music prevents stress-induced increase in subjective anxiety, systolic blood pressure, and heart rate in healthy males and females. Journal of Music Therapy, XXXVIII (4), Pg. 254-272 Hodges, D.A. (1980). Handbook of music psychology. Lawrence, KS: National Association for Music Therapy. Repp, B. H. and Penel, A. (2004). Rhythmic movement is attracted more strongly to auditory than to visual rhythms. Psychological Research, 68(4), 252270. Lucier, A. (1965). Music for solo performer, for enormously emplified brain waves and percussion. Rosenboom, D. (2000). liner notes, to invisible gold. Pogus Productions. Tanaka A. (1995). BioMuse.

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Bodies & Avatars

41

My Beloved Avatar
by K. J. Karoussos Artist, Researcher, Dept. of Byzantine Painting, Athens School of Fine Arts, Athens, Greece.

Topology The term Avatar (avatara in Hinduism) often translated into English as incarnation literally means descent and usually implies a deliberate descent from higher spiritual realms of existence for special purposes (wikipedia). Digital avatars are the users mirror or their imaginary image in the virtual world either in the form of [pseudo] three- dimensional model that is used in video games, Second Life, etc, or in the form of a two dimensional icon used in Internet forums and other communities. With AI, an avatar is spread across the social; communication and communality extend the opaque body into the translucent (Alan Sondheim). If we think of media as an authentic vehicle of communication (tangible or intangible) and the topology of virtual space as a non-orientable surface which is constructing endlessly through communication, the modeling of an avatar is based on the result of perceiving the relation of itself with respect to its topology. The topology of a computer generated space is based on the cyclical chain of 0-1. This cyclical chain which is a mathematical value refers to computational logic and the so called dual process of thought. In computational logic the dual process is a language model of system 1 and system 2 but it can also model some of the relations and interactions between system 1 and system 2. The character of this kind of topology is a set of

that if z = 1 we have a normalized homogeneous coordinate. (Figure 1.) Visual inertia The influence of Renaissance which was the period that generate perspective analysis- to the following centuries, modulated a dominant perception of space, which refers to a space that is metrical uniform and homogeneous, looking desperately to define systematically the relations of the proportion, the distance and the direction. At that time this was of course something predictable because of the evolution of science. The invention of the telescope had accomplished to alter the restrained horizon, so philosophers changed their idea that the earth was the center of the world and they started to believe that it is just a particle of the universe. Along with science, philosophy, art followed the mainstream of rationalism. (Figure 2.) route.

Figure 2. One-Point perspective

Figure 1.

finite number of elements which are closed to cause a plane. It could then be projected as a plane of P2. In this projective plane, a point x is represented by homogeneous coordinate with the involvement of z as the depth value. We are taught 42

Eventually it was from that time and forth that art made something like a treaty, in order to gain a public reception, to act rationale and according to the axioms of science; thus to always proof that it performs the reality or its avantgarde parameters. But nevertheless the evolution of science has boosted the idea of a more liberal thought than that of the Renaissances rationalism. Contemporary science is not a statically rational experience but rather it is a science which the dynamic perception of reality, together with metaphysical elements, constituted its existence. In parallel, the development of the new psychological power of hypersense might be possible to undermine the materialistic per

ceptions of human mind. (Michelis, 2001) From telescopic vision to virtual vision there is a hugeBut the idea here is not of a historical review; rather it is about the question that Martin Kemp posed: Are we perhaps stuck with the old schemata, locked by visual inertia into old modes at a time when the new realms of modern science suggest that we should be extending our consciousness into new realms of visualization? (Kemp, 2006). Or to paraphrase Kemps thought, are we perhaps stuck to a Western specified mentality which has produced a patronized system of vision? And this thought comes to mind because there were so many cultures and still are- that have a totally different perception of visual interpretation. (Figure 3.)

vince your Lordship that I have a perfect luminary at the juncture of two of my sides. Stranger: Yes: but in order to see into Space you ought to have an eye, not on your Perimeter, but on your side, that is, what you would probably call your inside; but we in Spaceland should call it your side. I. An eye in my inside! An eye in my stomach! Your Lordship jests. Stranger: I am in no jesting humor. I tell you that I come from Space, or since you will not understand what Space means, from the land of three dimensions whence I but lately looked down upon your Plane which you call Space forsooth. From that position of advantage I discerned all that you speak of as solid (by which you mean enclosed on four sides), your houses, your churches, your very chests and safes, yes even your insides and stomachs, all lying and exposed to my view. (Figure 4.)

Figure 4. Electricsheep

Figure3. Battlestar Gallactica. 1978. TV. Series, Century Fox.

Another dimension(s) Back to Paleolithic ages a shaman entered into a trance state and then painted his visions, perhaps with some notion of drawing power out of the cave walls themselves. This goes some way toward explaining the remoteness of some of the paintings without the aid of a conservative rationalistic interpretation. Along with that Martin Kemp gives another oft-cited example of a people living in a circular culture. the Zulu nation... It seems that they do not react to linear illusions of the kind favored by experimental psychologists with anything like the same kind of readiness as those subject to modern urban environments and barrages of western imagery (Kemp, 2006). These examples show that visual interpretation to spatial cognition can be registered out of the dominant axial system. Abbott in his novel Flatland argues that motion can insinuate a further spatial dimension with our inner eye: Stranger: I mean nothing of this kind. I mean a direction in which you cannot look, because you have no eye in your side. I. Pardon me, my Lord, a moments inspection will con-

Someone can say that this space is relative to virtual space even if Abbott wrote this dialogue in 1884. Almost one century later (1931) P. D. Ouspensky still argues, more or less, with the same idea: Vision in the forth dimension must be effected without the help of eyes, The limits of eye-sight are known, and it is known that the human eye can never attain the perfection even of the microscope or telescope. But these instruments with all the increase power of vision which they afford do not bring us in the least nearer to the forth dimension. So it may be concluded that the vision in the forth dimension must be something quite different from ordinary vision. Probably it will be something analogous to the vision by which a bird flying over Northen Russia sees Egypt, where it migrates for the winter (Unspensky, 1997). Nevertheless, optical human system has always the same operations. What is changing in every historical period is our cultural view upon our optical perception. As it was mentioned in the beginning, communication and communality in virtual space extend the opaque body (metaphorically) into the translucent. So the topology of its dislocation is based in a distributed and heterogeneous interface. The body is extended in infinite-dimensional space. Thus and because when plane z = 0 we have abandoned the normalized homogeneous coordinate and so the body extends to infinity. A cyclical chain is a loop with any number of 43

nodes; think of one as nul, 0, and another or the same as universal, 1. Then circle. What happens? One moves from 0, through infinity perhaps and back again. The simplest equation here: tangent. Each revolution is marked perhaps by sliding along the x-axis. And so were there. We can visit as many times as we like (Sondheim, 2007). Distributed Codes In Gestalt theory, visual perception only takes place during fixations. According to this theory, there are six main factors that determine how we group things according to visual perception: Proximity, Similarity, Closure, Symmetry, Common fate and Continuity. Although Gestalt theorists who were working in the 1930s and 1940s raised a more unfettered interpretation of visual system than their logician colleagues form Renaissance, they valuated as descriptive and not explanatory. Nevertheless, computational models of vision have appropriate several elements from Gestalt theory. Gestalt laws are used in user interface design and they also have some applications in computer vision which seeks to apply the human seeing to computers. Computer vision include systems for: controlling processes, detecting events, modeling objects or environments and interaction. As computer vision is closely related to the study of biological vision, their interdisciplinary exchange has proven fruitful for both fields. Undoubtedly, to try to explain and interpret non human systems with human parameters is always the method of exploring and appropriating the unseen. However, could virtual phenomena explicable form the point of view of physical laws? Are avatars a physical descent? On this account, it might have been expected that avatars are multiple projected images from physical specie. But how it can be projected without a plane and with no aid of z axis? As a digital avatar one can be here and there and else where because he/she is scrolling through the x axis in a continuum, with zero width into an infinite space creating tangents through communication in a distributed network. This network is never complete or integral to itself as Galloway mentioned The lines of a distributed network continue off the diagram. Distribution propagates through rhythm, not rebirth (Galloway, 2004). Therefore and in order to navigate through this distributed network, there must be another kind of vision and dimension that is far away from the conservative optico-spatial interpretation which has been analyzed above. In order to deal with the notion of another vision, we can interpret avatars and their topology as semiotic elements distributed through space and time. Glifford Geertz argues that all subjects around us are symbols ... or at least symbolic elements, because they are tangible formulations of notions, abstractions from experience fixed in perceptible forms, concrete embodiments of ideas, attitudes, judgments, longings or beliefs(Geertz, 1973). Undoubtedly avatars may have the characteristics of a sym44
Figure 5. The ribosome. Image Courtesy of John Hopkins Medical Institutions

bol, but having in mind that their very nature is composed into computer generated environment, they would better interpret as abstract codes rather than semiotic elements. Code is a set of procedures, actions and practices (Galloway, 2006) and thats the reason why they can be lively Bezier curves, NURBs and polygons. Alongside if avatars are considered as abstract codes they can be easily distributed in every space diachronically and synchronically at the same time. (Figure 5.) Miis portrayal An illustrating example of this is Wii console avatars. Wii console is the seventh generation of video game systemsconsole is the seventh generation of video game systems released by Nintendo. This interface has been designed

Figure 6. Mii Plazza

around the concept of interactivity, remoteness and communication. To be able to navigate, the user has to build a representation of himself into the Mii Channel Editor. Then as a Mii character he/she can navigate, communicate and transfer himself through the Wii remote via Bluetooth or WLAN. Miis can meet at Mii Plazza where they move and transfer arbitrarily into an abstract space. (Figure 6.) The most important issue for these 2d avatars is that their visual interpretation is so pictorial that it seems relativeto visual systems before the Enlightenment and the dominant

nents apart from the standard notion of perspective. These two last aspects can be seen in older art media practices; before Renaissance theories of perceptiveness and rationalism. One can meet this alternative usage of vision in middle ages as Byzantine fresco paintings which is the most fascinating example of using conceptual dimension to depict the supreme. At that time painting had no real space, but it was developing throughout a virtual area that expanded on a two dimensional surface. Depth was a case of mental awareness rather than an interpretation of rational thinking. Accordingly, light was originated from an inner source rather than from a physical one. Two concepts could be taken in consideration in order to encompass the above characteristics: pictography and plasticity. Pictography has been used as a term from art critics as something so exogenous insomuch that pictographic falls to be a realistic impression of phenomena without the involvement of artists consideration onto these phenomena. From the other side plasticity takes the place of a concept that derives completely from the viewpoint of the artist as a real aesthetic expression. The domination of plasticity towards pictography withholds the concept of high mindedness and of the supreme as art ideas for centuries. All these decades, tactual has been the absolute task for art practices and visual had been only in service of plausibility. Contemporary science has turned aside from the static rational way of thought that Renaissance consolidated. It has proceeded to a more dynamic perception of reality and the transnatural element plays an important role into its practice and reflections. In parallel a new model of science, that contains issues of hyper- perceptibility brings forward the real knowledge of the unseen that may alter the materialistic way by which people used to function. This shift together with the real contribution of technology is the absolute impulse for the erection of alternative vision which can be founded upon new aspects with respect to older mechanisms. However virtual and telematic phenomena have managed to generate alternative projected surfaces in such a way that rational thinking and plausibility are secondary factors of visual practice. The most important element that seems to create the convergence between old and new media art operations is visual communication. The form of communication associate with visual effect can be meet back to prehistoric cave painting. Similar to a shaman who employed trance including techniques to incited visionary ecstasy for vision quests, a contemporary avatar can employ clusters and constellations of data in a nonspace of the mind to distribute messages across complex and fluid networks. Conclusively all representatives of human spirit and mind throughout the centuries of human life operated as abstract codes which were seeking to communicate both with the seen and the unseen of the universe. It was not a case of 45

Figure 7. The Tomb of the Diver, Paestum, Italy. 480-470 BC

Western point of view, such as these of prehistoric cave paintings, or Fayum Mummys portraits and Byzantine iconography. These visual systems demonstrate an alternative sight, than this of the Western mentality; more immaterial and holistic. (Figure 7.) Three aspects are to be considered in order to describe the convergence: 1. Time management: Because they are pure icons of the dual process, Miis introduce another dimension of time. They capture time as an instant action of distribution which, however, contains activities of interminable time. They capture time as an instant action of distributionwhich, however, contains activities of interminable time (past, present and future). Thereupon Miis exist synchronically and diachronically into multiple places. One can consider that this phenomenon is similar to the imagery of Mummys portraits. Back to the 3rd century, Fayum portraits -as they are named under the place that they are created- are images that depict the head or busts of men, women and children. It has been assumed that they were created during the lifetime of their subjects and their purpose is to be added to their mummy wrapping after their death enable their posthumously existence. They usually depict a single person, showing the head, or head and upper chest, viewed frontally. The patrons of the portraits apparently belonged to the affluent upper class of military personnel, civil servants and religious dignitaries. Not everyone could afford a mummy portrait; many mummies were found without one. Even if in a social aspect, Miis portraits are more democratic than Fayum portraits, they have the same attitude by twinkling with time and scrolling in space and time via multiple entities. 2. Visual management: Mii avatars use the operation of icon (eidolon) in such a way with no implications of the so called sophisticated plasticity of shading. They are just abstract nodes of straight visualization. They are back form tangible to visible while they represent things not in the way they are looked but in the way they are experienced. Thus they succeed to bring forward whatever the canonical (conventional) sight withholds. 3. Lighting management: Instead of using the shading technique within the standard light process, their illumination derives from remoteness and emission just like the light of their spiritual ancestors. Thereby they are not in need of depth since the 3rd dimension is provided by other compo-

aesthetics with its recent meaning (Alexander Baumgarten, 1737) dealing with the nature of beauty, art and taste, but with its primary Greek meaning of perceiving feellingsensing. Conclusion Even if from Renaissance period and further, there was the notion of a mental state of viewer, perception took place in real physical space within the body. Visual interpretations as panorama and diorama, offered complex illusions that seemed real; that could be explored and that could change. Nevertheless all these theories involve physical conditions and their aim is to interpret the world as objective phenomenon as physical sciences do. Even if they tense to view the world outside the mind, their outcomes seem to be a process of reasoning and applied knowledge. From the other side, cyber space can move vision form physical space and material body to a distributed structure of modified codes. From the 3rd century when the mummy portraits were created to 21st century with Mii portraits, no big shift has been occurred concerning the human spirit. Beyond all the process in science and arts the basic necessity to extend the opaque body into the translucent simultaneously via spiritual realms remains always the same. Whenever an image represents this distribution, it celebrates the transfiguration of a human to rhizomatic vectors. As Deleuze and Guattary claim: The multiple must be made, not by always adding a higher dimension, but rather in the simplest of ways, by dint of sobriety, with the number of dimensions one already has available. (Deleuze, 2004) Conclusively, it is not so much about a shift and a new platform; nor about the new instruments that are in our service; rather it is about a review of what we think as prominent to our point of view. And eventually: What we are thinking about is not a flip in vision to an equivalent view but, in extreme cases, a transfiguration (Dawkins xvi). A transfiguration of an organism to a rhizomatic vector (avatar) which has been shot of all these cognitive parameters such as conservative depth of field and rational illumination; a rhizomatic vector that is able to be placed at a point in space which contains every point.

References Dawkins, Richard. (2006). The selfish gene. New York: Oxford University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. (2006). A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. New York: The Continuum Publishing Company Galloway, Alexander, R. (2004). Protocol: How control exists after decentralization. Cambridge: MIT Press Geertz, Clifford. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Kemp, Martin. (2006). Seen/unseen: art, science and intuition from Leonardo to Hubble telescope. New York: Oxford University Press Michelis, Panagiotis A. (2001) . Athens: Panagiotis & Efi Michelis Foundation Ouspensky, P , D. (1997). A new model of the Universe- Principles of the Psychological method in its application to problems of science, religion and art. New York: Dover Publications Sondheim, Alan. (2009) Theory, Codework, Links to Multi Media Work, Commentary. http://nikubo.blogspot.com/2007/10/z-or-whatever-combinations-of-these.html 09 Oct. 2007.

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Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

The Performer as Avatar as Performer as Avatar

by Joff Chaffer arx212@coventry.ac.uk

This was originally given as a joint paper by Joff Chafer and Joff Fassnacht (the avatar of Joff Chafer) focussing on the technical practicalities of combining performers in and from a virtual space with performers in a real space , both using performers in real time and recorded performances.

ished their lines and speak over them. As we perform more in Secondlife we have found an assortment of ways to limit

My background is as an actor and I currently teach practical modules in Theatre and performance at Coventry University in the UK. Some years ago I was teaching a module on site specific performance, which normally involves the students working in car parks and shopping centres and the like and I was looking into the possibilities of a virtual site for performance, originally I was thinking about using the Sims but another member of staff put me on to the virtual world of Secondlife. Which is where my avatar comes in, he was created, rezzed, on the 12th of September 2006 and spent the first few months wondering what this space could do, and what the students avatars and I could do. Initially there was no voice function in Secondlife and could only converse in type which was quite frustrating but in the Summer of 2007 voice was introduced and I auditioned for the Secondlife Shakespeare Company. At that time, Secondlife was going through regular upgrades and enhancements and it was not until February 2008 that

these problems but with people scattered all over the globe with different computer set ups and internet connectionswe are never going to overcome them completely and need to learn to live with it.Soon after this I saw a piece by Paul we put on our first performance, Act1 Scene1 of Hamlet in the Secondlife Globe theatre. This was a mixture of actors some professional some ex professional others keen amateurs and academics , none of whom new each other outside this virtual space, at home , and sometimes work, on computers with headsets, trying to control their avatars whilst an audience sat in the virtual auditorium to watch. We immediately ran into problems, firstly because of the number of avatars present the whole system became very unstable and there were times when our avatars would freeze or we would lose voice, or the latency, time delay, of our different voices would vary wildly and we would have to guess when the other actors had fin-

47

Sermon Liberate Your Avatar , which was the first time I had seen Secondlife Avatars and real people interacting in real time, albeit I was witnessing a recording rather than the actual event.On his website there is a diagram explaining the set up cameras and computers and vision mixer. I went to see him to check that it was as simple as he said and we agreed to work together on an improvisation project in June 2008. Unfortunately, the timing was altered slightly and he was unable to join me but I carried on working with a group of dancers and a couple of technicians and came up with The Summer Dancing project. A live improvisation exercise run in real time with the dancers in the studio and two avatars in a bluescreen space in Secondlife with the images combined and projected onto a screen in the studio. The technicians and avatar operators were in the same space as well as an audience.

In this performance we were not using sound or voice , and even if we had because we were all in the same physical space this would not have been a problem, so latency was not really issue, rather we were concentrating on the movement/animation of the participants. I recorded the animation using a wireless motion capture suit. It was a loop of sitting poses leaning forward, leaning back, scratching head, looking around etc that could either be played as a set or split up into the individual moves. This was then imported into Secondlife as a BVH file (the standard motion capture file format supported by Secondlife) and the dancers learnt this set of moves from watching the avatars. In performance, the idea was that the dancers would introduce elements of this movement during the improvisation, pick up/copy the movements from each other, and in turn, the avatars should start to join in with the movement sequence until they all are doing the full movement sequence in unison or in canon. This conformity would then break down, the dancers/ avatars get out of sync with each other and then, one by one, leave. The next project was in collaboration with UniSA the University of Southern Australia in Adelaide. For 48

this, I worked with Russell Fewster a theatre lecturer, Nic Mollison a lighting designer and Kyle Tripodi a Secondlife expert, and a class of 20 students.In this piece, our main means of mixing the avatars and life performers was by means of a gauze suspended in front of the stage area. This

In this instance, the ball is a balloon on the end of a stick

dio we also had a live web stream and a virtual audience in Secondlife. In theory, it is relatively simple for audiences in Secondlife to view live action, the technical problem that we had was getting past the university firewall. We could L to R Nic Mollison (avatar), Joff Chafer, Russell Fewster, Kyle Tripodi (avatar) not connect with the QuickTime streaming server that we allowed the avatars to be projected into the space whilst the needed for direct streaming into the venue in Secondlife, live performers worked in the lit areas behind the gauze.A instead we had to make do with streaming to a separate black space was set up in Secondlife that matched the di- streaming host and for the inworld audience to have a sepamensions of the real performance space and by coordinat- rate window. ing the placing of a camera in the virtual space with the Technically we used both the blue screen and gauze projection methods. We were also looking at scale and the relationship between the avatars and the live performers.

placing of a projector in the real space avatars could move backwards and forwards in the real space. The image could be fed straight to the projector without the need for a vision mixer. The biggest drawback with this set up was that the audience positioning in the real space was critical to how effective the result was, ideally, they needed to be positioned directly behind the projector. As with the previous performance, the real performers had to be aware of the position of the avatars so as not to walk through them. We also incorporated Bunraku style puppetry, that is puppeteers dressed entirely in black manipulating objects in the space. The most recent development of this work took place in June 2009, back in Cov entry working with Russell and Nic again. This time we were looking at combining the two methods and as well as a live audience present in the stu-

Nic Mollison (avatar), Russell Fewster (avatar), Joff Chafer, Joff Fassnacht (avatar)

Essentially the action takes place on and around a desk with the avatars and humans in various scales. To this end we had a normal desk that was then rebuilt at approximately 5 times scale both in Secondlife and with rostra in the real space. For the Secondlife desk, pictures of the real desk were taken and used as textures. There was also a bluescreen space at a similar scale in Secondlife.

For the first part, the real desk was used with miniature avatars superimposed from Secondlife via the vision mixer. For the second part, real performers appeared on the desk top, only slightly larger tan the avatars. The rostra desk was 49

the first time that we had a virtual audience as well as the real one and from both sides there were comments about a lack of connectivity, that sense of always being one-step removed from the action. Having voice might have helped to join the two spaces but the lag may just have pointed up the disjointedness, the live stream that we were broadcasting was a few seconds out of sync and we were only able to keep the synchronisation when the avatars and their operators were in the same physical space. For performances that take place entirely in Secondlife there is a tacit understanding on all parts that things can, and most probably will, go wrong at some point , and that that is part of the event. In a real space we have come to expect a level of reliability and slickness that at present is incompatible with the vagaries of virtual performance. By having the performers/operators all in the same physical space a certain level of control and conformity can be maintained, similarly having performers and audience inworld, a communal lack of control and non-conformity is the norm, and each has its merits. As a performer with a background in puppetry working at one remove is something that I am used to and has a number of parallels with manipulating an avatar in Secondlife. Similarly, one has to learn and understand the natural behaviour of the puppet/avatar and in certain cases pre plan moves or actions. With Secondlife this can be very complicated, having to find or custom make animations or find or write scripts that will enable actions to happen, for example picking an object up off the floor may be very easy for an actor, relatively easy for certain types of puppet yet incredibly complicated for an avatar. On the other hand changing a costume is simple for an avatar, easy but possibly time consuming for an actor but very complicated for a puppet unless one puppet is substituted for another. Virtual performance is in its infancy and at present can seem very crude and cumbersome, I fear it may take some time before it reaches beyond the novelty factor, out of the hands of academics and becomes an art form in its own right.

Joff Fassnacht (avatar), Russell Fewster, Nic Mollison (avatar)

Russell Fewster, Joff Chafer

filmed with only the actors lit and superimposed via the vision mixer on to a background of the avatars on the large desk in Secondlife.

For the third part, a different Secondlife image was projected onto the gauze through which the live performers could be seen still on the rostra. Finally, we invited both audiences to interact using the different spaces mediated through the vision mixer and the live feed of the composite image back on to the web. With all the performances/showings to date there are always more questions than answers and having the time to explore the space after the event is vital. The final piece was 50

HOME
a look inside an algorithmic world
by Joana Fernandes Gomes Research Center for Science and technology of the Arts (CITAR) School of Arts, Portuguese Catholic University, Porto, Portugal jfgomes@porto.ucp.pt

Abstract The piece HOME is a video art installation, where materiality is questioned and the real and virtual worlds are confronted, opening windows to a completely abstract and digital world. Generated by an artificial life system, this piece communicates with the spectator in two ways: one abstract and another actual (concrete). Each one shows one side of this algorithmic world. Outside of the installation room there is a screen, on which an artificial life system is shown to the visitor in its more abstract form; the individuals have shapes that transmit the mathematics and dehumanization inherent to such world through a graphic representation. Inside the installation there are three screens that represent the construction of that same world. Index Terms a-life, cyborg, video installation. Introduction The relationship between art and science is very close. Generative art is a discipline that values and brings together art and science. From principles of Biology where we can understand evolutionary concepts and selection principles (Dawkins, 2006), and the acquisition of external process of the human comprehension, it allows the creation of artificial replicating structures that dont belong to the human domain. Generative art is a branch of artistic practice that uses resources from biology, mathematics, physics and other scientific fields for its simulations in a way that generates new paradigms that until then were beyond the artists reach. All living beings are composed by rules the genome. Nevertheless, we are not entirely limited to them; the habitat, the experiences change us as individuals. The rules in that case are the heritage. The new characteristics are the learning, the adaptation and the mutations. Normally the most adapted ones perpetuate the skills more valuable and desired for that place at that time (Holland, 1992). On the artistic process something similar happens. In generative art, the rules are the algorithms generated by the artists and the rules applied are the parameters that shape the behavior of a certain individual, population and habitat. But like in the living beings those rules can be transgressed and the process reacts in a lot of different ways. This unpredictability, typical of complex systems (Galater, 2003), gives the artist the possibility of action and results

that are beyond the ones he is capable of comprehending through his natural systems of perception: vision, touch, smell, etc. In generative art, the artist provides functions to the machine, and establishes in the machine an extension of him/herself. Those extensions can be biological or psychological (Mcluhan, 1964) (Walter, 2008). It provides a semi-autonomous system (Todd, Latham, 1992) (Whitelaw, 2004) where the artist can be the agent that selects or give a program the ability to execute a selection through rules he builds-in. Thus, the processes and the relations between humans and machines become closer. The interactions become more fluid and adapted. The intelligence of some of those systems allows that each individual gets better responses to his/her/ its needs more evolved and optimized actions Introducing HOME HOME is an artificial life system that presents itself in two different ways: inside and outside the installation room. In

Figure 1. Information shown outside the installation room

Figure 2. Space of the installation

51

each side we are confronted with two different realities of the same individuals, space and their relationship. HOME is at the same time in the social reality world and in the fictional one (Harraw, 1991). The confrontations of such different perspectives aim at making us rethink our bodies, our minds and our spaces (Hansen, 2006) through the analysis of our perceptions of what surrounds us in that room. Outside the installation room Outside of the installation room there is a screen; on it an artificial life system is shown to the visitor in its more abstract form; the individuals have shapes that transmit the mathematics and dehumanization inherent to such world through a graphic representation. Is a community built by computers and represented by graphics. In the graphical representation that is presented outside of the installation room some information is presented in a very direct way to the visitor. There are only three facets available in this representation. Since this world lives on its own duality, this information can be related to any kind of world. Shown are the number of individuals/population; the number of years they exist and the amount of resources available. The lack of specificity doesnt allow the visitors to develop a preconceived view or understanding of this world but at the same time it reveals itself as abstract and machine-based. The information given the visitors before they dive into HOME is restricted, and doesnt present the effort of this world to transgress his own virtuality(Levy, 2003), even though those characteristics are always present, at least outside the installation room. This type of representation is normally more associated with machine-based individuals. Based on the computer system this world is very mathematical and algorithmic. This information is important to establish its natural form, making it possible to relate the different states inside and outside the installation room. Inside the installation room On the other side, inside the installation there are three screens that represent the construction of that same world. This system provides its own actions and it modifies itself along time by means of parameters set by the algorithm. During the time that such assembly of individuals exists, they feed themselves, reproduce, die and so on. The result of those actions is assessed and creates a set of parameters, which selects at each minute an assembly of three videos from a database. Triggered in a synchronized way and displayed on each of the installation walls (screens), such assembly of videos represents the status of the world. The sequence of those choices results in the presentation of the landscape of that world. The layout of those projections is aimed at producing in the visitor the sensation that he/she/it is looking through windows. The videos are composed of characters that interact with each other in a wide white immenseness moving along the various projections. The videos give the visitors access to this world. The white immenseness baffles the visitor taking and hinders him to perceive the extension of that world. The characters humanize themselves 52

losing slowly and progressively the virtual and abstract appearance they present on the screens outside the installation. It is a community that lives on the other side. In this installation the videos are an essential part of the construction of the identity of this society/world. These videos have very special characteristics as they are the way such community communicates with us, the spectators. It is where the community reveals itself and transcends the virtual. The white immenseness of the videos (Millerson, 1991) is a recurrent aesthetic in Sci-Fi concept art, where the absence of spatial references and the minimalist aspect of that environment are valued. In this piece, the Cyclorama offers videos that at the same time seem naked and that in turn suggest the existence of a technological society that almost spreads over an infinite space. The absence of parameters is aimed at ensuring that all the attention of the visitors is directed to the gestures of the characters. With this technique, the lack of references makes it impossible to have the full comprehension of the relations between characters and the real size of everything that is shown. In a totally amorphous space we have the possibility of building whatever we wish. The world built by means of actions. A Plantation exists solely when an individual makes movements that are in some way referred to a plantation space. Another important aspect is that the main objective of this installation is to enhance the attitudes of the characters, that is, to build a digital society, that expresses itself with videos, and that communicates by means of actions. In this

Figure 4. One possible landscape of HOME. Community status is negative

Figure 3. One possible landscape of HOME. Community status is positive

case the white immenseness is a way to emphasize the actions of characters without showing other distractions to the spectators. As the objective is to create in the spectator the sensation that he/she sees the community through glass windows, synchronization of the screens is important. That is, the presented videos in each screen will have two other videos, which will be simultaneously presented in the other two screens. The objective is to create a relation among

them, which induces the idea of the construction of a world beyond the walls feasible. That relation is going to happen mainly through the movement of characters from one glass window to another. The result is a wrapping sensation of the spectator with the digital world.We can say that in spite of these videos represent spectators perception of a world, they are also a sum of choices that result in one controlled representation of certain characteristics and that implicate a manipulation on the vision offered to the spectator. The glass windows have the function to create the illusion of clarity and transparency that are not real. The fixed camera reinforce that feeling even further. In this project, the user does not travel or walk in the space. Restricted information is supplied to him/her. Depending on the status of the inhabitants of HOME, the video is restricted information. Depending on the HOME state the videos may become solely the white immenseness. The algorithm This artificial life system was developed taking into consideration the duality of this worlds and their populations. For that reason, all phenotype and genotype aspects were carefully chosen. These world variables are intrinsically related with important human characteristics such as happiness and at the same time stress the artificial and machine-based orientation of this population. An initial population of ten individuals inhabits this world. Each one of them has a small genome that is composed of four numbers. The first one is the gender, the second one the third are the life expectancy and the third and the forth numbers are the time interval between their need to use resources. Gender And Reproduction The gender can be zero or one. Like humans there are only two gender and they can only reproduce with another individual of the opposite gender. I chose zero and one to represent their genders, because I wanted to stress that they are computer-based individuals. Since the computer is based on a binary system, so did the gender of the population. But the reproduction has another important requirement. The population cant reproduce at anytime. Individuals can seek for a reproduction partner at certain times of their lives. Like I mentioned before, they all have a time they are ex-

closest array positions (n-1 and n+1) and ask if they are from the opposite gender. If they are they reproduce trough onepoint crossover; if the position is empty or its occupied by an individual of the same gender, nothing happens until is time to look again. The empty positions are getting refilled when new individuals as they are born. The new individual is the result of a single-point mating. The parent that look for the reproduction partner gives the life expectancy and the other mate gives the time interval between the resource use. The gender is given randomly. Life Expectancy And Resources The life expectancy is a number of time intervals each individual is supposed to live. Sometimes they dont live as much as they were expected because of the absence of resources available to all the population. In this artificial system the fitness is given by the frequency that the individual needs to use resources from the world. In times of crisis, the ones that need resources more often end up dying proportionally sooner. Since their reproduction rate is related to their lifetime, in times of crisis the ones less adapted die first and propagate less their characteristics. The world is constituted of the population and the environment. The space provides an infinite possibility of creating resources within a fixed amount of resources it produces plus the amounts each individual can produce. Every single being of HOME can generate a fixed amount of resources distributed amongst all of them. The world gives some too. Adding these two amounts one reaches the result of how much of the resources they can spend during the whole year. All the resources that werent used are saved and can be used in periods of time that the resources are not enough to safely cover the needs of the population. Sometimes the population needs more resources than the ones produced, and thats when the individuals with better capacity of adaptation can survive. The others end up dying before the balance is established again. There isnt a maximum population value. If the population is so small that can lead to the extinction of HOME, the procreation intervals become two times smaller. Videos In this piece the videos are an essential part of the construction of this worlds identity. The aesthetic chosen for the videos was a minimal white space. This concept of space relates to some important Sci-fi movies; one of inspirations was George Lucass THX 1138 (Coppola, Lucas, 1971). To achieve such result all the videos were filmed in a television studio where the white surface was illuminated with a special lighting technique (Millerson 1991) that overexpose the white areas. The Cyclorama is a white surface with no hard edges that when used with a special lighting technique erases all the surface flaws and transforms the space into a non-horizon space. The white seams to extend to infinity. For this project it was important to relate these virtual aspects to human aspects. The virtual individuals were constructed in this mechanical and artificial way but at same time they are presented as humans. They have all physical 53

Figure 5. Image simulating the view of the array as the HOME physical space

pected to live. They can only look for a partner if they are at the 1/8, 14, 12, or 3/4 landmarks of their life expectancy. The last restriction to this individuals reproduction is related to their position. Their physical position in this virtual and artificial word is given by their position on the memory array. Each individual will look from time to time to their

aspects we understand as human: one mouth, two eyes, one nose, two arms, and so on, but they are not. They are something else. The environment is amorphous. The actors ages and genders, chosen to play the parts in each one-minute video, varied. Kids, adolescents, young adults and older adults played during each minute a various numbers of roles that relate to different moments of human existence. The general feeling of the video was given by the ambient sound. The sonic atmosphere communicates the general felling of the world: positive, negative or migrating from one to another (detailed explanation in section VII.). The actions of the individuals refer to more specific HOME data. The rate of reproduction, the amount of resources, the population number, the age of the population, etc are the choosing engine for which videos are going to be selected in a more specific way. If the population is big, there are a lot of resources, they are procreating a lot, the resulting video choice is going to be videos with a lot of characters, from different ages acting happily, with construction and planting food scenes. If the population is small old but there are a lot of resources the resulting videos should show images with few older characters acting productively in a peaceful environment. In times of crisis shall see the characters fighting, the dead being left in the middle of the scene, unhappy and scared characters, etc. One important aspect to take in consideration is that HOMEs landscape is the result of the assembly of the three screens. For such reason the combination of all videos produce an enormous amount of possible landscapes. So, even when the world is very balanced we never end up repeatedly seeing the same images. The same data can produce a lot of different outputs while always transmitting the same message. VII. Sound design For clear comprehension of the actions performed by the characters, it is necessary to define something that establishes that relationship between the action and the totally white background. The sound is essential for that to happen. The selection and the edition of references sound transformed and inserted in the videos allow the gestures to transform into actions. The sound is also a way to emphasize the immersion as each screen emits its own sound resulting in a surround effect. The first relation that the sound establishes is the general situation of the world. The ambient sound of the installation can present to the spectator three different situations of the global state of HOME: (a) positive (b) negative and (c) migrating from one state to another (Everest, 2000) (Fonseca, 2007). When the status of HOME is good the ambient sound is peaceful and happy. Birds sing, calming water flows and some cheerful kids can be heard. When the world is unstable and the resources are getting scarce, the sound is dark and scary. Rain and thunderstorm anticipates the difficult future of HOME. The mixture of both scenarios represents transition between the previous two states. The sound design was also important to enrich the video. The sound capture while doing the filming did not repre54
Figure 6. Image simulating physical space

sent the real sound of the activities that were being done. There wasnt any of shoving or digging the earth if in the scenario there wasnt a shovel nor soil. The actors movements needed the sound design to establish that relation. Diverse collection of sounds that transformed this empty white space into hundreds of new scenarios, edited with the software Protools. The sound is also a very important element for the wrapping effect of the spectator, emphasizing the idea of being completely surrounded by HOME. The setup The setup of HOME is very important to achieve the immersive environment. The space is a small (3x3 meters) empty room with three windows. Each window is made of 40 LCD screens that are placed about 1,5 meter from the floor on three walls opposite to the entrance door. Outside the installation there is another LCD monitor. Smaller then the others (only 17) this one is on top of a table next to the entrance of the room. Under that table is the computer that controls the whole installation. A specially made computer was developed for this work that allows us to have four DVI outputs instead of the standard two outputs. This computer is connected to all the screens of this installation. The space needs to be neutral so that this disposition can really look like a room with windows to HOMEs landscape. IX. Conclusion Although since the 1990s (Whitelaw, 2004) many artists already use artificial life systems to produce artistic pieces, most of them push those worlds away from reality, keeping them virtual. Even with the use of interaction (Sommerer, Mignonneau, 1999) (Sommerer, Mignonneau, 1998) they still maintain a barrier that induces the perception of the separation of these two worlds. HOME introduces a different approach because it explores the union of the artificial and the humans, projecting our own understanding of the body to confront and analyze the construction of a world that is in between. The main goal is to narrow down the referred barriers, and trough the glasses of the windows, inside the room, establish a com-

munication and explore your own understanding of our bodies. Even though interactive installations allow a close relationship between the user and the environment, hopefully this connection emerges through contemplation, allowing the user to immerge through the questions generated by its analyses.

References Dawkins, R. (2006). The Selfish Gene. New York: Oxford University Press Holland J. H. (1992). Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems. Cabridge: MIT Press Galanter, P . (2003). What is generative art? Complexity Theory as a Context for Art Theory. New York: Interactive Telecommunications Program, New York University. Mcluhan, H.M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: The New American Library Walter, B. (2008). The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproduction. Cambridge: Belknap Press Todd, S. & Latham, W. (1992). Evolutionary Art and Computers. Waltham: Academic Press. Whitelaw, M. (2004). Metacreation, Art and Artificial Life. Cambridge: MIT Press Haraway, D. (1991). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. In D. Bell and B. M, Kennedy (Ed.), The Cyberculters reader. New York: Routledge. Hansen, M.B.N. (2006). Bodies in Code: Interfaces with Digital Media. New York: Routledge Lvy, P . (2003). O que o virtual?. So Paulo: Editora 34 Millerson, G. (1991). Lighting for Video. Focal Press Coppola, F.F. (Producer), & Lucas, G. (Director). (1971). THX 1138. Warner Bros Millerson, G. (1991). Lighting for Video. Focal Press Everest, F.A. (2000) Master HandBook of Acoustics. McGraw-Hill/TAB Electronics Fonseca, N. (2007). Introduo Engenharia de Som. FCA Whitelaw, M. (2004). Metacreation, Art and Artificial Life. Cambridge: MIT Press C. Sommerer and L. Mignonneau, Art as a Living System, in Siggraph99 Conference Abstracts and Applications (New York: ACM Siggraph, 1999), p. 143. 1999. Sommerer, C. & Mignonneau, L. (1998). ART @ SCIENCE. New York: Springer Verlag. [1] W. H. Cantrell, Tuning analysis for the high-Q class-E power amplifier, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory & Tech., vol. 48, no. 12, pp. 2397-2402, December 2000.

55

The Third Pill for the Modern World

Gorillaz Project and Beyond
Can Fakioglu canfakioglu@gmail.com

Close your eyes and see When there aint no light All youll ever be Come on save the night Cause i dont believe When the morning comes, it doesnt Seem to say an awful lot to me - Gorillaz, All Alone, Demon Days 2006

The modern world nestles a layered structure in itself and must be experienced through multiple states of mind. The communication mediums on which the individuals interact with each other and their surroundings, obligate a process of interpretation through them. As the states of mind are demoted into two dream and wake by psychoanalysts, in some occasions it becomes compulsory to create another perspective over reality. Because in todays world, the viewers may experience moments in which the boundaries of fictional and real may dissolve into each other. Slavoj Zizek, cites the concept of a third pill connoting Matrix series. Zizek tells about the blue and the red pills and argues that the choice between them is not the choice of reality or illusion (Zizek 2007). Because in that machinery, the fictions are used as tools to structure our dominant reality, thus, are parts of it. Right after, he demands the third pill; The pill which is supposed to enable a person to perceive not the reality behind illusion, but the reality in the illusion itself. In 1998, Damon Albarn of Britpop band Blur and illustrator Jamie Hewlett created a virtual music band composed of four animated members: 2D, Murdoc, Noodle and Russel and named the band as Gorillaz. In 2001, the band released self-titled Gorillaz album as their first LP, which is recorded in a virtual studio called The Kong Studios (home and studio of the characters) and gained a huge global success. The virtual members became celebrities and the impact of the Grammy winning band spread quicker than expected. Gorillaz rocked the music ground and placed its name to Guiness Record Book as the most selling virtual band. Moreover, their unique identity is more likely to open a new era for the future of performances and the concept of reality. Because, supported with the dynamics of its very nature, Gorillaz is an illusion, which, in time, became more real than the reality itself. To understand the underlying factors behind the commercial success and increasing fame of the project, it would be useful to analyze the behaviors of the spectators and watching attitudes during performances. The experience of a performance takes place in multiple spaces/places. The first one is, of course the physical place where the show is actually happening. A theater, street, museum, concert hall can be defined. The latter is the tricky one, which each individual experiences alone. A unique, abstract state or plane which 56

is created in viewers mind. Different scholars, describes and names that space in different forms. In Freudian terms it can be resembled to dream-state, whereas for GuattariDeleuze, its the surface of a plane (plane of consistency) and is a state where person experiences having a Body without Organs. (BwO) (Guattari-Deleuze 1987) But there are common points in each of them when the experience of watching is studied. Since the cinematic experience and being a spectator of a performance can be considered parallel to each other, the works of psychoanalysts focusing on the relation of the film with its spectator can be used as a guide to explore this space. The state of the mind during the experience of watching a performance can be resembled to daydream. Christian Metz suggests that the gap between the real and dream states tend to diminish during visual experience and it may become the delusion of a man awake.(Metz 1982) This also means, the whole experience can be in functional competition with the daydream. As an industry bound to the reproduction of pleasure transmitted through audiovisual elements, the act of performing needs to open this kind of a space in viewers mind to communicate with its audience. Zizek supports that idea by applying function to it. According to him, it is essential to support the performance with the work of fantasy. Even the act of sexual intercourse (direct way of satisfying desire) means nothing more than stupid repetitive body movements.(Zizek 2007) However when one experiences it by filling the gap by translating the bodily activity into words with the work of the mind, it, then, becomes the most common-natural way of satisfying the desires. The work of mind, mentioned here is not the rationalizing factor of the brain. Its similar to the Projection Mirrors concept suggested by Jacques Lacan. He interprets the cinematic experience as a series of projections. If Lacans idea on cinema hall is adapted to the performances, the simple dynamics stay the same. The event on the stage reaches the eye of the spectator and is exposed by a series of explanation, categorization, and resemblance machineries inside the mind of the spectator. After these operations, the final product created by the spectator himself is projected again as personal scenery and the actual watching experience takes place. (Lacan 1977) If the same concept of third dimension between the dream and wake states of mind is investigated through the frame of Guattari-Deleuzes concept of BwO, one may reach another interpretation of the mind-state of the spectator of a performance. According to Guattari-Deleuze, psychoanalytic view tends to turn everything into fantasies and interpret them accordingly. On the contrary, BwO suggests a state, which consists of what is left when everything including the

fantasy is taken out. It suggests a state where you think, eat, see, etc. as a whole. Not as a person with an identity but as a part of a conceptual whole. The duo resembles the state of reaching the BwO to the moment of a drug addict finding dope or a masochist suffering pain and getting the ultimate pleasure for himself/herself. It happens on the plane of intensities, the continuum of all intensive continuities. The main discrimination between the dream state of the Freuidans and the BwO of the duo is; the BwO does not consist childhood memories, dreams or fantasies to interpret. It cant be described in words, can only be represented by colors, sounds and becomings. But its not before the organism, its the body itself, and is adjacent to it. (GuattariDeleuze 1987) When the Gorillaz project encounters the two different views, and interpreted through both, it can be seen that the animated characters on the stage cause a problematic situation. Its not a catastrophic state of mind, yet with its perceptual reading it has a rich potential to analyze the behaviors of the audience. The Gorillaz project, embodied on stage, has been fictional since the first appearance. As it happens to all the spectators experiencing a performance, it opens a room in viewers mind and settles down somewhere. But what happens to the spectator during this interaction? It would be useful to analyze the background of Gorillaz project and its inner dynamics before interfering with the performances of the band. The members of Gorillaz have no existence in dominant reality. However, this does not automatically mean that they do not exist. During the process of the creation of the band, nearly 50 people contributed to the project within their professions. Illustrators, animators, designers, musicians, performers etc. created a solid background, which originates from the ideas decided by Albarn and Hewlett. If the project is investigated closely, the details that embody the characters will definitely fascinate one who wants to look beyond the concerts and records, and learn more about Gorillaz world. At first hand, the website (www.gorillaz.com) and many other relatively small fan websites, blogs, games and other online applications accompanied the creation of the band. Since the characters are fictional, the record label was facing a problem about advertisement of the records and concerts. They were not suitable for live appearances on TV such as interviews, performances, award shows or magazines. But the band gained huge recognition stats with word-of-mouth advertising and pre-created promotional materials. At that time everybody was curious about the question: Who is behind Gorillaz? The online applications served well about creating a transition level and a strong bond between the animated characters and the flesh and boned customers. All the animated members of Gorillaz were already administered with certain life stories and characteristic features which allowed the production crew to add pieces over the strongly created personalities. Their home and studio Kong Studios was designed as a living organism in which the characters gained up to date features. This enabled the project to go beyond the preproduced materials. The lack of live-interaction was solved in a small but effective extent. According to the statistics, the clicks on gorillaz.com were greater than the sum of all the other websites assigned to the same record company (Charts of Darkness 2005).

In addition to online supplies, virtual life and fictional universe of Gorillaz were supported with video clips. All the videos were designed and produced with strong references to the features of the characters and the plots were written accordingly. For example in the first video for the second album (Feel Good Inc.) Noodle was seen on a flying island while the other members were performing in a tower. In the sequel video, El Manana, the island was being chased by two helicopters and was attacked then. In the end of the video, Noodle was seen running inside the windmill while the island was falling down in flames. This incident got immediate reactions online. The forums were full of questions referring to Noodles death. The strong information network behind Gorillaz became visible through this process. A few weeks before the video was aired, boxes and packing materials were seen inside Kong Studios on the Gorillaz web site. After a while the same boxes were moved to Noodles room and then in a couple of days, the materials in the room were packed. After the bombing incident in the video, the secrets of the Gorillaz world were revealed with interviews in the documentary Rise of the Ogre. I guess youve waited long enough. Noodles safe, she was just acting as planned Jamie Hewlett gave Noodle the command, and she parachuted safely off the island. Murdoc Niccals on the video for El Maana October 24, 2006 Starting with Hewlett and Albarn, the crew behind Gorillaz was constantly supporting the image of Gorillaz on different stages. The band was immensely open to interaction on online platforms. Via Gorillaz.com or on blogs like Facebook, characters answered questions and joined debates or made announcements constantly. Moreover, Gorillaz were placed on covers of many magazines. In January 2001, the DAZED magazine placed the band on the cover and published several pages of interview with specifically the characters, not the creators. The interview was also supported with the images of the band members with their fresh outfits specifically designed for the photo shoot and with the help of digital arts, all the characters were applied to real spaces such as the waiting and dressing rooms of Dazed Magazine. Also during the flow of the second album, Murdoc opened the doors of Kong Studios to MTV for MTV Cribs. In 2006, MTV aired Gorillaz MTV Cribs. The virtual house of Gorillaz found a chance to get out of online platform and was seen on TV for the first time. In the show, all the characters were seen in their daily activities and their parallel universe got closer to the real world. If the analysis on the band continues on the backstage, investigating the creation process of the thinkers and their intentions would be useful. There are clear references upon the intended realness for the characters in the documentary Charts of Darkness in the first DVD of Gorillaz Celebrity Takedown. When Gorillaz performances are examined with respect to chronological order, the intentions of Albarn and Hewlett is pretty obvious. The first live performances started in 2001 and the performers creating the voices and musical acts of Gorillaz stayed behind curtains in the first phase (2001-2005) which was one of the two screens on the stage. The other one was displaying the 2D and 3D animations of the characters, animatics and image collages. The only interaction between Gorillaz and the real world was provided by a projection of the band into an area inside the audience side to create an illusion that enhance the 57

idea that the band is watching their own songs played by other artists and people on the stage are not Gorillaz. Supporting this view, in the documentary Hewlett and Albarn states that their existence in the Gorillaz project, is not more than acting as silhouettes. He affirms that their intention is decreasing the effect of their presence in the band and turning Gorillaz into a self-sufficient system. Albarn says; If you were expecting to see Gorillaz, there must be nearly 50 silhouettes here, but there is only two of us. Now you are seeing us as silhouettes, soon we will be just outlines, and then we may disappear! The fascinating side of the Gorillaz project lies down at this point. The characters seen on stage are the sum of the elements behind the curtain. For example, Russel is created by the collaboration of a percussionist, a drummer, a hiphop singer and a voice artist. Similarly 2-D takes his voice from Damon Albarn and his instrument abilities from a guitarist and another keyboard player. If the predefined backgrounds of the characters are added to the visualizations on stage, the liminal place where reality merges the fictional rises. With their backgrounds, abilities and animated bodies, 2D, Russel, Murdoc and Noodle gain an existence on the stage for a given time on a given place. On the second phase of Gorillaz performances (2005 Current Time), the hottest issue for the creators was focusing on the ways of enhancing the physical existence of the band and defining a place for them inside material reality. Due to the fact that Gorillaz was a music band, the most suitable place for them to be embodied, was the stage. Throughout this phase, instead of the silhouettes of performers, there were huge screens on the stage. Each of the screens was assigned to a character. During the show, 3D models of the characters occupied the screens and performed the songs inside their frames. For the first time since the birth of the band, the band members gained a physical space on the stage. Although the screens were visible to the audience and the content of the projections were obviously pre-produced, the crew enabled the fictional characters to perform with the real collaborators such as Shaun Ryder, Neneh Cherry, Ike Turner, De La Soul on the same stage. Starting on November 3,2005, the third day of Demon Days Live performances, a different technique began to be used. With the new projection methods developed by Musion Eyeliner firm, using the basics of the old Peppers Ghost trick, the 3D animations of the band were projected to a transparent film creating a sense of actual presence on stage. The band performed their song Feel Good Inc, and they simultaneously appeared at the 2005 MTV Music Awards in Lisbon. Later the same technique was used at the 2006 Grammy Awards but this time a virtual Madonna was added to the stage. Grammy Awards performance was the climax point for the Gorillaz project. It was not just a revolutionary stage act created by the usage of new technology but also it was a harsh fist on the stomach to the audience. It was a complex transitional stage for the states of reality to merge into each other, stunning the viewer and putting him into a position where he/she never experienced. During 7 years, before the Grammy performance, the members of Gorillaz were transformed from fictional characters into celebrities with their own personalities, behaviors, habits, existing without 58

any need to the visual presence of their creators. Thus their actual appearance on stage via holograms embodied all this background and enabled them to have a semi-physical existence at the given time and space. Richard Schechner defines the stage as a limen, where the fictional and real worlds merge into each other and creates a space for endless possibilities. (Schechner 2002 ) In this definition, role players (actors, actresses, performers) still stand as the representations of the fictional worlds gaining existence in the material world. But in Gorillaz case, the performers of the act were also fictional. Additionally, their embodiment on the stage and on the plane of the dominant reality did not cause a loss in their fictional value. They were still moving and acting in their cartoon world and according to cartoon universe rules. The contradiction occurring here is based on the communication of the stage act with the audience. In common examples of performances, the act is the product of realized imagination, and audience experience the act of watching within the dynamics stated above. The viewer experiences a state of disembodiment during the act of watching. He receives the images, perpetrates and reflects again for the secondary watching experience. In this process he reaches a state such as daydream. He dismantles the body and gets closer to a body without organs. The perception of I changes and the show goes on in the mind of the viewer according to the rules of the alternative universe on the stage, not with respect to the rules of dominant reality. But in Grammy awards performance the fictional characters merged into the dominant reality. Moreover, this confusion was supported by the addition of a virtual Madonna, whose existence is clearly attached to the dominant reality. Facing two totally different universes dissolving in each other on the stage was not a common experience. If the discussion is approached through Lacanian perspective, it can be seen that Gorillaz universe is not open to identification with the characters due to its property of being not real. There was always a line that divides the cartoon with the real during the experience of watching Gorillaz visuals. Although the characters in the videos seem inviting the audience to participate the fun ride inside the Gorillaz universe, it was rock solid that no human being may enter that plane and take part in the action. Thus identifying oneself with the characters or as a person inside that reality does not seem possible. If the same issue is approached through Guattari-Deleuzes angle, the only war for the viewer to transform himself into that reality can be dismantling the material body. Gorillaz is a project that can also be defined as an answer to escapist view. Escapists define the escape as a term to define the actions people take to help relieve feelings of depression or sadness and neglect the stress of daily life. Because they believe that de facto removes people from their biologically normal natures. In that case, it can be said that Gorillaz may have a property that offers the audience such an experience. The utterance of the Gorillaz is also about the feeling of being free. In the song and video Feel Good Inc. the floating island is a representation of mental freedom:
Windmill, Windmill for the land. Turn forever hand in hand Take it all in on your stride It is ticking, falling down

Love forever love is free Lets turn forever you and me Windmill, windmill for the land Is everybody in? - Gorillaz, Feel Good Inc., Demon Days 2006

What Guattari-Deleuze refers to with the BwO is also a concept of a state full of gaiety, ecstasy and dance where you eat, think and see with your whole body not with parts of your body with different functions.(Guattari-Deleuze 1987) If the sub context of Gorillaz project is blended with the act of performance, the sum can be resembled to a call for the audience, to participate to the action on a state which is neither adherent to the material reality or the dream state. As it can be seen in the Gorillaz project, the Modern World harbors possibilities for the real and the imaginary to exist together on the same plane. If the planned hologram world tour of the band can be realized, the audience may need the third pill before the shows. That is to say, in time, the people of todays world may witness the merging of the two on different levels and this will result with the need of a new perception over the act of watching. With the usage of new technologies in the service of performances, next couple of years may be the beginning of a new era for representation.

References Deleuze, G., Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus : Capitalism and schizophrenia, New York: Continuum. Lebeau, V. (2001). Psychoanalysis and cinema: Short cuts. New York: Wallflower Press. Metz, C. (1986). The imaginary signifier: Psychoanalysis and cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lacan, J. (1977). Ecrits: A selection. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Schechner, R. (2003). And introduction: Performance studies. New York: Routledge. Dir. Hewlett, J.C. Gorillaz phase one : Celebrity take down (2002). EMI Records Ltd. Dir. Hewlett, J.C. Gorillaz phase two : Slowboat to hades (2006). EMI Records Ltd. Dir. Zizek S. (2007). The perverts guide to cinema. P Guide Ltd. Gorillaz, The Band. Retrieved 10.01.2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Gorillaz Gorillaz Official Site. Retrieved 08.01.2008 from http://www.gorillaz.com Escapism Retrieved 10.01.2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escapism

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Interactive Spaces & Wearables

61

Digital Choreographies
Designing Reactive Spaces and Artefacts
by Michel Guglielmi, Hanne Louise Johanssen http://www.diffus.dk/

One year ago in November 2009 Diffus made a workshop at the a-m-b-e-r festival in Istanbul. The workshop culminated with a dance performance at the Talimhane Theatre on the closing night of the festival. After our performance, where we worked with costumes that communicated with each other using ultrasound just like bats, a group of creative people played a concert using transformed electronic toys. We had been working hard for five days, we were tired but the spirit was good, the responses we got from our work were overwhelming and there was an altogether creative feeling. This could have been a party to remember forever was it not for the local police who decided to close the party due to complaints from the neighbours. This party was a culmination of a week where the entire group attending the a-m-b-e-r festival had been working with bodies, arts and technologies an explosive cocktail when it comes to creativity. Exactly this cocktail will be the focus of present paper and our dance performance of last year a-m-b-e-r festival will be the starting point. Costume Choreography Istanbul Before we went to Istanbul in November 2008 we prepared some ingredients for the final performance. These ingredients had focus on technology and sensuality. We wanted to integrate computer technology and textiles in order to make costumes. The costumes became wearable expression tools and they also contributed with a range of possible choreographic combinations. Then combined with other ingredients the costumes became an integrated part of the active communicating elements of the dance performance in the sense that the individual costumes could communicate with each other as well as the bodies wearing them. Therefore it was not possible to create a solid choreography. Instead we worked with choreographic qualities. The other ingredients created a priori were; a communication device based on ultrasound and programming; communication visualization formed as illuminating circuits; an aesthetic expression for the costumes that was closely aligned with the choreographic qualities and the illuminating circuits and a series of soundscapes that on the spot could be sampled and adapted. In Istanbul we were greeted by two dancers, a textile designer and a PhD student specializing in interactive (New Media) performance. On site, in cooperation with the four participants, we refined and mixed our ingredients. During five days the two dancers and our choreographer worked on the choreographic qualities, costumes were aligned, illuminating patterns were created and constantly reviewed in alignments with developments in choreography, costumes, sound and set design. All of us worked in the same theatre space, resulting in a mutual development and customization of individual ingredients. The physical result was a set 62

Figure 1: CC2 choreography, Istanbul, 2009

of new media based costumes demanding action from dancers in order to express anything.

When new media art demands the presence of a participating body, it happens in real time. Real time has become the key phrase in todays digital art, and is a conformity in time that constantly is valid in our physical interactive and performative dealings with everything from cultural objects and work processes to offers of entertainment and personal events. Real time most often depends on simultaneity: When acting one expects the surroundings to react promptly to this action. The focus on real time action often results in an affective approach to the works, which demand our participatory attention. In the case of our Costume Choreographies the affective process was an expression of the immediate motivation to interact due to the fact that the costumes reacted to the dancers movements. Affect is emotion emanating from a fundamental mood as, for example, fear, curiosity, or happiness. The affective is in this way the emotional - it is the moods, which make us act instinctively

and mainly subconsciously, and can be seen as very natural reactions which have an effect on us in unknown situations. Affect precedes words and reflection and relates itself to an immediate sense world, which in the first instance is manifold and mobile. A sense world that lies latent like an

on, as if it were a piece of clothing (or maybe a costume), following every movement and constantly connected to real time. Oskar Schlemmer, man/machine-relations and the seeds to a cyborg history. Through our Costume Choreographies, we also wanted to comment on Oskar Schlemmers work and re-situate some of his concerns in the context of todays digital media culture. Oscar Schlemmer, who was the leader of the Bauhaus scene in the Weimar-republic, Germany from 1924 till 1929 focused in his performances on the costume design and made with his Das Triadishe Ballett from 1923 almost a ballet for costumes. With playful elegance Schlemmer explored aspects of the art of theatre that until then only had a supporting role. His focal point was the human figure, which he reduced to puppet-like shapes that expressed the human body as a perfect system of proportions and functions according to the machine age. The ballet was choreographed to reveal the figures relationships to each other as well as to the space around them. Schlemmer saw the puppet (made of dancer and costume) as an idealization of the human form, a form that was able to move with perfect machine-like grace once it was liberated from the earthbound realm of the single human being. Schlemmer created a human form that was at once timeless in the perfection of its parts and contemporary in its mechanical movement. The movements of puppets and marionettes emphasised according to Schlemmer that the medium of every art is artificial. This artifice could be expressed through stylised movements and the abstraction of the human body. His consideration of the human form led to the all important costume design, to create what he called his figurine. The music followed and finally the dance movements were decided. Schlemmer understood the modern world as driven by two main currents, the mechanized (man as machine and the body as a mechanism) and the primordial impulses (the depths of creative urges). From his point of view this abstract ballet was free from the historical baggage of theatre and opera and therefore able to present ideas of choreographed geometry and man as dancer, transformed by costume and moving in space . In these thoughts lie the seeds to the idea of the cyborg - a cyborg where the artificial has the ability to fulfil the imperfection of humanity. It is this tradition we wanted to create our version of a cyborgian performance striving to investigate and understand what consequences, possibilities and limitations new technology have for the scenic expression and the relation between body, space and technology. The major difference due to the distance in time is that were Schlemmer connected his ideas of man as machine with the industrial age of precision and repetition we want to work with the characteristics of the contemporary machine, the computer, with its skills of variation, customisation and connectability. Instead of having a fixed and repeatable choreography formed by the costumes we work with movement given by the costumes. The costumes become instruments of light, movement and sound that have a specific tune but can be played differently each time. 63

Figure 2. CC1 choreography, Copenhagen, 2007

impotent consciousness, because we are influenced against our will by what happens and to a large extent also by the memorys reproduction of this powerlessness. We know through experience - that this sense world might take over and bring us in affect . In our Costume Choreographies, as well as in other works, sensuousness, body and affect are elements we want to bring in focus in relation to a digital universe, which most often is experienced as cold, clinical and with very little physicality. In the book New Philosophy for New Media, the American new media philosopher Mark B.N. Hansen has attempted to pin down which differences the participating interactive works constitute, in relation to traditional works that have a lesser grade of involvement . Hansens thesis is that new media works require a different starting point for interpretation: namely, the body. When cultural objects and events demand active participation, the body becomes centre of actions and focal point for the use, the understanding and the utilisation of the intangible patterns of information. Few years ago it was through the film medium we approached culture. Today, according to Hansen, it is the body that sets the framework for the interpretation of any given event. When we meet computer-based cultural objects, the surrounding space is almost something one puts

Materialogy and sensations Variation, customisation and connectability is essential within computer media but what interests us here and in general is the interplay between analogue and digital properties of a composite material resulting from combining traditional materials like textiles and immaterial substances like computer controlled light patterns or colour changes. For this purpose, we often downgrade computer technology in order to make it appear as tangible, textured and tactile as the analogue material in which it is interweaved. The computer technology is therefore always mediated, blurred and filtered trough analogue material. The way our senses perceive those two materials gets very similar when integrated in a homogeneous manner instead of simply be superposed or juxtaposed. Since light patterns and electronic computer based circuits are intimately embedded into analogue material, we tend to be surprised when textiles or other material react as a digital device, allowing for example real-time interactions. Our senses and intuition are surprised when a material offers radically new properties compared to those they normally are known for. Such hybrid material, allowing types of uses

of mother earth, until we in death is dressed in our best and most representable clothes. Pollution sensoring dress CC was a way to investigate new forms of instrumental and embodied interaction and understand what possibilities technology based on interactive textiles combined with dynamic light-patterns have for the scenic expression. Also Hansens body which sets the framework for the interpretation of any given event was clearly at stake in our performances because the patterns of information, resulting from the positioning and gesture of the performer, is instantaneously interpreted into visual events: Modifications of texture, patterns and sound. A dynamic stage-space ruled and organised by algorithms and digital processes is insuring a seamless experience of flow. In order to expand our research toward other subjects we have in November and December 2009 worked with a air quality sensing dress that meas-

Figure 3. Soft circuits embedded as embroidery, Copenhagen, 2009

and states which are opposed to its seemingly affordance, offers tremendous possibilities for story telling and design experiments. Soft circuits In order to refine the integration of for instance computer technology and textiles we have added soft circuits to our repertoire. We of course integrate soft circuits as function but also as decoration. This way electronic circuits can be enhanced and emphasised instead of hidden away and also integrated in a way that elements of comfort, flexibility and aesthetic step forward. Our familiarity with textiles in general and clothing specifically is well developed. No one could imagine everyday life without textiles and few of us could imagine life without technology. Still technology is alien to us and often connected to something uncanny, but soft circuits benefit from the well known feeling of textile that, apart from skin, are the material our bodies are most accustomed with. Textiles are part of our lives every day always. From newborn where we get wrapped in a blanket in order to minimize the transition from the heat of our mothers womb to the chill 64

Figure 4. Climate dress, Copenhagen, 2009

ure and visualize any given CO2 level in the surrounding environment. With this project we created a garment that visually changes in real-time through evolving patterns according to the level of air quality in a given environment. The evolving patterns are made of LED-lights, which are powered by soft circuits, meaning that the circuits are made of conductive textiles and yarns and thereby softly integrated in the garment. We worked together with the Swiss embroidery company Forster-Rohner who realised our eembroidery design as an industrial process. The goal was thereby to integrate soft circuits, telecommunication sys-

tems and sensor technology into one specific design statement, which on the aesthetic and technical level simultaneously is explored trough a joint project involving Alexandra Institute, Denmarks Design school and Forster Rohener. The Climate dress was shown at Bright Green Expo, December 13th in Copenhagen. Bright Green Expo was the largest parallel event during the COP15 meeting in Copenhagen. More than 160 world-leading companies showed their innovative solutions using environmental friendly technologies. By experimenting and developing intelligent textiles using soft circuits, which are able to communicate and transfer information in a pervasive manner, we wanted to widen the possibilities for production of intelligent garments to broader design purposes. In order to make the LED dress, soft circuits were applied on a suitable fabric as an element of embroidery where LED lights are connected. The construction of the dress was made of two pieces, in order to minimize seams and embroidery work. The embroidered soft circuits and LED lights were applied on the top part of the dress. The conductive embroidery is powering the LED lights and the light intensity and combination of LED lights is expressing information about the CO2 concentration in a specific place. Therefore the position and the readability of the LED lights were important so we made a range of diverse light patterns varying from slow, regular light pulsations to short and hectic: When the CO2 level is low or normal, the light is pulsating in a regular but still dynamic way making, imitating calm and deep breathing. The higher the CO2 level becomes the more hectic and irregular the light pulsation becomes. The dress makes the invisible CO2 level visible in a poetic way and it is possible to make an impact on the ever-changing light pattern by blowing on the CO2 sensor or crowd around the dress. Choreography of Sensation Through interaction, space and design, we explore the relationship between body, space and movement in terms of computer-mediated events. In our projects, body space and movement are continuously adapting to each other trough carefully designed scenarios. We try to make space become an organism so it will adapt to an ever-changing context and flow of information. To achieve this task, we work with sensors, which help us to gather data from the environment. Then we process the information and finally, we actualise subtle changes within the physical space. Our main concern is always to propose poetical experiences, which engage our senses in an active way. Therefore we have developed different strategies and a kind of toolbox of materials that have the abilities to appeal to our senses but at the same time can be modified on the fly and controlled through computer technology. Intelligent textiles with dynamic light patterns embedded in the garment are one of the possibilities explored in 2008 at the Amber workshop in Istanbul. The participants of the workshop created costumes for 2 dancers who - trough changes in patterns - could express the physical relationship between the performers. We have recently expanded

our field of experimentation by including innovative and surprising materials like digital concrete: Concrete slabs in which optical fibres are moulded into an 8 millimetre pixel-arranged grid. Such material gives us the possibility to create dynamic spaces in which seemingly opposite disciplines like traditional craft and computer technology join forces in order to achieve an engaging experience. But whether we make a Costume Choreography in Istanbul, a Climate Dress in Copenhagen or a Dynamic Pavement in a yet undecided city the important thing for us is to include choreographic elements into the sensor based environment in order to make the specific event meaningful. At the same time we will continue to learn from participants from other professional areas like we did with the irreplaceable and inspirational participants in the Costume Choreography Istanbul.

65

Cybersthesia
Cross-media and cross-modal abstractions for real-time performative animation
by Veroniki Korakidou, Aris Bezas, Antonis Psaltis Laboratory of New Technologies, Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens vkorakidou@yahoo.gr

Abstract This paper documents the process of development for the design of a performative audiovisual installation. This case study is placed within the context of a synaesthesia- based evolutionary media art theoretical perspective. The term cross-media abstraction is introduced as a metaphor in order to describe the design process of structuring crossmedia associations for human-computer interaction thus putting forward an analogy to the process of language formation in the human brain. The ability to relate abstract qualities of sound and image or any two other separate media in a bidirectional manner, making possible their intertranslatability establishes a linguistic code. It is discussed, how multi-modal real time interactive art installations are performative in the sense, that they are designed to offer a unique participatory experience to the viewer/visitor. Such artworks often explore additional multi-sensory creative insights into audiovisual design by employing sensors for extended human interaction possibilities, such as haptic input, motion tracking and bio-feedback. By appropriating or simulating the neurological condition of synaesthesia, in order to describe the design process of integrating networked communication and transcoding of sensory data for creating interactive installations it is suggested, that ICT technologies may in fact have an inherent conceptual connection with the notion of synaesthesia. Conceptualization & Background Cybersthesia as a neologism is a hybrid term, or rather a conceptual remix form the words cyber - (cyber-space1, cyb-org / cybernetic2 organism) and - sthesia from synaesthesia.3 In their paper Synaesthesia - A window into perception, thought and language V.S. Ramachandran and E.M. Hubbard investigated grapheme-color synaesthesia and found that synaesthesia is a genuine perceptual phenomenon caused by hyperconnectivity between different brain areas (i.e. fusiform gyrus and the amygdala) at different stages in processing. This hyperconnectivity might be caused by a genetic mutation that causes defective pruning of connections between brain maps. This ability of experiencing cross-modal interactions or making abstract associations between two different sense modalities, such as vision and audition has been termed by Ramachandran and Hubbard cross-modal abstraction and as they suggested it is probably a pre- requisite to the formation of human language4. Ramachandran & Hubbard also claim that the specific gene causing the neurological defect of synaesthesia may have survived over thousands of years of natural drift for this sole purpose: language formation, thus offering a sy66

naesthesia-based5 evolutionary theory of language.6 Robert Solso in his last book The Psychology of Art and the Evolution of the Conscious Brain, 2003, MIT Press, describes how human consciousness, which evolved for other purposes, perceives and creates art. There has been subsequently an attempt by Korakidou and Charitos (2008) to conceptualize evolution in media art history, introducing an evolutionary theoretical model which suggests a structural analogy to the linguistic paradigm of cross- modal abstraction with the formation of abstract animation language which has evolved from film into new media art genres.7 As suggested in Korakidou and Charitos (2006) abstract animation film language has evolved from the experiments of visual artists of the 1920s Avant Garde.8 In Berlin, after World War I, abstract artists Walter Ruttmann (1887 1941), Hans Richter (1888 - 1976) and Viking Eggeling (1880 1925) created three ground-breaking films, Light Play Opus I (1921), Film is Rhythm 1 (1920-1) and Diagonal Symphony (1921) respectively, which are considered as the first abstract animation films made. A few years earlier, Wassily Kandinsky (1866 1944), Piet Mondrian (1872 1944), and Paul Klee (1879 1940) experimented with the concept of applying structural laws of musical composition to visual art and thus set the foundations of modern abstract painting. Viking Eggeling, Hans Richter, Walter Ruttmann and a bit later on, Oskar Fischinger experimented further with applying such musical laws in visual composition over a timebased medium: film.9 By realizing with the help of cinematic technology the conceptual quest for movement in art, a concept only implied by Klee and Kandinsky in their static paintings10 they crossed what Lopold Survage called The glistening bridge from still to moving art.11 Hans Richter was part of Dada movement and one of the pioneers of modern art alongside artists and filmmakers Ferdinand Leger, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Francis Picabia, Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dali. He was probably one of the first who recognized the possibilities that cinematography had to offer to abstract art. He and his collaborator Viking Eggeling explored time and continuity as elements of visual art by creating scroll paintings. Counterpart became yet another element of music, like rhythm, that Richter successfully transformed into visual art, by using positivenegative relationships to structure his pieces12. To abstract is to construct a plane upon which otherwise different and unrelated matters may be brought into many possible relations.13 According to early 20th Century abstract painter Piet Mondrian: As nature becomes more abstract, a relation is more clearly felt. The new painting has clearly shown this. And that is why it has come to the point of expressing nothing but relations.14 Historically, cinema

may have been the first synaesthetic art form, simulating an inter-sensorial conjunction of sound and image. Rudolf Arnheim in Film as Art first raised this basic aesthetic question of how various media can be combined in a work of art.15 Throughout the Twentieth Century, there has been a broader re-evaluation of the senses questioning the supremacy of vision over the other senses, which also brings up the common fact that cinematic sound is considered to have almost invariably been subservient to the image.16 Interactive art forms, like performative installations and audiovisual environments that involve the simulation of synaesthetic perceptions may change this hierarchical structure by exploring new perceptual hierarchies through interactivity. Additional senses, such as the sense of touch and proprioception (the sense of ones own movement in space) are being employed in audiovisual artworks linked with networked communication and transmission of sensory input. 17 ICT technologies may in fact have a conceptual connection with the notion of synaesthesia, in the sense that they offer the ability we hereby refer to as cross-media abstraction, meaning the ability to relate abstract qualities of sound and image or any other two mediums in a bidirectional manner. This inter- translatability of media, a situation of media-blur which simulates a neurological blending of the senses, is very close to the modernist aesthetic ideal of a union of the arts most common in early 20th century Avant-Garde art 18 and late 19th Century symbolist poetry of Rimbaud and Baudelaire.19 This tradition of fusion between media and the arts is most commonly known as intermedia, a combinatory structure of syntactical elements coming from more than one medium and combined into one, thus being transformed into a new entity. Intermedia as a term was first used by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1812 and was later employed in the midsixties by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins to describe artworks that were between media that are already known. Often the creation of new media is done by fusing old ones. This formal fusion between media was very common in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Intermedia art involves a process of interaction between independent art systems within time and space. Higgins described the tendency of the most interesting pieces of art to cross the boundaries of recognized media or even to fuse the boundaries of art with media that had not previously been considered art forms, including computers.20 The notion of new media is currently used to represent a convergence of two separate historical trajectories: computing and media technologies.21 Frank Popper in his book From Technological to Virtual Art connects synaesthesia with the notion of Gesamtkunstwerk22 adding: We know that one stimulation of the senses automatically leads to another by means of association. The same goes for mediums, but in this case, it takes place on a metalevel of a cybermedia that blurs the boundaries between internal and external space.23Ludwig Wittgenstein described art as a game whose rules are made up as the game is in process. The exact meaning of words (images) becomes known only in the context of each new statement.24 Therefore, the language of a new medium can only be understood within the cultural, socio-economic and technological context that created it. According to Gene Youngblood: Synaesthetic cinema is the only aesthetic language

suited to the post-industrial, post-literate, man- made environment with its multidimensional simulsensory network of information sources.25 We can therefore understand why the evolution of abstract animation language embraced ICT technology in order to become meaningful as a contemporary art form. In his articles Systems Esthetics and Real Time Systems, published in Artforum in 1968 and 1969, respectively, Jack Burnham already explored a systems approach to art: A systems viewpoint is focused on the creation of stable, ongoing relationships between organic and non-organic systems26, which approach still holds a noticeable position in todays critical discourse on digital art. Cybernetic Serendipity, the famous exhibition at the ICA in London in 1968, was the first exhibition to attempt to demonstrate all aspects of computer-aided creative activity: art, music, poetry, dance, sculpture, animation. The principal idea was to examine the role of cybernetics in contemporary arts and presented works ranging from plotter graphics to light and sound environments, that showed characteristics and narratives of contemporary digital art. The exhibition included robots, poetry, music and painting machines, as well as all sorts of works where chance was an important ingredient. Some of them were dynamic and process-oriented, exploring possibilities of interaction and performance.27 When referring to Multiple-Projection Environments, such as the Vortex concerts in the 60s, Youngblood suggests: in real-time multiple-projection, cinema becomes a performing art.28 He also argues: The term kinetic generally indicates motion of material bodies and the forces and energies associated with it. Thus to isolate a certain type of film as kinetic and therefore different from other films means were talking more about forces and energies than about matter.29 This energy to which Youngblood refers to is a characteristic of Lyes films, and is especially profound in his film Free Radicals (1958). Len Lye (active 1901 - 1980) was a New Zealand abstract filmmaker who believed that the kind of kinetic empathy in his work30 should be seen as a means of composing motion for it reveals the body energy which connects the music and the visual images.31 Youngblood defines aesthetic quite simply as: the manner of experiencing something. Kinaesthetic, therefore, is the manner of experiencing a thing through the forces and energies associated with its motion. This is called kinaesthesia, the experience of sensory perception {sic). One who is keenly aware of kinetic qualities is said to possess a kinaesthetic sense.32 Notation is also a system dedicated to the spectrum of diverse artistic processes existing between the conception and the work of art. In the alliance between scientific calculation and artistic form, the artists of the 20th century have continued to make new realities visible. Morphic resonances, serial structures and sound waves: modernity has discovered the intellectual dimension to existence, to immaterial phenomena, and the ephemeral as a field of research in art. In the process, the relationship between concept, recording, repetition and work has been determined in a radically new way, the design processes have themselves become autonomous works of art. These processes may involve works from all areas of art in relation to one another: sign systems for literature, music, painting, choreography, architecture, photography, film and media art33. Only to mention a few 67

contemporary artists who explore computer technology and abstract audiovisual compositions, we can refer to the works of Carsten Nikolai, Ryoji Ikeda, Semiconductor and artists like Chris Cunningham, who expressed his talent in the synchronization of sound and visuals using digital technology mostly for MTV productions, John Maeda, the well-known graphic artist who created pattern reactive animation, Toshio Iwai, famous for his interactive audiovisual installations, Prix Ars Electronica Awarded Japanese artist Yoichiro Kawaguchi, who used computer generated images and Karl Sims, who creates artificial life algorithmic patterns for abstract virtual worlds. Using this conceptualization and background as framework for our current research, we will now focus on the process of developing an interactive installation for real-time performative animation. Project Development Our current work in progress is a collaborative art-sciencetechnology project for developing an interactive audiovisual installation using camera tracking interface for realtime human interaction via sKetCh software, developed by Igoumenitsa-based Greek artist Aris Bezas.34 sKetCh is a software, able to create a sonic and visual environment in response to human body tracking as visitors are moving around the space of the installation. In this sense, the camera tracks and captures the process of physical movement by visualizing an abstraction of the paths followed by the visitors as they moved around space. sKetCh has been used for previous installations (i.e. Skopje Biennale 2009) and is available as open source. An integral part of this project is to keep the dynamic of this experimentation in the frame of available tools that can be found on- line and then be used as a resource by the on-line community.35 For the soundscape composition, as in previous sKetCh installations, natural sounds by Granular Synthesis is very likely to be used, as this system offers endless possibilities for creating interactive soundscapes. A system of correspondences for the association of audiovisual elements with motion qualities is currently at the focus of our research for enhancing the installation design. Our proposed experimental application, which is currently under development, aims to research further on ways to create correspondences between sonic and visual elements using a bio-sensor. This bio-sensor has been designed for tracking human stress performing certain measurements of human bio-activity. It has been manufactured at the NT Lab of the Media Department of the University of Athens as product of individual research conducted by researcher Antonis Psaltis. This bio-feedback sensor consists of electrodes placed on the sides of an ordinary mousse. This way it looks like a common PC peripheral and can be used as such. The sensors have been integrated, in order to measure the levels of GSR (Galvanic Skin Response) on the skin of the end user. The electronic circuit transcodes the GSR levels of the skin into frequency levels calibrated with the area of the computers sound card. Installation Design

for two screens will be integrated as new elements for this installation. The camera will locate the visitor as he moves and visualize the trace of his/her movement. In parallel to this abstract visualization of the visitors movement, the sound will drive the visitor to move further around the installation space. The double screen will remain black when no visitor(s) are tracked in space. Each time a person is located standing, his/her abstraction will be visualized on the screen as a white dot. As the person moves around, the dot will start becoming a line, thus leaving the trace of the visitors movement on the screen following the same path like watching it in a mirror (i.e from left to right). According to Josef Albers the illusion of space can be created by color interchange.36 Interaction between colour and colour can lead to an awareness of interdependence of colour with form and placement. Accordingly, visual composition can create in effect an optical illusion of 3D space, by rhythmically changing color tones, shape, size, position or placement, direction and visual pattern as affected by the movement of the visitor in space. There will also be an arrangement of the installation modules (screen, projector, speakers) in physical space in order to engage the users as they move around in order to surround them in an affective environment consisting of 4-dimensional sonic and visual bio-sculptures. Visitors will be able to animate the audiovisual outcome using their sense of kinesthesia or proprioception (sense of ones movement in space). The involvement of the visitors movement as an added element for interaction with the potential palette of audiovisual correspondences created for this installation will make sKetCh a rather complex instrument. For this experimentation to be meaningful, the audiovisual correspondences of the installation should be designed in such a way, in order to also enable response to spatio-temporal qualities of direction and change of speed as these parameters will be determined by the movement of the visitors. With the interdependency of visual elements to spatio-temporal qualities that used for interaction and the installation design in mind, an indicative table of such correspondences is put forward in order to theorize and analyze further certain parameters to be taken into account for the process of synthesizing audiovisual correspondences in response to abstractions of human motion (See Table 1). VISUAL ELEMENTS Visual Form (i.e. Lines, shapes) Colors interchange Visual pattern Volume, size Placement SPATIO-TEMPORAL QUALITIES Movement change of position in time (i.e. trace, visualization of process) Spatial structure, organization Rhythm Distance Direction

Table 1. Spatio-temporal qualities associated with visual form

The installation design aims to provide a unique experience to the visitor as he moves around space. Instead of using a PTablet and a controller as in previous sKetCh installations, an infrared camera for motion tracking and a VGA splitter 68

By controlling the visual parameters, such as shape, through motion tracking, the corresponding sound will be indirectly affected in response to visual qualities. The mode, according

to which the installation will select the parameters of colour and form, will be at the core of our research and will be based on an empirical, trial and error method. According to Albers, colour combinations can vary to infinite, as it is the most relative medium in art.37 This way the bio-sensor will be used in such as way, as to help determine when stress levels of the user are normal, which indicates that the emotions of the visitor are pleasant and harmonious. This means that each performance of the installation with sKetCh using the bio-sensor will be unique, considering that we will deal with different stress levels each time, even if the person is the same.A possible way to associate sound with movement is to enact movement through sound by means of associating proximity with volume. Visual art, involves time and space as music uses not only the dimension of time, but also the dimension of space. Spatial localization and the use of space in general, is also one of the most important and innovative features of contemporary music.38 In the visual domain, shape is probably the element that best defines an object. Association with harmonic sounds can be made by smooth shapes and inharmonic sounds with jagged shapes, because we may identify sounds in harmonic ratio as non-aggressive, and associate them with the idea of smoothness, while we hear inharmonic sounds as irregular, aggressive objects.39 Further research will define spatial interaction in terms of agency and dependency of the visitor with the parameters given by the associations designed for the installation. If any randomness is to be allowed in the interaction process, as if par example the visitors are driven to move around by random sonic stimuli or in response to random colour changes and not according to meaningful processes as dictated by specific correspondences to audiovisual qualities indicated in (Table 2) with spatio-temporal qualities described in (Table 1) may be confusing. VISUAL PLANE Color (R, G, B etc.) Speed Shape (I.e. Round, zig-zag) Brightness/darkness (I.e. volume) SONIC PLANE Tonality (A, B, C, etc.) Tempo Texture Quality (I.e. Smoothness, distortion) high/low (light/heavy) (I.e. volume)

will be applied in the end installation will be the outcome of an empirical procedure, so it goes beyond our aim to set any rules for audiovisual composition based on psychology of perception, physics and optics, although it is of interest of us to draw material from relevant research on these fields. Research & Methodology Discussion There are numerous parameters of the psychological effects that define perception and meaning of colour, such as cultural background, socio-political and historical context or even gender. In other words, taste, preferences and response to colour can by no means be universal.40 Aristotle in De sensu et sensato was probably the first to write a scientific treaty on colour. References on the effects of colour can also be found in Plato Timaios, on the 30th chapter Explanation of Colours. Leonardo da Vinci suggested an alternative hierarchy of colour in his Treatise on Painting (1651). Johann Wolfgang von Goethe also published in 1810 his Theory of Colours, a book with original German title, Zur Farbenlehre. In 1704, Isaac Newton published Opticks, a study of the nature of light and colour. Isaac Newton adopted the seven-fold division of colours as seen in the rainbow and still more distinctly in the solar spectrum, namely the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Sir David Brewster (1781-1868), the inventor of kaleidoscope, considered the red, yellow and blue as the three fundamental colours out of which all other colours are made, while Hermann von Helmholtz (1821 1894) in his Treatise on Physiological Optics (published in 1910) has shown that each colour of the spectrum is formed by its own independent law of vibrations, which is incapable of subdivision, and that there is no overlapping of certain colours to make an intermediate colour, as red and yellow to produce orange, yellow and blue to produce green, etc.41 Synaesthesia is a highly individualistic neurological condition, where the symptomatic correspondences of two separate sense modalities among synaesthetes who may share similar cases of synaesthesia, by definition, hardly ever coincide. However, as discussed by Campen and Harrison, it has been suggested by French philosopher Maurice Merleau Ponty in his classic book The Phaenomenology of Perception (1945) that every person is able to have synaesthetic perceptions, as synaesthesia and synaesthetic metaphor have a common ground in the unified preconscious perception. According to Campen, Ponty draws from the German theory of gestalt perceptions.42 Ramachandran, has grounded this argument on an experimental basis, using the booba-kiki effect, which demonstrates that the neurological construction of the human brain makes the vast majority of the healthy human population able to share and understand synaesthetic qualities. This common property shared by all human beings is abstraction, the ability to create associations between seemingly unrelated realms43. Harrison, finally, refers to specific EEG experiments that clearly show how neonates up to 3 months old remarkably show signal of activity in the visual areas of the occipital cortex when an auditory event is presented to them, thus verifying the fact that we are all synaesthetes, or at least have been, once, at the earliest stage of our lives44.Edwin D. Babbitt (18281905), one of the most influential American pioneers and writers in the field of colour research and colour therapy, in his writings presents a colour theory with striking simi69

Table 2. Audiovisual associations

The colours interchange will not be a conscious selection of the visitor of the installation, but it will be determined by preselected correspondences based on objective measurements of emotional states as defined by stress levels, in particular those indicative of excitement, pleasure, calmness or tranquillity. Part of the thinking behind the installation design process is how this dependency on human bio-feedback may affect the final audiovisual composition. Our aim is not to pose and answer specific questions, but to suggest a working model for the study of such a design process. Preferred combinations of what is pleasant or harmonious and

larities to Kandinskys theoretical corpus. In Cncerning the Spiritual in Art, originally published in 1911, Kandinsky argues that colour doesnt only have a purely physical effect on the eye, but goes deeper causing emotion, defined as a vibration of the soul, or an inner resonance, a spiritual effect, whereas colour touches the soul itself. The first obvious properties of colour are the warmth or coldness of the tone, and the clarity or obscurity. The warmth according to Kandinsky is a tendency to yellow, and the coldness a tendency to blue. Yellow and the blue form the first big contrast, which is dynamic, as yellow possesses an eccentric movement while blue a concentric movement. A yellow surface seems to get closer to us, while a blue surface seems to move away. Clarity is a tendency to white and obscurity is a tendency to black. Black and white form the second big contrast, which is static. White acts like a deep and absolute silence full of possibilities, while black is nothingness without possibility, an eternal silence without hope. Mixing white with black leads to gray, which possesses no active force and whose affective tonality is near that of green.45 According to Babbitt: The circle, answering to the blue colour, and the type of all curvature, is soothing and fine in its degrees, while the hexagon, like the yellow colour, is the medium between extremes. {...} The circle and the blue colour, which it matches, are found beautifully combined in the sky which is natures representative dome {...}. As the triangles and other angular forms of which it is the type belong more to hardness, spiritedness and power, so does the circle and other curved forms of which it is the type deal with softness, gentleness and grace, as with the sky, the human form and all worlds, which last were soft when they assumed their spherical shape. {...} The violet would naturally be represented by the oval {....}.46 Babbitt never proved his theories with hard evidence and up till today he is considered a pseudo-scientist. It is interesting to compare his claims with Kandinskys observations. According to Kandinsky: On the whole, keen colors are well-suited for sharp forms (i.e. a yellow triangle), and soft, deep colors by round forms (i.e. a blue circle)47 Yellow, if steadily gazed at in any geometrical form, has a disturbing influence, and reveals in the color an insistent, aggressive character48. Eastern esoteric and theosophical influences49, apparent in the writings of Babbitt who is considered as the founder of contemporary chromatotherapy, slightly differentiate and expand in the writings of Kandinsky, one argument in favour of those who claim that he was a synaesthete.50 In his later book Point and Line to Plane (first published in 1926) Kandinsky gives a detailed description of his theories regarding visual composition. By analyzing the formal elements of painting, namely the point and the line, as well as the material surface on which the artist draws or paints, which he called the basic plane, on the point of view of the subjectivity of the observer who looks at them, his theories remain remarkable and influential up to this day. According to Kandinsky, the point is a small stain of colour put on the canvas by the artist and possesses form according to its placement, be it isolated or put in resonance with other points or lines. A line is the product of a force applied on the paint brush by the hand of the artist in a given direction. Linear forms can be straight, as a result from a unique force applied in a single direction, angular, as a result from the alternation of two forces with different directions, and 70

curved or wave-like produced by the effect of two forces acting simultaneously. The subjective effect produced by a line depends on its orientation: horizontal lines correspond to the ground, on which man rests and moves and possess a dark and cold affective tonality similar with black or blue. Vertical lines correspond to height and possess a luminous and warm tonality close to white and yellow. Diagonal lines possess by consequence a more or less warm or cold tonality according to its inclination towards the horizontal and the vertical.51 A plane can be round, created from a line rotated around one of its ends. However, the basic plane is, in general, rectangular or square, composed of horizontal and vertical lines which define it as an autonomous entity in support of the painting, communicating its affective tonality as determined by the relations of horizontal and vertical lines, the first giving a calm and cold tonality, while the latter a calm and warm tonality. Every part of the basic plane possesses an affective coloration influencing the tonality of the pictorial elements on it, which contributes to the richness of the composition resulting from their juxtaposition. In example, the above part of the basic plane corresponds to looseness and lightness, while the below part evokes condensation and heaviness. Paul Klee, also referred to the endotopic (inside) and exotopic (outside) areas of a picture plane, stressing their equal importance in the overall art experience.52 The role of the artist is to use these psychological effects in order to make artworks that are not merely products of a random process, but an authentic work of art resulting from the effort of the artist towards achieving inner beauty. Kandinsky thinks of the basic plane as a living being of which he feels the breathing53. This scale (red = hot, passion, danger vs. blue = cold, calmness etc) still exists in our minds as an empirical one and can be considered without any evidence of scientific proof as totally subjective. Although Gestalt psychology of perception, a major influence to the Bauhaus School of design, founded by pioneer artists of abstract art, as Kandinsky, Moholy Nagy and Kepes, has tested all elements of todays visual vocabulary on an experimental basis, there is yet no scientific proof of a universal response to art, based on objective measurements. There is also a long history of audiovisual correspondences but none of them is so far based in bio-metrics54. Our proposed methodology is to ask the subjects participating to our sample to interact with sKetCh by picking combinations of correspondences between visual and sonic planes or spatio-temporal qualities. The bio-sensor will be applied to these subjects, in order to measure their stress levels in each case. These measurements can be grouped and processed resulting to the most relaxing or exciting combinations. Subsequently, a palette of audiovisual correspondences can be created based on these data. This research will provide valuable feedback on the installation design for the end exhibition. All these experiments will be recorded and the real-time documentation of the installation with its end visitors will be afterwards available on-line as a virtual exhibition. Anticipated Results There is a growing interest in GSR research in neurosci-

ence and art, integrating bio- feedback measurements for performance or wearables as there is also a growing interest in pervasive computing for health, entertainment and the fashion industry. However, there seems to be little or no previous experiment with bio-metrics for the purpose of understanding the psychological effect of audiovisual correspondences on human subjects, which gives to this experiment an added level of scientific interest and originality. Indications of GSR, such as sweat, appear to human subjects when they respond emotionally to a stimulus. This way we anticipate evaluating the emotional impact of sonic and visual associations in order to achieve better results for user interaction with the installation. We will proceed our research further with a framework for theorizing the process of installation design and suggest methodological steps to be used for researching users response to audiovisual correspondences. The outcome of this evaluation may contribute towards a revaluation of the psychological impact of the senses and their traditional hierarchy, as discussed in modern questioning of the supremacy of vision over audition and the rest of the sensorium, explored further in the light of synaesthesia research. Conclusion In this project, we wish to combine formal elements of audiovisual composition with motion qualities for the purpose of designing a real-time interactive audiovisual installation. By using objective measurements of human biofeedback we wish to enhance user experience. This process of transcoding sensory stimuli across two or more different media (sound, motion and visuals) is referred to as crossmedia abstraction, because it simulates the neurological condition of synaesthesia or cross-modal abstraction. The aesthetic choices for visual elements corresponding to the sound are the core topic of our research. Our aim is to create responsive environments that take into account objective measurements considering qualitative audiovisual relations (i.e. texture) in the broader sense of synaesthesia. Since synaesthesia is an individual neurological condition that varies in each case, we are looking for rather universal aesthetic and psychological parameters for the development of such installations, however the outcome will be a unique performance adapted to the specificity of each time and place.

Acknowledgements Cyberspace is a mass consensual hallucination, a fictional informationspace navigable with brain- computer interfaces connected to a network. William Gibson coined the term in his short story Burning Chrome (1982) and later popularized the concept in his debut novel, Neuromancer (1984) the seminal cyberpunk novel which is credited as the origin of the term.
1

Cybernetics - derives from the Greek kybernetes meaning steersman; our word governor comes from the Latin version of the same word. The term cybernetics was first used by Norbert Wiener around 1948. In 1948 his book Cybernetics was subtitled communication and control in animal and machine. The term today refers to systems of communication and control in complex electronic devices like computers, which have very definite similarities with the processes of communication and control in
2

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the human nervous system. A cybernetic device responds to stimulus from outside and in turn affects external environment, like a thermostat which responds to the coldness of a room by switching on the heating and thereby altering the temperature. This process is called feedback. Press Release for the exhibit Cybernetic Serendipity curated by Jasia Reichardt at the ICA London August 2nd to October 20th, 1968: < http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/exhibitions/serendipity/> Synaesthesia is a neurological condition, where a sensation is produced in one sense modality when a stimulus is applied to another sense modality, as when the hearing of a certain sound induces the visualization of a certain color. Artistic exploration of synaesthetic perceptions most commonly consists of perceptual abstractions comprising conjunctions of sonic and visual elements. Synaesthesia, however, can occur between nearly any two senses or perceptual modes.
3

- I made rules for the form and movement of every consonant, and I flattered myself to invent a poetic verb with instinctive rhythms that would be accessible sooner or later, to all senses. I reserved the translation. Arthur Rimbeaud in the Alchemy of the Word (I), which appears in the second chapter of A Season in Hell (1873) called Deliriums. This verse refers to the earlier poem, Vowels, written by A. Rimbeaud three years earlier (1870). Like voices echoing in his senses from beyond Lifes watery source, and which into one voice unite, Vast as the turning planet clothed in darkness and light, So do all sounds and hues and fragrances correspond. Charles Baudelaire trans. by George Dillon, Flowers of Evil NY: Harper and Brothers, (1936). Dick Higgins with an Appendix by Hannah Higgins (1965). Synesthesia and Intersenses: Intermedia, Originally published in Something Else Newsletter 1, No. 1, Something Else Press, 1966. Also in Dick Higgins, Horizons, the Poetics and Theory of the Intermedia, Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1984. <http://www.ubu.com/papers/higgins_intermedia.html>
20

V.S. Ramachandran, E.M. Hubbard (2001). Synaesthesia - A window into perception, thought and language, in Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2001, 8(12): 3-34.
4

Their claim that language was a specific target of natural selection has been previously discussed by Pinker & Bloom (1990) contradicting older theories (such as Chomskys), that the ability of language was merely a byproduct of other cognitive adaptations. See Pinker, S. & Bloom, P . (1990): Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 13, 707-784.
5

Manovich, Lev. (2002). The Language of New Media, Leonardo Book series. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
21

Richard Wagner in 1849 referred to opera as a Gesamtkunstwerk in his essay Art and Revolution, in a romantic review of Ancient Greek Drama as a combination of poetry, music and dance.
22

V.S. Ramachandran (2004). A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers. New York: Pi Pearson Education Press, 2004, pp. 74-82.
6

Frank Popper. (2007). From Technological to Virtual Art, Leonardo Book series. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
23

In Korakidou V. and Charitos, D. (2008). On the language of abstract animation, in ISEA 2008 14th INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON ELECTRONIC ART Conference Proceedings, Singapore, 25 to 31 July 2008, pp. 277-279.
7

Ludwig Wittgenstein. (1963). Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell Press.

24

Korakidou, V. & Charitos D. (2006). Creating and perceiving abstract animation, in Proceedings of the 8th Conference, Consciousness Reframed: Art & Consciousness in the Post-Biological Era, Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth, 21-23 July.
8

Gene Youngblood Expanded Cinema, E P Dutton; N.Y. 1970 p. 77. Youngblood acknowledges in his introduction of the book Expanded Cinema that his indebtedness to the thoughts of (among others) Norbert Wiener, and Marshall McLuhan is quite clear. Ibid, p. 44.
25

Jack Burnham, Systems Esthetics, Artforum Vol. 7, No. 1 (September 1968), p. 31; Real Time Systems, Artforum Vol. 8, No. 1 (September 1969) p. 51.
26

Fischingers work in abstract, nonobjective, or, to use his preferred term, absolute film, was an exploration of applying musical qualities on moving visual forms in the tradition established by these three filmmakers. His biographer, William Moritz in Optical Poetry (2004): The Life and Work of Oskar Fischinger, Indiana University Press, 2004 claims that he is to be considered among them as one of the pioneers of this kind of abstract art.
9

Christiane Paul (2002): Renderings of Digital Art, in Leonardo, October 2002, Vol. 35, No. 5, Pages 471-484
27 28

Youngblood, ibid, p. 387 Youngblood, ibid, p. 97.

29

Standish Lawder (1975). The Abstract Film: Richter, Eggeling and Ruttmann, in Lawder, The Cubist Cinema New York: New York University Press, Anthology Film Archives, Series 1. 1975, pp. 3564.
10

It is the mode of succession of their elements in time which establishes the analogy between music, sound-rhythm, and that colored rhythm of which I am announcing the realization by means of the cinema. Lopold Survage: The glistening bridge and the spatial problem in painting by Putnam, Samuel, Covici- Friede. New York, 1929, p. 113.
11

For an analysis of the film Free Radicals see also Korakidou, V. & Charitos, D. (2007): Elements of Graphic Design in Abstract Animation, in Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Typography & Visual Communication, 2023 June 2007, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece (in press).
30

Hans Richter. Easel-Scroll-Film, Magazine of Art, No. 45 (February 1952), pp. 78-86
12

All of a sudden it hit me if there was such a thing as composing music, there could be such a thing as composing motion. After all, there are melodic figures, why cant there be figures of motion Wystan Curnow, Roger Horrocks (eds.) (1984): Figures of Motion: Len Lye, selected writings, Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland University Press, Oxford University Press 1984 p.p. 31-32.
31 32

NeMe: A HACKER MANIFESTO [version 4.0] by McKenzie Wark http:// www.neme.org/main/291/hacker-manifesto

13

Youngblood, ibid, p. 97.

Piet Mondrian (1945), Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art. New York: Wittenborn, Schultz, Inc., 1945, p. 50.
14

Arnheim, Rudolf (1957). Film as Art. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, p.6.
15

For an interesting historical note on cinematic sound Thomas Y. Levin (2003): Tones from out of Nowhere: Rudolph Pfenninger and the Archaeology of Synthetic Sound, in Grey Room 12, Summer 2003, MIT, pp. 3279.
16

For a brief overview of the technological evolution from screen-based animation to interactive art forms see also Korakidou V. (2007): The impact of media technology evolution on abstract animation aesthetics, Proceedings of International Conference EUTIC, Athens, 2007
17

Over 500 positions from 1900 to the present from more than 100 artists drawn from international collections, from the ZKM | Karlsruhe and from the archive of the Akademie der Knste in Berlin were exhibited in Notation: Calculation and Form in the Arts on March 1 - July 26, 2009. Curated by Hubertus von Amelunxen, Dieter Appelt and Peter Weibel, in collaboration with Angela Lammert and Bernhard Serexhe. ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany Artists included Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht, John Cage, Tony and Beverly Conrad, Marcel Duchamp, Viking Eggeling, Oskar Fischinger, Paul Klee, Peter Kubelka, Gyrgy Ligeti, Stephane Mallarm, tienne-Jules Marey, Chris Marker, Gordon MattaClark, Mel Bochner + Wittgenstein, Marcel Proust, Paul Sharits, Michael Snow, Lopold Survage, Edgard Varse, Rudolf von Laban, Iannis Xenakis. In Dieter Appelt, Hubertus von Amelunxen and Peter Weibel (eds.) (2008): Notation : Kalkl und Form in den Knsten, Exhibition catalogue, Berlin : AdK, 2008, ISBN: 978-3-88331-123-4.
33 34

On early 20th Century abstract art movement and especially constructivism, see also: Patricia Railing (ed.) (1989). From Science to Systems of Art: On Russian Abstract Art and Language 1910/1920 and Other Essays by C. Van Manen, S. Tverdokhlebov, and Patricia Railing (ed.) Artists Bookworks 1989. 19 I invented the colors of vowels! - A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green.
18

<www.igoumeninja.org>

Video interview of Aris Bezas during Skopjie Biennale with his installation of sKetCh : < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_0jXI4jMr4 > and older videos made with sKetCh <http://vimeo.com/2371178>36 Josef Albers (1975): Interaction of Color, Yale University Press; 1975, pp. 29-32.
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Cyborg As Cultural Construct

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Surpassing human nature

Reinventions of and for the body as a consequence of astronomical experiments in 17th and 18th centuries
by Luca Ayala Art Historian DAAD/LaCaixa Scholarship holder at the Humboldt University in Berlin lucia@luayas.net

Abstract The involvement of mankind in a technologized society is a fact with a long history. This paper analyzes some examples from a crucial period of our history, when the development of the telescope gave rise to a complete new understanding of our world and the universe surrounding us. The use of a wide range of variations of this device has since then been an absolutely indispensable part of our relationship to our environment. Many elds of human action and thought were combined with technological prosthesis, without which it was impossible to conceive ourselves anymore. Within this context we present some exceptional devices that were neither popularized nor commercialized, but that constitute crucial metaphors for the changes caused by the new technologies. For instance, Galileo Galileis prototype of a head-mounted display, or more precisely, a headmounted viewnder is put into relation with Kindermanns wonderful philosophical device for a global observation of our planet. This paper also brings out some examples of the expanded body, as it was understood during this time. The reection on some case studies in 17th and 18th century helps us understand our society better, insofar as both periods of time are affected by crucial changes regarding the development and implementation of technologies that subvert the entire scientic, epistemological, and tactical system. Keywords astronomy, Galileo Galilei, Eberhard Christian Kindermann, Isidro Carnicero, Robert Fludd, Pschel, telescope, virtual reality, expanded body, history of science, history of art, history of technology, code, immersive environments, ubiquity, elasticity Exploring devices Confined in his villa in Arcetri, in the outskirts of Florence, where he spent his life after the sentence of house arrest that followed his abjuration in 1633, Galileo Galilei carried on intensively with his scientific life. In 1637, one year before he went blind, he wrote a letter to the Admiral of the East Indian Company of Holland, Lorenzo Realio, in which he explains an old device he had invented: Ive already made a long time ago, for use in our galleys, certain headgear with the form of a helmet (celata) that, when the observer wore it on the head, and being fixed on it 76

a telescope adjusted in such a way that its always looking at the same point, to which the other free eye focuses the sight, doing nothing more, the object observed with the free eye is placed always facing the telescope. A similar machine could be constructed that would be firmly fixed not only on the head, but also on the back and the bust of the observer, to which is fixed a telescope big enough to clearly distinguish the little stars of Jupiter. Galilei had already created in 1616 a prototype of his celatone (see Figure 1.): a helmet provided with an adjustable telescope designed to be used as an orientation method for navigation, as well as a military device that could mean a great advantage in a potential maritime conflict. He highlighted the great utility of his discovery for military purposes, trying to sell it to the Spanish army and hence commercializing and spreading it. But he had no success at all and his gadget was refused again and again. The prototype

Figure 1. Reconstruction by Paolo Del Santo of the celatone designed by Galilei.

he constructed failed to become a common device of wearable technology. The idea of the celatone was based on the observation of the satellites of Jupiter (perceived for the first time by Galilei himself) as references for getting ones bearings at sea. The position of the telescopic viewfinder could be adjusted in order to regulate its inclination, and consequently the sight could be correctly in line with the celestial bodies. He also considered an expansion of his device, as mentioned in the above quote: a bigger telescope inserted into a complex structure suitable for the human anatomy, a kind of technological extension of the body, or more precisely, of the

perceptual capabilities; a technological costume, a portable link to remote realities. Galilei went even further and indeed planned to develop his device into a more complex machine. Trying to solve the problem of the movement of the surface of the ship where the celatone was supposed to be used that distorted and hindered the precision of the observation, he came up with an outstanding solution (see Figure 2.): a hemispheric vessel built on a human scale where, once filled with water, one could submerge while wearing the celatone. As a result, the oscillation of the surface would be minimized and the astronomical observation could be exact enough to guide accurately the route of the ship. In other words, a (literally) immersive environment was designed in which, with the

that points out a perception from outside, an angel with his back to us carries a big apparatus. Above him we can see the Earth and the Moon. The so-called magic-tube is a combination of nine concatenated cones, defined in the text as triangular prisms made of crystal. Its structure is modular and articulated in such a way that each part can be moved to adapt itself to the sight line. In order to provide a better understanding of how it works, the image represents a transparent object, so that the glasses and the internal structure can be seen from outside. To make it even more clear, each part of the composition is organized with letters that follow the description of the explanatory text. The mixture of bold figurative depiction and abstract elements in this case, the letters and the dotted lines as strategies for elucidating is a common way of representation in astronomy and science in general. This kind of hybrid nature of the image facilitates a theoretical comprehension of the phenomena, and simultaneously a sensory apprehension which reinforces their status of credibility, and enables an immersion into the (tangible-)real. As it is shown in the engraving, the miracloscope has an inverted use in relation to the telescope: it is not an appa-

Figure 2. Reconstruction by Paolo Del Santo of the hemispheric vessel for the celatone invented by Galilei.

aid of a head-mounted display, so to say, or more precisely, of a head-mounted viewfinder, one could have an appropriate perception of distant realities. But Galilei could never persuade the Spanish authorities, owners of the most powerful naval force of this time, of the benefits of his invention and thus it was never produced. Only a prototype he carried in his efforts to exploit it, was seen by some of his contemporaries. Nowadays a reconstruction is possible thanks to the precise description included in his writings. One century later the telescope was not yet perceived as a common object, and some believed that its possibilities were unfinished and even unlimited; it still belonged for certain people to the realm of the invention. This is the case of the German writer Eberhard Christian Kindermann, who published a series of books dedicated to a wide range of astronomical topics. Thanks to a close collaboration with artists, the visual legacy of his books maybe their most significant value provides us with a fascinating field of deep conceptions of the universe and its cultural and scientific implications in that time. In one of his most famous works, Vollstndige Astronomie (or Complete Survey of Astronomy), he introduced a very special observation tool called the miracloscope in allusion to the miraculous nature of its potential (see Figure 3). He tells that he once saw this incredible apparatus, also called a magic-tube, and that he was left so astonished that he wanted to build one himself. The eighteenth figure included in the book is the image that depicts this tool. Emerging from a cloudy layer, a surface

Figure 3. Anonymous, The miracloscope, Tab. XVIII in Eberhard Christian Kindermann, Vollstndige Astronomie (1744).

ratus that we use for observing the stars of the firmament, but one used from outer space in order to observe the Earth itself. The developments in astronomy have epistemological and practical consequences that are usually applied to a better understanding of humanity as a last resort. Here we can see how the human himself is subject to inspection. But the most interesting part of Kindermanns narration is 77

the description of his experience when viewing through the miracloscope: I became aware against my assumptions, that I had changed my position, since in the depths I saw the garden and also the whole world, placed a considerable height above me, in such a way that I could really see the villages lying on both sides of the garden. Taking into account this description, the miracloscope is presented as a device that provides a simultaneous experience of different locations and therefore creates a virtual space of intersection. This augmented perception blurs the spatial limits and generates a feeling of ubiquity, in which interconnected realities are viewed at the same level. The author specifies that this kind of extraordinary experience may be assumed as non-real, but he adds that it is no longer supernatural. In spite of its exceptional characteristics apparently extracted from the imaginary realm, it belongs indeed to the possible. If one would experiment with such a miracloscope, says Kindermann, and other parts of the world were represented to him, quite surely one could perceive many wonderful things. In the first decades of the eighteenth century the ongoing epistemological reassessment of optical devices, especially the ones devoted to astronomical praxis, triggered new levels of creative experimentation. The miracloscope, this telescopic sight aimed at us, plays with virtual dislocation and makes an experience of ubiquity possible. With this apparatus the point of view of the observer is placed outside the world in order to take account of the (human) world itself. Exploring corporalities This idea of ubiquity provoked by the miracloscope was developed even earlier in the literary tradition of the seventeenth century around the idea of the messenger. Galilei himself entitled his crucial text from 1610 Sidereus Nuncius (Sidereal Messenger). Francis Godwin chose for The Man in the Moone (published in London in 1638) a significant subtitle: Discourse of a Voyage thither by Domingo Gonsales, the Speedy Messenger. In this book Gonsales, a Spanish traveler around whom the story revolves, describes how he conceives a kind of hyperconectivity as follows: You shall then see me to flie from place to place in the ayre; you shall be able, (without moving or travailing of any creature,) to send messages in an instant many Miles off, and receive answer againe immediately; you shall bee able to declare your minde presently unto your friend, being in some private and remote place of a populous Citie, with a number of such like things: but that which far surpasseth all the rest, you shall have notice of a new World, of many most rare and incredible secrets of Nature, that all the Philosophers of former ages could never so much as dreame off. He talked not only about transmitting instant messages between distant places, but also about how the mind could become actually present in remote private locations. Some years later (1641) and also in London, John Wilkins published Mercury or the secret and swift messenger shewing how a man with privacy and spead communicate his thoughts to a friend at any distance. In this book he analyzes different ways of language codification within a complex 78

structure. The main idea resembles very closely the basis of digital logic and the internet: in order to transmit messages across large distances we need to invent a system of signals that encode the language (according to Wilkins understood in a broad sense, that is, not only limited to the written language, but also applied to the corporal, gestural and so on). The starting point, discussed in the introductory chapter, is a reflection on the planet Mercury, that triggers all the following considerations. Even in this case the fascination for astronomy is what encourages the creative imagination. The fact that the human experience was combined in these centuries with the new telescopic devices provoked a radical redefinition of its possibilities. Not only was the cognitive level enriched with new fields of exploration those that were since then observable thanks to the latest technologies for the visual but the potential of the body was also incremented according to the new concepts developed from then on. As a result of this redefinition, not only was a humanmachine combination imagined (like in Galilei), but also entire new kinds of corporalities. It was Kindermann again who presented in one of his books an amazing being for

Figure 4. Pschel, The elastic man, detail of the frontispiece for Eberhard Christian Kindermann Die Geschwinde Reise auf dem Lufft-Schiff nach der obern Welt (1744)

whom the space-time dimension would not mean a limit. Die Geschwinde Reise auf dem Lufft-Schiff nach der obern Welt (Swift Journey by Air-Ship to the Upper World) includes a description of the so-called elastic body (see Figure 4). Fama, the guide of the space travelers characters whose exploits are narrated in the book explains to them the nature of a strange apparition that suddenly appears in front of them: It was nothing else, I answered, but a Human by the putrefaction becoming elastic, who henceforth is qualified to enter with his elastic body in every sphere. Isnt it a nice blessedness, I said, being able to contemplate without obsta-

cles all the wonders of the highest! The travelers understand the novelty of such a being and underline the potential of its reinvented body:
Since there is no sidereal world that subsumes him, no element that strikes him any more, no stone nor rock that retains him; according to that, what is faster, more splendid and more blissful that such a body? If we were already elastic, we shouldnt need the air-ship, so wondrously built by us together. There will come a time, replied Tactus, in which we shall abandon our corporality and festering, thereupon we will travel around the world as elastic bodies like this one here viewed.

elastic man of Kindermann one century later. Notwithstanding their differences, the two men manifest two crucial similar peculiarities. On the one hand, both of them have homologous attitudes: their corporal posture suggests motion. They seem to be moving freely through media that do not represent a barrier or obstacle to their physicalities. On the other hand, no continuous lines define their figures, but a series of dots, as we have seen before. Besides having the association of expanded potentials of the corporal, this time the blurred body is also brought about by the fluid medium in which it is inserted. This artistic strategy used in both examples insinuates connotations of an expanded body, a corporality that has surpassed its

This was written in 1744. The frontispiece of the book, signed by Pschel, includes a representation of this peculiar inhabitant of the sidereal heavens. A naked body of colossal dimensions moves freely through the air. It has no body hair, and no sexual attributes are visible. Its visual details add information not included in the text. One of the most remarkable is the fact that only the outline of the face and the fingers are delineated with continuous lines. These are the only signs of singularization and therefore they are depicted with precision. The rest of the body is traced by little dots that allude to a non-limited physicality. The skin is broken into hundreds of dots: it no longer represents an impermeable boundary with the environment, but an opened surface of interchange. This connotation is especially clear in the detail of the neck. The elastic body is also surrounded by a halo, by a ring of light or, more precisely if we take notice of the textual description of flashing light, that gives account of his igneous nature: the figure was human and splendidly beautiful, but in a sparkling fire accoutered, as it is explained in the text. Its configuration by a dotted surface, analogous to the outline of the body, acts as a visual tool that hints at the expansion of the corporal beyond the strictly corporal. In the mentioned detail of the neck, for instance, we can see how the dots that form the neck are confused with respect to the surrounding light, in such a way that they build a hybrid field where the body blurs itself. Exploring new scenarios The intensification and improvement of astronomical observations brought out the awareness of a wider space suitable for the human, who, for his part, thanks to the new possibilities given by technology, was able to inhabit it. The extension of the human scope of action constitutes a significant aspect of the period of time we are referring to. The ground under our feet was not the only one exclusively adequate for doing, as had happened before. New physical scenarios were opened, very different to the illusory religious promises of an afterworld. This time the people were dealing with actual experienceable, expanded contexts: we are talking about populating the elements, about the process of rendering the water and the air habitable. Experiments intending to achieve the possibility of breathing underwater flourished in this time. Within this horizon, some images have special prominence. For instance, the sunken man (see Figure 5.) depicted in a engraving in Robert Fludds book De naturae simia seu technica macrocosmi historia (On the Ape of Nature or Technical History of the Microcosm) (1618) shows similar characteristics to the

Figure 5. Sunken man (detail), in Robert Fludd, De naturae simia seu technica macrocosmi historia (1618). Niederschsische Staats- und Universittsbibliothek Gttingen

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own limits, that could not be represented within solid lines delimiting a closed area any more. New potentialities and unprecedented experiences allow the emergence of these blurred borders of the human. Putting aside the aquatic medium and tackling specifically the aerial space, the novelties triggered by astronomical discoveries, as well as the development of their devices, led to a renewed awareness of the air as a habitable and usable context. Ingenious strategies were merely imagined or actually developed in order to explore this new territory. For instance, a peculiar engraving from 1784, Bullfight in the air, engraved by the Spanish artist Isidro Carnicero (see Figure 6.) reveals this attitude. The air is presented as a public space, as a new scenario for human entertainment. Using a simple technology, such as balloons tied to strings that are manipulated by a few men who control the direction of the movement, the spectacle is developed in the air, while the enthusiastic audience observes from the ground. Conclusion: Looking at the sky, thinking about the body We have presented some (practical and concrete) consequences of looking at the sky, for the body and the human, from different points of view: be it directly related to the materiality of the corporal, or referring to new conceptions around the bodily experience in an expanded sense. Nevertheless our intention does not consist of emphasizing the connection between different levels of reality, that

is, the correspondence between the macrocosmos and the body understood as a microcosmos parallel to it. The focus is only centered on the human level and the idea is to construct a different kind of relation with the universe: astronomy assumed as a new open field of experimentation for humans sake. We have chosen marginal experiences because they make deeper changes possible; the inherent potential of change of unsuccessful, risky, and forgotten initiatives is always more inspiring than the established ones. Briefly, Galilei revealed to what extent technology has always been understood as part of the bodily experience; the magical inversion of the telescope made possible a real experience of ubiquity, as well as of the position of the human and the earth as subjects of observation through astronomical tools; and swift messengers were placed between the avoidance of spatial limitations and the inventions of new forms of beings whose corporal characteristics surpass the human ones. As a consequence of all these experiences, the closed conception of the body exploded into a variety of reconfigurations and a wide range of possibilities appeared in the collective imaginary. Finally, not only was the human body subjected to reinventions, but so too were the context and the scenarios in which it moves. It was especially revealing that Galilei used the term experiences when referring to his experiments. Following the implications of this terminology, we should say that the experiments implemented within astronomical research constituted real experiences understood in their most broad sense for the human being. When looking at the sky, the people of these centuries were always aware of the possibilities opened for them, and the belief in developing utopias as starting points for an unsettled future was present at every moment. Free invention and exploration were a constant attitude in this period. The results of these innovative centuries can be inspiring today as well, insofar as they are not foreign to our conceptions and desires. Therefore the reconsideration of their epistemological scope can constitute an additional reference for the reflection on some creative aspects of technologies that are for us as subversive and revealing as were astronomy and the new worlds opened (and created) by it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

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Figure 6. Isidro Carnicero, Fiesta de toros en el aire (1784). Biblioteca Nacional de Espaa

References Favaro, Antonio (ed.) (1968). Le opere di galileo galilei, vol. XVII. Florence: G. Barbra. Fludd, Robert (1618). De naturae simia seu technica macrocosmi historia, Oppenheim. Godwin, Francis (1638). The man in the moone: Or a discourse of a voyage thither by domingo gonsales, the Speedy Messenger: London. Kindermann, Eberhard Christian (1744). Die geschwinde reise auf dem lufft-schiff nach der obern welt. Kindermann, Eberhard Christian (1744). Vollstndige astronomie, Rudolstadt. Wilkins, John (1641). Mercury or the secret and swift messenger shewing how a man with privacy and spead communicate his thoughts to a friend at any distance, London.

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What Language Does The Cyborg Speak?

Culture, Ethnicity And Nationality As Part Of The Language Of The Cyborg?
Lanfranco Aceti Associate Professor in Contemporary Art and Digital Culture at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Istanbul, January, 2010 aceti@sabanciuniv.edu

Abstract The paper will explore the concept of post-humanity as a cultural construction that, as Elaine Graham explained1, is a condition which affects both human and post-human social frameworks. If the post-human body is a cultural definition, does the cyborg speak English, as it is the globalizing and totalitarian language? What is the relationship between the imagined cybernetic utopia of liberation and the posthuman existence developed in different cultural contexts? The condition of humanity in cyborgology, and its relationship with post-humanity, is based on a utopian assumption of liberation and freedom from human restraints. This process of liberation is one that either transcends culture, ethnicity and nationality or is enriched by them. As a consequence, the language spoken by the cyborg becomes a reflection of the cultural imperatives that underpin the cyborgs future existence. If, in this context, the language spoken by the cyborg is English, what is the relevance of this new liberator to a culturally diverse audience? What are the enriching elements inherited from culture, nationality and ethnicity that can be subsumed into the cyborgs existence? The paper will conclude by making a case for the existence of the cyborg as a reflection of the cultural realities within which the machine is embodied. By comparing the cyborg as a dystopic reality as opposed to an utopian idealized future existence, the paper will argue that the coming of age of the cyborg demands the recognition and definition of the roles and challenges that culture, ethnicity and nationality play in the embodiment of human biological organs in the machine. Keywords Post-humanity, cyborg, dystopia, utopia, Futurism, crisis, evolutionary process The cyborg between utopia and dystopia The Internet has developed beyond it original ideal and has been shaped by audiences imperatives or more often by national authorities that have gained control of the space of the servers that the viewers access. MySpace, You Tube and bloggers have been victims of ideological, religious and political restrictions on what had been hailed as the greatest democratizing tool and space: the Internet. If the Internet is no longer considered a democratizing utopian space with no flaws2, but is increasingly seen as a space surveilled and controlled by national governments accord82

ing to local laws and not international codes and models of freedom of expression, what is then the technological role played by the democratizing and empowering concept of the cyborg in contemporary society? If the Internet has been facing the realities of the spaces within which it operates, leaving its utopian and idealistic origins, is the same happening to the concept of the cyborg that, from its utopian origins in Donna Haraways writing, is now obliged to face local realities and asked to speak localized multiple languages? What is being undermined in the contemporary post-postmodern societal cultural constructions is the ideological nature of the cyborg and its possibility of freeing humanity from a set of hierarchies and exploitative conditions that are enforced in order to perpetuate power structures through policies of assimilation and marginalization. The cyborg is no longer. Similarly to the Internet, this utopian creature of liberation that has inspired artists and cultural operators at the end of the 20th century is no more than an entity whose existence is in between the memories of past utopia and the contemporary and future representations of dystopia. The extensive literature on the democratizing value of the Internet can be summed up in the increase in readily available technological tools to exercise national censorship and control over a world, that of the online space, originally intended as a space of freedom and shared knowledge.3 There are two forces that are shaping the contemporary world of online interactions. The first can be represented by a libertarian and democratic use of the Internet to challenge old hierarchies examples can be offered by the proliferation of political dissidents blogs, by the usage of mobile phones to rally flash mobs to demonstrate at political and religious events as young people are doing in Iran4 or by sharing practices that infringe copyrights and intellectual property rights in order to create a level playing field for access to information, shared participation and self empowerment. The second force may be best identified by the increased censorship and control enforced by the nation state that feels threatened by the undermining and sudden shifting of power from hierarchical structured bureaucracies to self empowered masses. The best examples of these processes of control can be offered by the increased legalization of the online space the recent law passed in France5 provides a good example of defense of institutional ownership of knowledge or the obligation for software and hardware

tools to be free of any undesired content in contrast with the national political thought as in the recent case of Chinese state and Apple Inc. and the eradication of any reference to the Dalai Lama in the content available to iPhone users in China.6 The cyborg is becoming an embodiment, not of technological liberation, but of technological enslavement, switching from a position of an utopian and idealistic symbol of empowered individuals in a non-hierarchical society to one of dystopian representation of control and enslavement realized through the technological surveillance that the state can exercise, together with the corporate powers, through contemporary technologies surrounding and embedded within the cyborged human body. The problem is one of a fundamental shift within the conceptualization of the cyborg that still can be an empowering utopian ideological referent only if it is in charge and control of its own technological components. The technological liberation of the cyborg is a battle that will be fought on the liberation of the technological tools from corporate and state control. Avoiding the biotechnological surveillance of the body will become increasingly difficult as the benefit of embedding within the human body a microchip for health scanning and drug administration linked and cross-referenced with credit ratings, insurance policies and credit cards could be presented as increasingly necessary.7 The cyborg is caught, in its ideological and utopian constructions, between utopian scenarios of liberation of humanity and historical fears of dystopia and enslavement. The language spoken by the cyborg in the context of contemporary cyborgology is fundamental in order to understand future possible societal developments that reside in the cyborgs diversae inclinationes animi (diverse inclination of the soul) that will determine and characterize the social role played by the cyborgs language.
PS. Grosseteste takes inclinatio directly from Priscians diversae inclinationes animi which give rise to mood in the verb. Both he and Simon Dacus (Domus 48.30-) hold on to the old-fashioned idea that modus significandi and significatio are the same thing.8

cyborg heteroglossia is one form of radical culture politics.9

The necessity to understand and clarify what the inclination of the cyborgs language is and what it will be is reflected in the imperative to clarify the very nature of the cyborg. While humans are being transformed into cyborgs through internal and external technologies ranging from subcutaneous microchips for surveillance to GPS mobile devices, the intentionality of the cyborg is a necessity in order to envisage a future of utopian liberation or dystopian human enslavement.
A cyborg world is about the final imposition of a grid of control on the planet, about the final abstraction embodied in Star Wars, apocalypse waged in the name of defense, about the final appropriations of womens bodies in a masculinist orgy of war. From another perspective a cyborg world may be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints.10

It is the dual nature and the dual possibility of the cyborg that undermines its liberating utopian message. If Haraway argues for a concept of the cyborg and its language as being free from the dualistic conflicts between mind and body, animal and machine, idealism and materialism,11 she also presents the reader with a return to Priscian and Dacus through a cyborg that expresses a language that is both verbal and physical, intrinsic and extrinsic, mind and body, animal and machine, idealistic and materialistic. A language that is divine in nature and that is both language and thing, as the original language of god with no distinction between modus significandi and significatio. The cyborg presents itself through its language of liberation as a new savior, substituting pre-existing totalities for a new totalitarian language, that of the cyborg. A cyborg that is nationalized, controlled, and surveilled, dependent on the corporate powers, military organizations and state institutions for its upgrading. The ideal of a self-upgrading, self-creating, self-determining, autonomous liberated entity is crashing against the reality of state control, institutionalized corporate interest, power and human greed. The cyborg has inherited and is a representation of the conflict between proprietary software and open source. Will the cyborg choose proprietary software or open source?
We do not need a totality in order to work well. The feminist dream of a common language, like all dreams for a perfectly true language, of perfectly faithful naming of experience, is a totalizing and imperialist one. In that sense, dialectics too is a dream language, longing to resolve contradiction. Perhaps, ironically, we can learn from our fusions with animals and machines how not to be Man, the embodiment of Western logos. 12

If the idea of an exact correspondence between modus significandi and significatio is presented as obsolete particularly within the context of a post-postmodern society within which the characterizing elements are deconstructions and multiple connectivity the relationship between the intrinsic and extrinsic meaning of the language is paramount in order to understand whether the cyborg is a symbol of utopian liberation or dystopian self-enslavement through the false ideal of self-empowerment through technology. The inclinatio of the cyborg, at least according to Haraway, is that of breaking away from the hierarchies and prisons generated by languages structures as mirrors of powers. The cyborgs inclination to freedom is an element that has to be reflected in the liberating power of the cybernetic language.
If we are imprisoned by language, then escape from that prison-house requires language poets, a kind of cultural restriction enzyme to cut the code;

The languages problem is a reflection of the dualistic decision that the cyborg has to take. Will the cyborg choose a multiplicity of non-Western logoi still hierarchical languages since all languages reflect and embody cultural and power hierarchies or the imposition of a dominant linguistic form? Which criteria will the cyborg adopt in choosing and defining what has to be the dominant linguistic form? The dream of the perfect common language of the cyborg is perhaps just a substitution to the feminist common language that follows other concepts of nationalistic perfect 83

common languages throughout history, back to the search for the perfect divine language, the one in which both modus significandi and significatio were the same. This is the divine language where verbal and physical were one and a word had the dual function of naming and creating. The cyborg is trapped in between contemporary utopia and dystopia and is a reflection of multiple dualistic languages each one attempting to impose its own hegemonic power relations and totalitarian vision of reality upon the cyborg. The disappearance of the idealistic powers of the cyborg The futurists envisaged the machine as the tool that would empower and liberate humanity from social restrictions and the stifling obsequiousness toward past hierarchies. Technological innovation merges with scientific thought providing, as in the case of Hugo Gernsback, an idealistic vision of the future.13 Perhaps no other phrase represents better the high expectations for the idealized figure of the cyborg than the writing of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in the Futurist Manifesto of 1909. Noi stiamo per assistere alla nascita del Centauro e presto vedremo volare i primi Angeli.14 In the cultural imaginary the cyborg has and continues to represent an ideal liberator or, in the evolutionary transhumanistic approach a new model of humanity. The reality of the cyborg is actually different. As the free space of the Internet is increasingly regulated and controlled by state and corporate powers and the communal social spaces are regimented and stifled by imposed codes, norms and behaviors, doubts arise about the level of real freedom in online and cyborg environments. As the rules that are enforced in reality are replicated and more easily adapted to the database structures of online environments, it is increasingly difficult to see how these online spaces so prone to surveillance and control could offer alternatives to the hierarchical structures reflected in contemporary democractic and less democratic societies. The condition of the cyborg may be assimilated to that of the online space. The cyborg is no longer a liberator but at best a slave like any other, or at worst the enforcer of a surveillance system subservient to the power that happens to govern at the time. The idea of difference and diversity as an ontological source of liberation is ideologically and philosophically fallacious, particularly if it is set within the context of cultural otherness. The idea of an alterity that is presented as more humane, better and embracing of diversity in any of its forms, simply on the basis of its conflicting relationship with the institutional power of the moment, is naive at best. Minority groups political, religious, sexual, racial and ethnic have their own hierarchical systems, their own norms, their own codes and behavioral structures which are represented by and reflected in their own languages. Transgression in the language or transgression to the norm is a violation of the system as set and represented by the hierarchical structure that is a reflection and expression of the group. 84

Even in these minority groups a transgression of the rules will be followed by a reprisal and not by a reward. To assume that the language of the minority just because the minority is in an historical moment of strife against a majority is a language of liberation does not keep into account the evolution and change of the minoritys language as an expression of hierarchical structures when and if the minority becomes a majority. With the consolidation of power of the new majority in fieri comes a consolidation of the totalitarianism of its language. For this reason it is necessary to understand what role the language of the cyborg will play in the future world of cyborgable entities (human, animal, vegetable and mineral) and envisage societys future evolution.
Language is not assumed to be a representation of ideas that either cause material relations or from which such relations follow; indeed, the idealist/ materialist opposition is a false one to impose on this approach. Rather, the analysis of language provides a crucial point of entry, a starting point for understanding how social relations are conceived, and therefore because understanding how they are conceived means understanding how they work how institutions are organized, how relations of production are experienced, and how collective identity is established.15

The language spoken by the cyborg is a reflection of collective identities and in fact, should we follow the evolution of the cyborg in film, the language that it speaks is a translatable language moving across multiple societies and reflecting local hierarchies, institutional organizations and modes of production. Terminator Salvation (2009) becomes Terminator La Salvacin, Terminator Die Erlsung, O Exterminador Do Futuro: A Salvao The language of this particular cyborg becomes one that mixes globalized modes of production and local realities in a linguistic interplay that is more than just translation but a process of assimilation and enculturation. There is also something else that Joan W. Scott points at, as a passing point, in Deconstructing Equality-versus-Difference, and that is the idea of a poststructuralist language that is disjointed by the dualistic relationship of idealist/materialist opposition. If this paper is arguing against the materialization and causality of language by surpassing the dualistic opposition and following Haraways idea of a new set of relations, certainly the idea of a new language cannot be reduced to a perception and understanding of society. Language re-creates structures and reflects the emergence of new hierarchies in a symbiotic relationship that is perhaps closer to the undifferentiated relationship between modus significandi and significatio of Priscian and Dacus. Pier Paolo Pasolini in his analysis of the power relations in Italy in the 1960s identified language its disappearance and re-appearance as a powerful signal of societal changes and societal development. The extinction of contemporary languages,16 as the extinction of species and the reduction of biodiversity, speaks volume of the possibility offered to the cyborg of being an entity that can resume differences. As the variety of languages decreases so increases the possibility for the cyborg of speaking a language that is totalitarianand that is based on a relationship of acceptance or rejection. Perhaps the revolutionary nature of the language of the cyborg resides in

speaking dead languages within which the power and hierarchical structure of social relations are no longer valid and therefore no longer a threat. Or is the revolutionary nature of the cyborgs language structure dependent on multiple vocabularies of opposition transcending cultures, ethnicities and nationalities and constantly rejecting any institutional frameworks? There are further issues that the cyborg should reconcile what to maintain and what to discard of contemporary languages. The acceptance of a single language chosen by the cyborg, be it English as a globalizing and totalitarian language, or be it the language representing the strife of a minority group, will imply the acceptance of the institutional hierarchies, frameworks and cultural relations implied in and at the basis of the chosen language. By choosing a single language the cyborg will be in the danger of legitimizing a language as the chosen language of the chosen people thereby creating a new totalitarian institutional framework. Not very different is the mixing of parts of a range of languages since this new construction, although differentiated, hybridized and revolutionary, will at some point consolidate in an institutionalized, structured and organized language. At that point someone or something new will rise to lead the revolution against the totalitarian linguistic model imposed by and the expression of the cyborg. The modus significandi of the cyborg
Modus significandi appears in grammar around the time of Abelard, whose modus significandi has a slight touch of nominalism: Aristotles categories are features not of things, but of the way language describes them (Abelard, Logica 116.35-117.2). A word is not inextricably bound to its referent, and modus significandi is something arbitrary under the control of the speaker, though the arbitrariness of word assignment is tempered by some sort of proportion between word, thing and perception.17

tus: [] out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them. [] Clearly we are in the presence of a motif, common to other religions and mythologies: that of the Nomothete, the Name Giver, the creator of language.18

The cyborg in the construction of a new language is trapped in a series of complex systems: the impossibility of accepting a dominant language, the impossibility of making of a minority language that of a new totalitarian majority, the difficult choice in selecting and mixing parts of a range of languages for the creation of a new modus of expression that still includes some and excludes others. As Nomothete, creator of a totally new language, the cyborg re-presents humanity with an ancient proposition, that of the search for the perfect language of god. Since the cyborg is a Nomothete and is creating a new language, it must be derived that he is god. In the search for the language of the cyborg the argument developed so far presents us with an old proposition, that of a unifying language that is the perfect language versus a plurality of linguistic expressions that are no other than confusio linguarum: confusion of the languages. Multiple languages become the expression of a humanity that has moved away from perfection.
Before the blasphemy of Babel, mankind had known one language, a perfect language, a language spoken by Adam and his posterity. The plurality of tongues arose as the consequence of the confusio linguarum.19

If it is true that the language is under the control of the speaker, as a consequence in the societal application of the modus significandi the modus in which to attribute meaning to a word word and language in general acquire a revolutionary power. In this context the language of the cyborg, away from the control of an institutionalized linguistic tradition, has to be assumed to be more arbitrary than the traditional proportion established between word, thing and perception because of the unusual sensory system of the cyborg being in itself a different creature made of things (human, animal, vegetable and mineral). The cyborg, in its materiality easily deduced by the subjective personal pronoun it is an expression of the modus significandi of the world of things and not of the engendered subjective personal pronouns he and she. It is this new materiality of perception that invests the cyborg and its utopian world of liberation with the necessity of creating and reshaping both a new language and a world within which the language is spoken. It is a new divine function that the cyborg acquires taking on the role of creator that generates a new shared common language.
Thus Creation itself arose through an act of speech; it was only by giving things their names that God created them and gave them ontological sta-

Haraway with the notion of the cyborg contests the totalitarian and monopolistic approach to an idea of language as perfection and focuses on the beauty of diversity as language in development, in eternal flux, never perfect and never perfectible. It challenges the European tradition of conceiving linguistic multiplicity as a sin and presents humanity, through the concept of the cyborg and its language, with a possible alternative.
It thus happens that as soon as Europe was born as a bunch of people speaking different tongues, European culture reacted by feeling such an event not as a beginning but as the end of a lost harmony, a new Babel-like disaster, so that a remedy for linguistic confusion needed to be sought.20

Haraway describes the language of the cyborg as noise and pollution, and therefore as disharmony. No longer in search of a point of equilibrium, the language reflects the spontaneous conjoining of different forces: mechanical, human and animal. The language of the cyborg finds its legitimacy in the revolutionary power of this illegitimate fusion with elements of the world that are not legitimate, not approved and not institutionalized.
Cyborg politics is the struggle for language and the struggle against perfect communication, against the one code that translates all meaning perfectly, the central dogma of phallogocentrism. That is why cyborg politics insist on noise and advocate pollution, rejoicing in the illegitimate fusions of animal and machine.21

If the language of the cyborg is becoming institutionalized and regulated there is still a necessity for a form of communication that is sharable and that is outside what is now becoming the mainstream reality of cyborgology. The concept of the cyborg is no longer illegitimate and a challenge to societal hierarchies. Inroads have been made 85

in the mainstream that interpret the reality of the cyborg as a new form of cool, as embodied by Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator (1984). The cool factor of the cyborg is detached from its natural duality clearly indicated by Haraway who described it as a creature that may both represent and enforce either control or liberation.22 Its mythology supersedes the reality of a society of cool communication forms.
Cool communication forms (satellite and cable TV, telex, fax machines, instant electronic communication [electronic mail]) have produced a global village predicated, not on a shared humanness, but on marginality, and on cultural and racial differences.23

significandi and significatio, by becoming expressions of word and object or the creation of the Nomothete. Conclusions Haraways idea of an utopian cyborg, as an entity that can overcome differences, is perhaps still valid if the quasi-biological force of language is taken into consideration. The nature of the language of the cyborg is biological since it is determined by bio-mechanical hybridization processes. Perhaps, contrary to the Middle Ages when the multiplication of languages was felt as a loss of harmony and linguistic confusion, today the unification of multiple languages into a single language, in the Cyborgs utopia, is lived and culturally experienced as a loss of cultural and political power and as a process of linguistic and identities homogenization. If there is a process of homogenization leading to the creation of a single language, that of the cyborg, perhaps this process should be placed in the context of languages new biological evolution. With the cyborg the language is not solely an utopian hybridization determined by the multiplicity of representations of a variety of cultural and national elements randomly picked Such a vision would be too narrow and restricted. The language of the cyborg is a biological expression. It realizes the utopian dream of a language based on a connection between word and object, modus significandi and significatio, that does not need to be verbalized but is materialized in biological, chemical and electrical exchanges. The cyborg may very well not need a language according to old frameworks, structures and hierarchies but rather will develop a new biological form of communicating. The cyborg may not need to speak at all. But if the cyborg is silent it does not necessarily mean that it is not speaking.

The lack of shared humanness and the differences amongst cyborgs a cyborg divide is emerging and is based on the economic ability to afford the latest devices are signals of the emergence of a cyborg that is determined and ruled by the worlds old divisions. It is in this context that the linguistic choices of the cyborg become important, particularly as its mythology is moving from the periphery into the mainstream. Will the cyborg continue to speak a hybridized language in constant evolution or will its language become less polluted and more structured and therefore institutionalized? The technological parallel initially presented between the Internet and the cyborg becomes clearer if we consider that the Internet was intended to be a technological tool freely accessible and a means to further liberation and democracy. The reality of the Internet today is characterized by increasing controls within a corporate space that mirrors the multiple legislative restrictions and levels of freedom of each national state. The cyborg, as a utopian liberating new technological construct, is the object of the same assault for regulation that has been made on the internet in order to rein in its liberating frameworks and impose or exploit its function of surveillance. The cyborg and its language, despite the utopian inclination of the cybernetic organism, represents a phenomenon of social enslavement where the necessity of being cybernetic similarly to the necessity of being online is stronger than the small price to pay: that of offering access to our lives and behaviors online and that for the cyborg of giving to someone else control of the body. If this is a dystopian representation of the contemporary and future existence of the cyborg, even in its biological components,24 there is something that may provide an uncontrollable element in the regimented structures of the national-corporate-military axis. That is the unpredictability of evolution.
Notice that from this bold conception for the restoration of a perfect language, and of his own role within it, comes a celebration of the quasi-biological force displayed by languages capacity to change and renew itself over time rather than lament over the multiplicity of tongues.25

It is in the evolutionary structure of the language itself that Eco in his analysis of Dante Alighieri and of the history of the perfect language attributes to the Florentine poet the visionary acumen of having understood that languages evolve. Even by becoming totalitarian, by merging modus 86

Hindman, M. (2009). The myth of digital democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 18.
2

Bohman, J. (2004) Expanding Dialogue: The Internet, Public Sphere, and Transnational Democracy, in democracy online: The Prospects for Political Renewal Through the Internet, ed. Peter M. Shane, 47. New York: Routledge, (47-61)
3

The main mobile telephone network in Iran was cut in the capital Tehran Saturday evening while popular Internet websites Facebook and YouTube also appeared to be blocked, correspondents said. Mobile phones, facebook, youtube cut in iran, AFP , June 13, 2009, http://www.google.com/ hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jSPlmVgh-SfeEO9WhpOVG6Slnu0w (accessed December 1, 2009).
4

Schofield, H. (2009). New internet piracy law comes into effect in france. BBC News, December 31, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8436745.stm (accessed January 1, 2010). See also: Net Pirates to Be Disconnected, BBC News, October 28, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8328820.stm (accessed January 1, 2010).
5

Lef kow, C. (2010). Apple blocking dalai lama, kadeer, iphone apps: report. AFP , January 1, 2010, http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ ALeqM5gyVRNCazpu-LUQxa-KAe_uwBLvfA (accessed January 2, 2010).
6

Shenk, D. (2006). Welcome to the Body-wide Web. Nature Biotechnology 24, March 2006: 282-283.
7

Kelly, L. G. (2002). The mirror of grammar: theology, philosophy, and the modistae. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing, 144.
8

Haraway, D. (1994). A manifesto for cyborgs: science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s. in The Postmodern Turn: New Perspectives on Social Theory, ed. Steven Seidman, 88. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (82-116)
9 10

Ibid., 90. Ibid., 89. Ibid., 114.

11

12

Graham, E. L. (2002). Representations of the post/human: Monsters, aliens and others in popular culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 27.
13

Luciano De Maria (1994). We are assisting to the birth of the Centaur and soon we will watch the first Angels flying. (The Translation is mine.) Marinetti e i Futuristi. Milano: Garzanti, 4.
14

Scott, J. W. (1988). Deconstructing equality-versus-difference: or, the uses of poststructuralist theory for feminism. Feminist Studies 14, no. 1, Spring, 1988: 34. (33-50)
15

Losing your tongue: Worlds top endangered language experts gather at u, News Center University of Utah, November 2, 2009, http://www. unews.utah.edu/p/?r=110209-2 (accessed December 2, 2009).
16

Kelly, L. G. (2002). The mirror of grammar: Theology, philosophy, and the modistae. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing, 27.
17

Eco, U. (1999). Serendipities: Language and lunacy, trans. William Weaver. London: Phoenix, 30.
18 19

Ibid., 39. Ibid., 38.

20

Haraway, D. (2003). A manifesto for cyborgs: Science, technology and socialist feminism in the 1980s. in From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology, ed. Lawrence Cahoone, 475. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, (464-481)
21

Acknowledgements My critique of some of the most prominent representations of what it means to be post/human has revealed a multiplicity of visions and political/economic interests. I have been particularly critical of models of post/humanity which adopt self-fulfilling prophecies of evolution, either to foretell human obsolescence or to predict an era of the superhuman. Graham, E. L. (2002). Representations of the post/human: monsters, aliens and others in popular culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 225.
1

Haraway, D. (1994). A manifesto for cyborgs: Science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s. in The Postmodern Turn: New Perspectives on Social Theory, ed. Steven Seidman, 88. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (82-116)
22

Denzin, N. K. (1991). Images of postmodern society: Social theory and contemporary cinema. London: Sage, 7.
23

Clough, P . T. (2008). Celebrating work. Studies in Symbolic Interaction 30, 42. (37-44)
24 25

Eco, U. Serendipities: Language and lunacy, 53.

87

Night Vision
or The Mediated Perception Of Invisibility
by Eduardo Abrantes eduardoabrantes@gmail.com

The experience of night is a primordial and unsettling one, yet it is also a universally common, predictable and expected phenomenon. Everyday the light dims, the sun sets, the moon and the stars shine through, and sleep extends its invitation to each and everyone. We use the expression Every-day, but what do we really mean? Day is the interval between two nights, that is our actual experience of the abstract 24-hour divide. An alternated succession of night and day, of light and dark, is one of the essential constitutions of our perception of time, and consequently space. For instance, when a friend visits a foreign city, we ask: how many days are you staying? or how many nights? and that informs us somehow about the length and scope of his exploration of that particular city. But day and night are not equal. They extract their symbolic nature from different mythologies, they are commonly viewed as opposites in every sense, they imply different life forms, different lifestyles. In the most simplified way possible: day means light and night means dark. And if humans are phototropic by nature meaning, drawn to the light, our organisms metabolism and our chemical balance tied in to sunlight exposure if our western culture has defined itself as a culture of light in its universal quest for knowledge; if, likewise, our conscious self views its other, dreaming, unconscious self with suspicion and curiosity; then night is certainly the realm of the mysterious, the ever-present hidden face of reality. For Man, in its passionate struggle with Night, if in the beginning was the Word, the Word is Fire. The light of the celestial spheres, the stars and the moon, might before have lit up the night, but did so in its own mystical terms. The discovery of man-made fire was mans way of bringing the heat and light of day into night. It provided (and still does) security and comfort; it became the seed for civilization, the definition of home for humankind. Fire was followed by oil, which was followed by gas, which was followed by electricity, always in an ongoing campaign against the night realms. Modern cities became like mirrors, starlit from below, undistinguishable from the starry skies. The stars themselves became hard to see through the outpour of artificial light in any contemporary city. But what fuelled all of this? What strange power does night possess to nurture such radical means? Where does it fascinate us and why do we fear it? Simply put, night makes things invisible. And if in the history of thought, visibility as been liked to being that which is, is visible, and accordingly that which is not visible, is not at all then night seems to threaten existence in itself. Do things still truly exist when I cannot see them in the dark or is the continuity of the real merely sustained by mind and memory? This line of questioning seems to be an ancient one: do I still need to see something to believe it exists, once Ive already seen it once? Or even another question, slightly more 88

askew: maybe night does change things. Is there a day version and a night version of any given thing? If we take one of the first recorded studies of the notion of visibility in perception, Aristotles On the soul, concerning vision we find that the Greek philosopher conceived of an enveloping medium, in which to be immersed in was a necessary condition for the sense of vision to work. He called it diaphans (Aristotle, 1935, p. 103), or the transparent. He defined transparent as that which is visible, only not absolutely and in itself, but owing to the colour of something else (Aristotle, 1935, p. 105). That which is visible, then, is colour (chroma) (Aristotle, 1935, p. 103). Thus, this transparent medium is invisible in itself but becomes visible through colour. And what part does light play in this? Aristotle states that light (phos) is the activity of this transparent substance qua transparent; and, wherever it is present, darkness (skotos) also is potentially present (Aristotle, 1935, p. 105). He further affirms that light is then in a sense the colour of the transparent, owing to fire (pyros) or any such agency as the upper firmament; for one and the same quality belongs to this also. (Aristotle, 1935, p. 105) And finally, he concludes that: Light is considered to be the contrary of darkness; but darkness is a removal from the transparent of the active condition described above, so that obviously light is the presence of this (Aristotle, 1935, p. 105). So, according to Aristotle, the visible is the transparent where colour appears, but what makes the visible visible, is light. Light, which is in itself invisible, meaning, it has no colour, enables the visible manifestation of the transparent, meaning, any given colour. Hence, when stated above that nights strangest power is to make things invisible, what is meant is that in the darkness, the transparent becomes opaque, not with solid colour, but with the absence of colour. In spite of the colloquial expression, we do not actually believe that night paints anything black, we do however perceive it as drawing colour away from everything. So, the motivation of the pursuit that started with the invention of fire, and which spanned the greater part of human history, seems to be to make the invisible visible, to get the colour back from the darkness. However, there is a subtle yet vital difference between seeing the night and seeing into the night. If we imagine how we should go about seeing the night itself, the paradoxical transparent-opaque field of invisibility, we can also ask: and how would I represent night if I could see it? A strange question indeed Let us consider an example borrowed from film studies. Joseph Anderson and Donald Richie, in their 1959 reference work The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, describe the distinct chromatic experience of cinematic night in western

and eastern tradition. Whereas in the early colour conventions of western films night was expressed in a blue tint, in eastern films, namely Japanese and Taiwanese, the night scenes were coloured orange (Anderson & Richie, 1982, p. 33). From a western point of view, it seems easier to attribute such a radical difference in twilight tonal perception to vague notions of a distinct symbolic-cultural background. Perhaps in the east the night is a bit more orange, or perhaps the hue of the twilight makes such an impression in the realm of the rising sun, that the aesthetic tendency would be to carry the tone deep into the usually pitch blackblue night But let us consider this difference from the point of view of perception and representation. It is interesting to notice that blue-purple and orange are complementary colours, meaning that while it is mimetically clear that a night sky might appear bluish purple to human eyes, if one were to suddenly look towards an empty white film screen, the brain would reproduce an orange colour, due to the physiological trait that an afterimage is produced by the fatigue of specific colour receptors. Meaning that, after staring at length at a blue purple night sky, looking at a white screen would generate the perception of its complementary colour: orange. This happens due to the chemical subtraction of the blue from the white, the remaining frequencies being that of its complementary colour: orange. So somehow, the visible in time seems to manifest its invisible counterpart, its complement. But, in this example, trying to answer the question what is the colour of night? seems to push us away from the actual perceptive presence of darkness as something that is blocking colour itself. Be it blue-purple or, the Aristotelian darkened transparency of night seems to evade us. And yet, we still feel that night takes something away from us, in visual terms. If seeing the night is problematic, seeing into it seems to be too but its scope seems easier to pinpoint. Usually, seeing into the night means turning the lights on. Be it fire, oil, gas, electricity seeing into the night means literally pushing the night away into the edge of our lighting area. The spotlight used in cabaret shows and prison escapes is a good

visual analogue to this: a moving spot of light, surrounded by the oppressing darkness. Night starts where the lighting cone field stops. Would it be possible to see into the night without converting night into localized day? Could humans see in the dark without turning on the lights? Have something like a visible experience of night itself ? It seems something of this sort has been made possible by the contemporary digital utopia. I am (finally) referring to the use of night vision techniques. Developed in the last 50 years, since World War II, night vision apparatuses come usually in two formats: thermal imaging and image enhancement (Tyson, 2009). Both work by making visible through optical technology the lower infrared frequencies of the light spectrum. Essentially, they allow a human observer to see in lighting conditions where he would normally be blind in the dark, in the night. However, both night vision formats not only produce a quite different picture of the world, they provide access to a very different night world. Thermal vision works by capturing the infrared light that is emitted as heat from any given object. So an image of a

Figure 2. Depiction of image enhancement (night-shot) in the climax scene of Jonathan Demmes 1991 Silence of the Lambs.

Figure 1. Stills from John McTiernans 1987 Predator an accurate fictional representation of thermal vision.

particular landscape, using thermal night vision, would imply a thermal criterion, in which the warmer bodies usually organic ones, living creatures would stand out from the cooler, inorganic or man-made background. Actually, thermal vision can even see through matter, depending on the degree of permeability to temperature variations of that specific matter so in its uses, mostly military due to the cost involved, one can not only see into the night, but one can see into a building in the night, a see how many people are in a given room and what they are doing. Another interesting use of thermal vision is that it can detect heat signatures, like for instance which chair is warmest in an empty auditorium informing us where its recent occupant would been sitting just a few minutes ago. But if thermal vision lets us see into the night with a hunters perspective (thermal vision is a trait of quite a few members in the reptilian order), image enhancement, due to among others aspects its common presence in domestic, non-military contexts, poses a very interesting set of questions. Image enhancement is the night vision format that we find in our own digital cam89

corders in a simplified version, the so-called night-shot. In the last few decades its vision of night in a green hue has become commonplace, its three main manifestations in fiction and otherwise: covert-ops warfare, wildlife documentary and amateur pornography. All of these have quite a lot in common indeed, being perhaps the most evident aspect the voyeuristic tendency in which it places the viewer. Technically, the night-shot works differently from the thermal imaging because it captures not the light emitted by an object but the one reflected off of it. In this sense it works closer to normal daylight vision. It simply has a greater sensitivity to the photons present in a given environment, so that it amplifies their reflection until it produces a monochromatic image distinguishable by the human eye. It is from the phosphor cells present in their optical apparatus that the colour green emerges. Night appears now in colour, but not in the previous complementary mode of bluepurple and orange, it appears in an unnatural fluorescent

er stills object it is a purely visual access into the darkness, the criteria for focusing on this or that element resting with the observer, which is usually himself unobserved. But if the night-shot provides access into the night, it works in such a way that the observer stays immersed in the night, invisible, unless he himself in some other observer enhanced sights. With the lights turned off, the night opens up and the observer is usually in an uncanny stance: he at once believes there is a stability to reality, that the things visible by day do not stop being in the night, but he also as to answer that previous question for himself: is there a day version and a night version of any given thing? That seems to be one of the strongest underlying motivations for the development of night vision techniques. If we consider that being vigilant is the core disposition of the night vision user that somehow he is one who tries to access a usually offlimits realm of reality, meaning, one who wishes to perceive the commonly imperceptible, catch the invisible off guard we find him a stranger in a strange land, or at the very least, trying to peel off the veil of constancy in our relationship with the perceived environment. This unsettling experience, of considering the everyday as a foreign region, of arming oneself with prosthetic probing abilities, of questioning if reality when our face is turned away plays by the same rules, is manifest in such creative pieces as Spike Jonzes 2002 Its In Your Hands, a musical video for the Icelandic performer Bjrk. Shot with image enhancement techniques, in the video we find the, at the time pregnant, performer wondering through natural landscapes that seem drawn out of a National Geographic wildlife research piece. And then suddenly the strangeness of the situation becomes apparent when night crawling creatures, frogs, insects, fishes, appear in the background on a wrong scale are they gigantic or has the performer become tiny? Bjrk is then seen as a modern Thumbelina, dwelling amidst the strangeness of the pitchblack woods, an explorer in a natural world gone astray. In this piece, the usual technical or scientific context of the night-shot is transfigured. It is not the technique that becomes unreliable, it is the daylight version of the world that seems not to deserve our trust. The intrinsic perceptive and phenomenological categories at work in these optical devices become, if not clear, then, at least, undeniable and indiscreet. Philippe Grandrieuxs 2002 La Vie Nouvelle on the other hand, uses thermal vision techniques to produce a artificial opacity in the representation of the human as a beastly dweller.

Image 3 The Icelandic performer Bjrks Its In Your Hands 2002 musical video, directed by Spike Jonze - a creative experiment in the night vision format. Phillipe Grandrieuxs La Vie Nouvelle 2002 film using thermal vision to represent bestiality.

green. The interesting thing is that when comparing an image of the night world produced by thermal imaging with the one by night-shot, we find the latter as having no criteria in itself. Night-shot show us a visible monochromatic world, it does not highlight the warmer organic forms from the cool90

In the climatic scene of this film, shot with a thermal vision camera and afterwards filtered into black and white, we are presented with the recognizable human form in a less than human becoming: clawing, gnawing, biting and walking on all fours, a crowd of body-shapes is entangled in each other while a furious drone sound blasts in the viewers ears. The surrounding encompassing darkness becomes abstract, a background into which the white-hot bodies are carved into. The viewers effort to engage, to recognize, is slowly transmuted into a fascinated repulse, as the night seems to

be cut open. Viewed together, both Grandrieuxs La Vie Nouvelle and Spike Jonzes Its In Your Hands, using night vision techniques as aesthetic inquiry into the nature of the invisible, seem to point to a epistemological disruption that occurs when peeking into the fabric of the limits of visibility what is there to see seems to change radically according to the conditions of access, and the idea that, while immersed in the experience of the night, one could simply scientifically turn on the light seems to be doubtful. When at last we consider the transgressive fields with which night vision seems to be associated in contemporary culture (public intimacy, the ethical stance of the observer, the society of control, etc), we may recall that trying to pierce the Aristotelian opaque transparency in the night can make it brighter, actually bright enough that we can see into it and dissolve the day-night visibility divide, but the observer remains somehow obscured, sleepless and vigilant cut off from colour, anonymous in the field of the visible.

References Anderson, J. L., & Richie, D. (1982). The Japanese film : art and industry (Vol. Expanded). Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Aristotle. (1935). On the soul; Parva naturalia; On breath (W. S. Hett, Trans.). Cambridge, Mass., London: Harvard University Press; W. Heinemann, ltd. Tyson, J. (2009). How Night Vision Works. from http://electronics. howstuffworks.com/nightvision.htm Sponsler, Claire (1992). Cyberpunk and the Dilemmas of Postmodern Narrative: The Example of William Gibson. Contemporary Literature, S.33, 4, 625-644. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Pres. Toker, Glen (2007). Bilim kurguda Kadn. from http://www.ucansupurge.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view &id=3597&Itemid=81.

91

Cinematic Cyborgs
The West, Japan and the Politics of Representation
by Niall Cosgrave cosgranm@tcd.ie

Introduction Walter Benjamin in his influential essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936) discussed the profound effect of the then new developing media of photography and film. His penetrating analysis examined both the opportunities and problems posed by the multiplicity of art through mechanical means. As a result of such technology, he argued that the aura or the authenticity of an original work of art would be shattered; its uniqueness destroyed. Such logic could be applicable to the development of the cyborg an organism whose bodily functions have been enhanced by technology and whose character, although conceivably a better, more advanced recreation of us, is generally without its own aura or soul, and does not normally possess such fundamental human qualities like morality, free will and empathy. With the advent of digital technology, photos and paintings can be further manipulated, modified and cloned to such an extent that it is often difficult to tell which one is the genuine article and which one is the fake. The same could be said of the fictional cyborg who, despite its blend of organic and synthetic parts, is almost indistinguishable from humans. Cinema a remarkable invention of reproducible and distributable images itself has long dramatised our experiences with technology and just as culture affects the way technology is perceived, in a reciprocal manner, technology also shapes culture in distinct ways. Science fiction film, through the trope of the cyborg, attempts to understand and stimulate debate surrounding humanitys ubiquitous use of and dependence on technology. Importantly, such films demonstrate that when we make cyborgs at least when we make them in movies we make, and on occasion, unmake our conceptions of ourselves (Pyle, 2002, p.125). Cyborg films have much to comment about humans, their relationship to technology and equally to one another. The focus of this paper is to analyse these concerns in the specific context of Japanese and Western-American popular culture and society, while drawing on a number of theoretical discourses. The fact that the cinematic cyborg has garnered a great deal of attention in academia proves its impact as a figure of intense, thematic complexity. From a Western perspective, Japanese culture is likewise mysterious, possessing a seductive unfamiliarity. The cyborg is a condition of the environment it is born into and the West holds a very different view from Japan in relation to it and technology as a whole. Cultural Anxieties and Technology
My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them.1

At the time Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, Britain was in the middle of the Industrial Revolution. Scientific progress in the form of new technologies, such as electricity, saw the debate between modern discoveries and traditional religious and metaphysical thought beginning to take shape. Frankensteins monster is part biological and part mechanical (through its reanimation) and when rejected by its creator, poses an irrational threat to human beings, questioning their unique identity and powers of supremacy. Although Donna Haraway suggested that the cyborg has no origin story in the Western sense (1991, p.150), Frankensteins monster can be understood as science fictions first cyborg and a number of concerns which form the focus of Western cyborg cinema find their parallel in Shelleys imagined monster (Short, 2005, p.38). By the early twentieth century, an ambivalent attitude towards automated devices one of empowerment and the other of alienation intensified. The mechanical eye of the movie camera provided avenues in which to portray mans submission to, and obsession with, the machine. Fritz Langs Metropolis (1927) and later Charlie Chaplins Modern Times (1936) probe, albeit diversely, the theme of technologys unfavourable affect on man acting as metaphors for his collective anxieties, hopes and expectations concerning such ubiquitous machinery. In the post-World World War Two era, a common theme of anxiety over the loss of humanity and the possible collapse of civilisation triggered by nuclear technology prevailed. When Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline helped invent the term cyborg as a reconceptualised post-human body (as opposed to a machine- controlled monster) in 1960, mechanical components were soon recognised as a positive addition to the human body that restored, modified or improved on its existing potential. With the onset of the computer revolution, technology pervaded the domestic space and became, in Marshall McLuhans terms, extensions of man (1964). Computers facilitated the blurring of the boundaries between man and machine, extending human capabilities as well as replacing humans and making us more automaton-like both physically and cognitively. The concept of humanity in a state of posthuman emergence was to extend to a number of academic disciplines, significantly feminist epistemology. Donna Haraway offered new directions for a hybrid identity in her Cyborg Manifesto. Seeking myths or figures to overcome the dualisms that structure oppression, she helped imagine a more utopian future. Yet, Haraways cyborg is problematic for a predominantly Christian Western culture for it confuses the distinction between manufacturing and breeding. It is an unorthodox body conceived through non-biological reproduction having no mother and an illegitimate father.

92

With this in mind, such works as Ridley Scotts film Blade Runner (1982), William Gibsons novel Neuromancer (1984) and James Camerons The Terminator (1984) envisioned the nihilistic subversive side of an electronic society. Their plots tended to focus on conflict between human nature, technology and their respective combination in a dystopian near-future. It was probably inevitable that cyberpunk drew much of its inspiration from mystical views of Asia as during the 1980s, Japans prosperity and economic power was especially tied to technology. Today, Japan is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. It has the highest percentage of industrial robots globally and the Japanese government has accelerated its efforts to specifically promote the robot to a novel technological integration (Kitano, 2006, p. 82) in the hopes of contributing to the enrichment of society. What does this say about Japans attitude to technology and the cyborg? Moreover, does it differ from the Western perspective? While Jean-Jacques Rousseau called for a return to nature in the face of dubious progress in Europe (Orwin, 2000, p.66), in Japan the concept of a symbiosis between humans and technology was being realised in the form of an attraction with karakuri ningyo or wooden wind-up dolls of the Edo period (1603- 1868). The most famous of these karakuri was the kimono-clad tea-serving machine. Modelled in the form of an adorable child rather than a hybrid monster, the role of these wooden cyborgs was not to express their own independent identities but that of human beings (Kurosawa, 1994). The strong connection between real and synthetic is integral to Japanese culture which is highly animistic due to its Shinto beliefs. At the very heart of Shinto is the worship of spirits or kami which exist everywhere and in everything. In craftsmanship, regardless of whether the object is natural or constructed of mechanical parts, like the karakuri, its spirit is identified with its maker. Even after the much later highautomatisation and systemisation of society, Japanese people continue to practise the belief of the existence of spirits in their everyday lives, in an unvocal manner (Kitano, 2006, p. 80). After a period of self-imposed isolation, Japan restored its relations to the West under Emperor Meiji in 1868. Through implementation of a European-style political system and market economy, it rapidly established itself as the first major Asian industrial nation. It learned how to master the threatening technologies of foreigners and by 1928, Makoto Nishimura produced Japans first robot, Gakutensoku. Translated as learning from natural law, this impressive hybrid android could close its eyes, smile and puff out its cheeks. Christopher Bolton notes, however, that at this time machines and technology in Japan did not just represent social progress; they were also associated with fear and degeneration (2007, p.6). Such fears were to be reinforced with the nuclear attacks on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The horrific destructive power of the atomic bomb strangely, but probably unavoidably, found its way into film and kick-started the long reign of kaiju eiga big monster movies. The hybrid monster of Godzilla symbolised an unrecognisable and alien Japan much like those victims exposed to and dreadfully mutated by radiation. A Frankenstein-like

creation, Godzilla was the consequence of mans meddling with technology possessing the potential to emasculate, indeed obliterate him. However, a certain affection by the Japanese towards Godzilla became noticeable as the series progressed. Gradually, it came to symbolise not a fear of technology but heroism, transforming into a sort-of therapeutic icon. Other more benevolent notions of the cyborg became equally prominent in post-war Japan, primarily in a wide range of increasingly popular anime and manga comic narratives. One such fictional character Testuwan Atom, or Astro Boy was turned into a TV series during the 1960s, and succeeded in initiating the idea of robots having consciousness and feelings. By the time Expo70 was held in Osaka, Japans economy propelled for the most part on exports of cars, electronic devices and computers, with its people becoming progressively technophilic workaholics. Tetsuo, the Iron Man (1989) and its 1992 sequel Tetsuo 2: Body Hammer, both directed by Tsukamoto Shinya, present humans literally morphing into metal. Although filled with techno-horror, Tetsuo is a reflection of a Japan that has both vanquished its fear of technology that was once embedded through the character of Godzilla and one that speculates on where human society may be going next. Hollywood films, such as the X-Men series and I, Robot (Alex Proyas, 2004), likewise pose similar questions. Conversely, they perpetrate the underlying fear both of other advancing nations and of technology as the potential catalyst to render humans as machinic mutants or to see it as a future deadly force in a new war. Such antagonistic tales of conspicuous binary opposition present an image where mutants/robots are unsurprisingly deemed inferior to humans. Self & Other Cinematic cyborg protagonists through their hybridity of artificial and organic allow their audience to question their own identity and by the same token how they perceive others that are different from them. The tenets of postcolonial theory explore the hierarchical nature of humanity, focusing on how differences in genetic make-up can induce an identity crisis. Edward Said (1979) examined such a tradition using the term Orientalism to controversially describe the legitimacy of the West to govern, speak and shape the Middle East and most of Asia. This concept of self and other originated in European Imperialism during the eighteenth century and the core of the claim asserts that the Orients progress and value are judged in terms of, and in comparison to, the West and therefore it remains the other; the conquerable; the inferior. The very premise of the X-Men series analyses the dichotomy of self and other. Faced with genocide in the first film and under threat of the Mutant Registration Act in the sequel, they attempt to deal with their subaltern status. One particular scene in X2: X-Men United (Bryan Singer, 2003), demonstrates the extent to which humans can choose not to embrace diversity when Shawn Ashmores teenage character Bobby Drake/Iceman decides to tell his family that he is a mutant. The movie treats the dialogue as a coming out scene, as his parents struggle to come to terms with his heterogeneous form almost hinting that it is a disability. 93

Categorising him and others as mutant enhances the human position in the narrative generating a them versus us scenario. Like the X-Men, Japan is collectively perceived by the West as other and yet does not fall into the stereotypical postcolonial category of backward or passive. In the contemporary field of science and technology it has surpassed the West with the lingering presence of Western Orientalism having now evolved into Techno-Orientalism. Japan has largely been able to control its own history and individuality. Ultimately, when it insists on the uniqueness of itself, Japan stresses the spirit of the Orient. When it comes to a matter of civilisation, it behaves like a Westernised nation (Nishihara, 2005, p.245). This contradictory nature makes the West anxious. It is unable to shape a modern, wholly westernised Japanese identity or persuasively change Japans sense of itself. In spite of choosing Western influences to shape their society during the Meiji Restoration and later under US Occupation, Japan continues to remain irreducibly different and impenetrable to the full and total grip of Western humanism. It is known that Japanese people often refer to their own culture as robotto okoku or The Robot Kingdom, confidently aware of their progressive status, revealing the exceptional relationship they have to technology. Japan contains what the West most lacks and fears. Although perceived as an exotic culture the land of karate, the geisha, curious architecture, Pokemon, Resident Evil, Anime, Hello Kitty, sushi, Sony Playstation, Tamagotchi and funny tea ceremonies Japan has not entirely eradicated the sense of fear the West, and especially the US, has in relation to them. Certainly, these have helped to demystify Japan but a visible paradox exists within the Western imagination towards their Oriental other. They fear its inhuman martial traditions samurai, bushido, ninja and kamikaze and see Japanese people themselves as automatons; a robotic-like uniform race devoid of Cartesian ideals and enclosed in their Zen spirituality and communal outlook. As a result, Hollywood makes its own accessible versions of Japanese movies, such as Godzilla (Roland Emmerich, 1998) and the samurai and martial arts influenced, Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2 (Quentin Tarantino, 2003). Manga and anime and their idiosyncratic styles, like that of Astro Boy, and Tokusatsu entertainment like the TV series Super Sentai (Power Rangers), have also been successfully adapted to satisfy the particular tastes of Western audiences. As previously mentioned, American cyberpunk has been immensely shaped by Japanese techno-culture. William Gibson himself, when asked why he is so inspired by Japan when writing his tech-noir novels, he uttered, because Japan is the global imaginations default setting for the future (Gibson, 2001). Japan availed of the opportunity to find itself in the future of the West without sacrificing the traditional uniqueness of its past. This unification of duality corresponds to the modern condition of Japanese society where a conflict of past/local/culture is intertwined with future/global/technology. Despite this dialectical status, Japanese science fiction has harmoniously united science with Shintoism, imbuing computers and sentient machines with spiritual power thus permitting the fictional cyborg to prevail without prejudice. Yet, its ever-increasing narcissistic quest to become the most advanced nation has emasculated 94

the West, destabilising the correlation between modern and post-modern and reinforcing the Orient as mysterious, dangerous and elusive. Ironically, demilitarisation and the US Occupation immediately after 1945 castrated Japans patriarchal feudal base and an attempt was made to rebuild its family life and values. Chon Noriega, in his deeper analysis of the Godzilla movies of this time, emphasises an apparent role reversal with Japan symbolising self and the United States as other. Godzilla is really a transitional monster caught between the imperial past and the post-war industrial future, aroused by the US H-bomb tests (1987, pg.68). Godzillas hybrid character allows anxieties about self/other, US/Japan, natural/manmade to be resolved. American movies of the same genre imply a blurring of the relationship to the other, for example by giving the monster no name like The Thing and therefore rendering it devoid of any personality or identity of its own. The Japanese anime film, Appleseed (Shinji Aramaki, 2004) presents a species which retains its own separate identity and where humans are the ones seen as the antagonists. In a utopian view future world, half the population is made up of clones called bioroids. However, they are seen by some as the other a threat. A human faction within the military force makes formidable attempts to destroy the production of bioroids, but is eventually stopped. We might be original and possess an aura, but that does not make us any better or superior than the duplicate other of ourselves. Bioroids were created to transform humanitys aggressive nature and destructive power and the self (humans) need them to ensure their continuation towards a peaceful future existence. Appleseed portrays a society that can amicably accommodate both humans and cyborgs; both self and other. Even though the US needs the other, they generally continue to be ignorant of the East, whereas the Japanese, gifted with bifocal vision, have conquered their anxieties by becoming both self and other and by immersing in the self, distinctions between the two become less discernible. Undeniably, Japan has been able to adopt, appropriate and transform Western technology to its own end with so much success that it has Japanised technology itself. It is as if the future has passed from Europe to America to Japan, from us to them (Morley and Robbins, 1996, pg.173). The Gendered Cyborg Just as it can help us rethink and reshape self and other, so too can the cyborg be used to determine how such categorisations of difference are to be understood. Donna Haraway may have postulated that such dualisms of masculine and feminine to be non-existent with the birth of the cyborg, but it is crucial to note that throughout the history of screen science fiction, this has not evidently been the case. From man-made Maria in Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) to artificial Arnie in The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984) and the uncanny female cop Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii, 1995), cyborgs are clearly not intended to live in a post-gender world. They are fundamentally represented as either male or female and as opposed to trouncing these discrete roles, cinema often bolsters their clichs. It was inevitable that cyborgs were going to be culturally

polarised into male and female roles, but it is how these celluloid figurations are actually depicted that leaves them open to question. The T-X (Kristanna Loken) in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (Jonathan Mostow, 2003) while more dedicated to killing man than devoted to seducing him, could be emblematic of an assertive, post-modern woman. Yet, she is nicknamed the Terminatrix which is clearly a play on the word dominatrix. Like a traditional dominatrix, T-X is highly sexualised and deadly a blonde mechanical femme fatale dressed in a red leather suit. As Sue Short points out, representations of female cyborgs largely reproduce the same ideals of femininity we have grown accustomed to seeing on screen, therefore they highlight the extent to which these images are not only false, but literally man- made (2005, p.86). Like Langs feminisation of the machine in Metropolis, technology is presented as a fetishised, powerful female whose hostile motorised presence facilitates in the extermination of humanity and it is at this junction that the Western conception of other can be mapped onto female and technology. Female-gendered cyborgs, if overtly sexualised, could be condemned as products of a patriarchal fantasy. When alternative attributes (like physical athleticism) are assigned in an attempt to move away from this female-as-sex- object convention, they could be deemed unappealing and too masculine. Sadie Plant might recognise the posthuman female body in a more constructive light for she believes that the robotic is inherently feminine and from a sociohistorical perspective, categorises technology as a female object (2000, p.270). Moreover, she writes that technology is implicitly a process of emasculation and that women are mimetic forces, duplicating almost anything valued by man be it autonomy, beauty or a computer (2004, p. 432). Plant expands her argument to the very intricacies of a computers function, suggesting that the zero the nothingness of binary code has always been the 0-ther, the female (2004, p.189). Regardless of her fatal proclivities, T-X could be Plants intelligent machine with her liquid metal interior adept to anthropomorphism, she tries to weaken the structures of patriarchy and all the while manages to preserve her feminine sexuality. On the whole, Hollywood visibly insists on regressive tactics for its pictorial representations of the cyborg, flying in the face of Haraways archetype that endeavours to supersede conventional gender boundaries. Japanese anime especially enjoys examining the posthuman body and it is here that parallels can be drawn with Hollywood. The apparent manipulative use of schoolgirls as cyborgs as in the TV series Gunslinger Girls (Morio Asaka, 2004) for example, points to the reality that most anime is intended for an adolescent male audience, while the portrayal of gynoids like those in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (Mamoru Oshii, 2004) are purposely built to serve their male masters lustful needs. However, there are some unmistakable features of Japanese cinema that serve to counteract the Hollywood norm, not least the frequent portrayal of cyborgs as women who, unlike the transgressive T-X, are powerful superheroes, often cast in the leading militant role and as the protector of the usually weaker human male. When Universal suffrage was swiftly introduced in Japan

post-1945, the balance of power shifted profoundly in favour of the woman. From this historical perspective comes a female cyborg who manages to uphold her feminine beauty and attributes intuition, self-reflection, maternalism while simultaneously counter weighing the masculine, mechanical body she is constructed of. The extremely efficient leader Major Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell exemplifies such characteristics, her cybernetic body often contemplative and brooding. Superhuman power, a girlish vulnerability and the cult of technology are all attributes that work better within the image of the Japanese female cyborg rather than its Western counterpart. Tying in with Plants contention, Theorist Toshiya Ueno notes:
It is well-known that, especially in Japanese animation, women are figured in very specific ways, and the theme of the merging of women with technology is the most visible one. In much of Japanese animation, female characters are numerous and frequently supposed to possess special abilities of being more adjustable to machines and technologies.2

The interaction of the male body with technology in Japanese cult cinema is just as personal, if not more, complex as its opposite other. In the post- apocalyptic world of Dead or Alive: Final (Takashi Miike, 2002) we encounter two replicant protagonists Ryo (Sho Aikawa) and Honda (Riki Takeuchi). Unlike the previous violent Tetsuo movies, which show an authoritative Japanese man mutated by technology and divested of humanity, Dead or Alive: Final illustrates technology permeated by humanity. Throughout the film, Honda believes he is human with a human wife and son. As head of the special police force, he has been given orders to arrest anyone who has violated despot Major Wus (Richard Cheung) ban on reproduction. Soon, however, Honda starts to feel compassion for those couples he has incarcerated. This vision of the family unit and the later scene where he finds out both his wife and son are also replicants, invigorates the humanity in Honda. It is ironic that while he believed he was human, Honda was emotionless. Yet, when he learns that he is a replicant, empathy invades him. Ryos character is not much different but he is aware he is a replicant, originally a miliary construction specifically designed for battle. Seeking companionship, he finds it in a resistance group opposed to Major Wus tyrannical regime. He becomes a formidable father figure to a young kid and later declares his love for one of the rebels, Jyun (Josie Ho). Playing with the boy with dexterity and wit and taking care of him and Jyun, he begins to become more human. Machine becomes indistinguishable from man and man indistinguishable from machine. At the films end, technology and humanity in both characters feed off each other and, reclaiming their masculinity, their bodies literally unite to become one massive hybrid phallic machine. The Japanese male cyborg has transformed into a paternal figure, acquiring feminine traits of compassion and nurturing while at the same time preserving its machinic masculine traits. Hollywood and Japan converge here. Despite being blessed with indestructible virility and a thirst for violence, the Terminator goes through a similar revision, ending up protecting John Connor instead of setting out to destroy him. Worthy ethical and moral standards are imprinted on the Terminators character with the help of 95

John Connor and as a result he eventually exceeds his core programming. Conclusion Both the West and Japan have historically mixed attitudes towards the cyborg and the corporeal body in a state of posthumanity. Nonetheless, it seems that overall the history of the cyborg as a monster evokes Western modern societys profound anxiety that we have lost control of, and may even be destroyed by, the technology we have created (Gusterson, 2004, p. 52). Hollywood science fiction narratives tend to reiterate such fears describing cyborgs as distrustful entities who express themselves through violence or worse still as megalomaniac machines bent on taking over the world. In Japan, technology has actually augmented Japanese identity and the difference between the natural and the artificial is not as crucial as it is in the West. Often purposely didactic, Japanese film, notably anime, uses the metaphor of the cyborg to propel Japanised ideas about technology and the future of identity. Such notions culturally resist the West, especially the US, and the Japanese cyborg appears less constrained by human subjectivity, often portrayed as just as intelligent and reflective as any human. Susan Napier further states that while American films seem to privilege a kind of individual humanism as a last resort against encroaching forces of technology, [Japanese anime] simply repudiates the constraints of the contemporary industrialised world to suggest that a union of technology and the spirit can ultimately succeed (2000, pg.111). They embrace McLuhanesque principles of extension as is evident through an obsession with mecha-suits the amalgam of organic pilot with inorganic battle shell. They equally believe in Baudrillardian simulacra, offering fantastical futuristic views of a world where fictional science as simulation seems more favourable than real science. One universal theme that resonates throughout this paper is duality man/machine, West/Japan, real/artificial, technology/humanity, man/woman, self/other, present/future, fascination/repulsion and it serves to prove that humanity is caught up in an identity crisis. As a consequence of mired clichs and contradictions, cinematic cyborg bodies both in the West and Japan fail to be genuinely subversive, for they are continually colonised by the hierarchical dualisms of natural identities (Haraway, 1991, p.175). Despite the best efforts of Japanese science fiction to more credibly address the cyborgs identity, like the West it still manufactures an identity based primarily on physicality alone. The cyborg then, according to Japanese roboticist Dr. Masahiro Mori, seems destined to lie in the chasm of the uncanny valley. Moris scale of repugnant barely human and beautiful fully human captures the constant recurrent strangeness human beings experience when confronted with the posthuman body. Conclusively, however, is this: implanted in Japanese fiction and folklore are the concepts of transformation and incorporation. If we take the direct translations from their Japanese form respectively, change form and combine bodies we can perhaps use them as a new way of thinking about ourselves, about the nature of the cyborg and fundamentally, about how the cyborg is to be represented on the cinema screen. 96

OMahony, M. (2002). Cyborg: The Man-Machine. London: Thames & Hudson. Orwin, C. (2000). Rousseau on Sources of Ethics. In Thompson, N (Ed.).Instilling ethics. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, p.63-84. Penley, C. et al. eds. (1991) Technoculture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Plant, S. (2000) On the Matrix: Cyberfeminist Simulations. In Kirkup, G. et al.eds. The Gendered Cyborg: A Reader. London: Routledge, p.265-275. Plant, S. (2004). The Future Looms: Weaving Women and Cybernetics. In: Webster, F. (Ed.). The Information Society Reader. London: Routledge, p.424- 438. Pyle, F. (2002). Making Cyborgs, Making Humans: Of Terminators and Blade Runners. In: Bell, D. et al. eds. The Cybercultures Reader. London: Routledge, p.124-137. Redmond, S. (Ed.). (2004). Liquid Metal: The Science Fiction Film Reader. London: Wallflower Press. Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. New York: Pantheon Books. Short, S. (2005). Cyborg Cinema and Contemporary Subjectivity. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Telotte, J.P . (2001). Science Fiction Film. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Wollstonecraft Shelley, M. & M. Hindle (Ed.). (1994). Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus. London: Penguin Books. Bolton, C. A. (2002). From Wooden Cyborgs to Celluloid Souls: Mechanical Bodies in Anime and Japanese Puppet Theatre. Positions: East Asia Cultures, Critique, 10 (3):729-771. Goto-Jones, C. (2008). From science fictional Japan to Japanese science fiction. International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter, 47:14-15. 16 Kaplan, F. (2004) Who is afraid of the humanoid? Investigating cultural differences in the acceptance of robots. International Journal of Humanoid Robotics, 1 (3):1-16. Kunzru, H. (1997). You are Cyborg. Wired, February. Nishihara, D. (2005) Said, Orientalism, and Japan. Journal of Comparative Poetics, 25:241-253. Noriega, C. (1987) Godzilla and the Japanese Nightmare: When Them! Is U.S. Cinema Journal, 27 (1):63-77. Sato, K. (2004). How Information Technology has (not) changed Feminism and Japanism: Cyberpunk in the Japanese Context. Comparative Literature Studies, 41 (3):335-355. Siegal, M. (1985). Foreigner as Alien in Japanese Science Fantasy. Science Fiction Studies, 12:252-263. Bryant, D. (2006). The Uncanny Valley: Why are monster-movie making zombies so horrifying and talking animals so fascinating?. Arclight. from: <http://www.arclight.net/~pdb/nonfiction/uncanny-valley.html> [Accessed 14 October 2009]. Gibson. W. (2001). Modern boys and mobile girls. The Guardian. from: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/apr/01/sciencefictionfantasyandhorror.fe atures> [Accessed 05 October 2009]. Kitano, N. (2006). Rinri: An Incitement towards the Existence of Robots in Japanese Society. International Review of Information Ethics. from: <http://www.i-r-i-e.net/about_irie.htm> [Accessed 23 September 2009]. Tabuchi, H. (2008). Japanese robots enter daily life. USA Today, 1 March. from: <http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/robotics/200803-01-robots_N.htm> [Accessed 03 October 2009]. Ueno, T. (1996). Techno-Orientalism and Japanese Subculture. Institute for New Culture Technologies. from: <http://www.t0.or.at/ueno/japan. htm> [Accessed 10 October 2009]. Cyberpunk Review. (2009). from: <http://www.cyberpunkreview.com/> [Accessed 19 September 2009]. IMDb (Internet Movie Data Base). (2009). from: < http://www.imdb.com/ title/tt0301167/> [Accessed 19 September 2009].

References Bolton, C. et al. (2007). Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams: Japanese Science Fiction from Origins to Anime. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Carter, D. (2007). East Asian Cinema. London: Kamera Books. Clynes, M. & N. Kline. (1995). Cyborgs and Space. In: Astronautics. September 1960; reprint. The Cyborg Handbook, Hables Gray, C. (Ed.). London: Routledge, p. 29-34. Gibson, W. (2003). Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books. Grenville, B. (Ed.). (2002) The Uncanny: Experiments in Cyborg Culture. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press. Gusterson, H. (2004). Short Circuit: Watching Television with a Nuclear Weapons Scientist. In: People of the Bomb portraits of Americas nuclear complex. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, p.51-62. Haraway, D. (1991). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist- Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. In: Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: LBC Information Services, p.149-181. Kurokawa, K. (1994). The Philosophy of the Karakuri. In: The Philosophy of Symbiosis. (translated by J. Hunter). London: Academy Editions. Matthew, R. (1989). Japanese Science Fiction: A View of a Changing Society. London: Routledge. McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill. Morley, D. & K. Robins. (1996). Techno-Orientalism: Japan Panic. In: Spaces of Identity: Global media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries. London: Routledge, p.147-173. Napier, S. J. (2000). Anime from Akira to Howls Moving Castle: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Cyborg as Other

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Change of the Female Image in Science-Fiction & Cyberpunk Literature

by Bengi Basaran PhD Candidate, Istanbul Technical University, History of Art

Abstract In the early works of Science-Ficton, there are erotic and sarcastic examples, such as Barbarella literature besides maledominated society system in the themes. The discussion is then related to the human-machine relation in Cyberpunk and the reflection of this relation on strong woman characters as opposed to the traditional male-dominated society. Cyberpunk movement points out the closing gap between sexes in its projection of the near future, questioning the traditional role and dominance of males in the society. The main argument is that the historical responsibilities of males like hunting and protecting are no longer as important as in the past because in the technological society of the future, AIs and computers can restore and produce even biological functions and parts such as limbs and organs. In other words, the female characters of Cyberpunk are quite different than present-day women and much more capable than simple human beings. The outlook of the characters also matters in the feminine world of Cyberpunk where a strong and independent female image is supported by rubber, latex, leather, metallic and bright clothes. Most of them are good fighters and shooters who are always equipped with different kinds of technological artifacts or features. Apparently, once we take into account that the ScienceFiction era was the golden age of heavy mechanical industrialization, the nature of digital technology, which relies of mental capabilities of human beings rather than their physical power, is a decisive element in Cyberpunk characterization of female figures. In line with this, Cyberpunk literature and cinema introduced a highly capable, talented, clever, challenger and technologic woman image to the audience To sum up, this paper analyzes Cyberpunk fiction which is not only describes new paradigms of gender, but also presents new methods showing that women can use manmade technology to overcome male domination. Although it doesnt go as far as to cause a paradigm- shift, it at least underlines the necessity of re-thinking gender and marks technology as a tool which can make this paradigm shift come true in the near future. Keywords: cyberpunk, cyborg, feminism, science-fiction, cyborg manifesto Since there is little consensus of definition among scholars or devotees, origin of the Science Fiction is an open question. However, one of the two prominent sights affirms Jules Verne as the first sci-fi writer and the other claims she is Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley by her Frankenstein or the 100

Modern Prometheus novel who was also an activist feminist of the period. In comparison with the common vision of sci-fi genre the novel written by her at the age of nineteen, was more pessimistic and skeptic about the science and future. Besides, one can always argue that the influences of the industrial revolution in England took place in novel, as well as the philosophic attributions from Locke and Hobbes. What is terrifying to the reader of Mary Shellys work, order the viewer of the numerous films about Frankenstein, is not only that the monster is piecemeal, stitched together, highlighting the capacity for the human body to be carved up into independent fragments, but that the body as we know it is the sum total of all its separate parts. This revelation emphasizes the machine-like function and structure of the body. The monster represents a human/not human being that both like us and not like us, and it is precisely misrecognition that elicits our sympathy and repulsion. Death, which as already overtaken and inhabited the corpse, creates an aura even after the monster has been reanimated, thus rendering the object both dead and undead (Shelly 1973,52) Both Frankensteins monster and the cyborg solicid the uncanniness associated with the body mutation and fragmentation. As Sigmund Freud has explained, The uncanny is that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar. Freud also speaks of the uncanniness associated with the movement of artificial dolls and automata. Drawing on the writings of E. Jentsch, he concludes that Particularly favorable condition for awakening uncanny sensations is created when there is intellectual uncertainty whether an object is alive or not, and when an inanimate object becomes too much like an animate one. Our basic understanding of the process of life is that the dead do not return to living. However, the Frankenstein myth challenges what believe to be true, for corpses do not remain silent or intact in it. Through the Frankenstein myth, introduces us to the science of physiognomy, in which the face features as a site of either terror or admiration. It was not the body of the monster that instilled dread into Victor, but rather its face which filled his heart with breathless horror and disgust (Freud 1971, 21). Though it really doesnt look it at first glance, Mary Shellys Frankenstein is edged with hints of the feminist viewpoint. Elizabeth Bronfen points out that Mary Shelly offers an analogy between herself and Victor Frankenstein, for, given that she called her novel her hideous progeny, she to obliquely articulates an anxiety of authorship (Bronfen 1994, 34). Devoid of any strong female characters, Shelly inserted into Victor Frankensteins tale on the role that society expects women to play, and shows the idealized powerless female of the romantic era. Although of first feminists

Shelly, builds her female characters on Victors attitude, so they were all pretty but non-scientific characters from the standpoint of a man. The female characters in the novel are there only to reflect the male characters and they reflect the image of the stereotypical women of the period. The female characters are very weak in this novel, especially Elizabeth, Victors cousin/fianc. She is portrayed as the perfect woman, especially after Victors mother. She takes the place of the mother figure in the household. And such examples supported by the speeches of Victor. For instance once he mentions in the novel that even though his expertise on human creation, he never think about to create a woman. As a later adopted version in the 20th century original Bride of Frankenstein film in 1935, the Bride is an artificial woman created for the monster, who desires a friend of his own species that is, a technological construct like himself. The Bride, who is fabricated by Victor Frankenstein and doctor Praetorius, is, like the monster, a patchwork of limbs and organs with an artificially developed human brain inserted into her cranium. Grown from what Praetorius has called seed, the Brides brain as a scientific development is different from the brain of the Monster, which is considered more natural. This brain grown from seed may be contrasted with recent investigations into primordial stem cell technology for the growth of organs for transplant (Creed 1993,78-81) Science-fiction makes its second core advancement after the First World War. When airplanes and nuclear researches proved, that the discovery of outer space was not only a dream but a scientific reality which was going to take some more time, science-fiction focused on one of the most essential and constant questions of humanity, which was if we are alone or not in this universe or is there any other life forms? In this sense, during 60s invention of atom bomb and progress of space Technologies had begun to determine the sci-fi. Age of space reaches the climax in this genre which originates from the scientific base. Public interest in space travel and new technologies revived. While themes such as space journeys, meeting with other species, travelling and moving to the moon or the other galaxies were constructed under the light of science, the science fiction was sharpening its role as a guide for future of the science. Nevertheless, the science fiction has always inspired visual arts and especially the cinema thematically and in 60s silver screen hosts a fantastic production which is more erotic than its scientific features. Barbarella is a fictional heroine in the French science fiction comic book created by JeanClaude Forest in 1962. She is a young woman who travels from planet to planet and has numerous adventures, often involving sex. The stand-alone version caused a scandal and became known as the first adult comic-book, despite its eroticism being slight. As one of first significant examples, Barbarella adopted to cinema by Jane Fonda personification which called the first erotic sci-fi movie later, even though its box office failure. During her journeys in the galaxy, Barbarella wears shinny, metallic, plastic, transparent, low-cut sexy costumes with fetish boots and except her intercourses with males and different species. In spite of complimentary elements of her physical appearance, she doesnt have any

deterministic characteristics. The movie also doesnt offers too much dialogues, substext or underlying message to the audience (Grant 2006, 110,112) Since its beginning, science-fiction movement kept its popularity by all means. However, in 70s, the genre came up with different dimensions by the new perspective of feminist literature. In these period authors as Octavia Butler, Gwyneth Jones, Suzy McKee Charnas, Pamela Sergent, Margaret Atwood, Marge Piercy and definitely Ursula K. LeGuin contributed to sic-fi by their remarkable pieces. The new wave shifted emphasis from the physical to the social sciences, radicalized notions of community, and acknowledged that science and technology can be used for dark purposes. New Wavers experimented with gender, relationships, and ideas of self as a series of constructed identities more influenced by social, political, and economic forces than by biological states. Ecofeminist science fiction boomed in the late 1960s and in the 1970s with groundbreaking works like Ursula K. Le Guins The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and Joanna Russs Female Man (1975). The effect was a shift in science fiction from hard science, the desire to portray plausibly a world in which unimagined technological advances have occurred, to soft science emphasizing the interpersonal and psychological. This explosive interest in gender construction fortuitously intersected with the ecological movement labeled ecofeminism in the 1970s (Grant 2006, 146-151). For instance, in The Left Hand of Ursula K. Leguin tells a story of a human made artificial intelligence who goes to Gethen planet. During its journey, Genly AI discovers that there is no gender difference between Gethenians. In other words, inhabitants of Gethen are sequentially hermaphroditic humans. The members of this race can be both female and male, when it is needed to monthly recreation in the period called kemmer and in other times they are sexless. Accordingly, there is no gender discrimination, sexual roles or stereotyping of sexes and throughout the story, LeGuin has aspired to reach beyond the question of What is a woman? to broader and deeper questions of What is sexuality? and What is the meaning of gender? Besides physiological differences, are there really any differences between men and women? (http://www.ucansupurge.org/ index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3597&Ite mid=81). In 80s, inspired by developments of the information age, feminist science have opened the door to this dislocation. But to fully realize its potential, the notion that the biological or material body is static and prior to the cultural constructions of gender must be abandoned. Feminist science-fiction has a prominent role on the criticism of subjectivity under the effect of sexism. It verbalizes the need of more pluralistic and heterogeneous social relationships of today and underlines the importance of having against attitude toward the tabulating and marginalizing governing powers. Depending on the first constituter of the techno science concept, feminist theoretician Donna Harawey sci-fi and cyberpunk, break the boundaries between problematic identities and the others in a supranational method. The world of cyberpunk is limitless with the chance to discover new potential worlds.
A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism,

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a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a worldchanging fiction. The international womens movements have constructed womens experience, as well as uncovered or discovered this crucial collective object. This experience is a fiction and fact of the most crucial, political kind. Liberation rests on the construction of the consciousness, the imaginative apprehension, of oppression, and so of possibility. The cyborg is a matter of fiction and lived experience that changes what counts as womens experience in the late twentieth century (Haraway 1985:31)

According to Haraways Manifesto, there is nothing about being female that naturally binds women together into a unified category. There is not even such a state as being female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices. A cyborg does not require a stable, essentialist identity, argues Haraway, and feminists should consider creating coalitions based on affinity instead of identity. What those literature suggest is a technological culture that bridges human and machine. The technoculture suggested in Haraways manifesto is a radical departure from modern understanding of the body. It foreshadows a fundamental reconfiguration of the relation of the human to nature, body to mind, individual to society, man/woman to machine. High-tech Frankenstein, as a figure for the relation of human online to machines, also intervenes in the discussion of the subject. The body online or wired unsettles pre-existing identity formations: national, gendered, ethnic, racialist, and so forth. To be sure high-tech Frankenstein might find new hierarchies and subaltern, but they will be those peculiar to the global mechanic apparatus and will, of necessity, put into question territorial identities, identities constructed through earlier media, and all previous configurations of identity. High-tech Frankenstein therefore functions as an opening to globalized, mechanic post-humanity, one who will who stare backwards at us, his/her historical ancestors, as if observing a monster (Sponsler 1992, 625,630). Significantly, bodies that have been modified are often described as polluted by technology. These transformations have given rise to the emergence of the nation of the post-human, describing the state of being simultaneously one thing another. Positioned in a liminal zone, post-human is neither male nor female, neither human nor machine, neither dead nor alive. Indeed, mutation is central to the notion of the post-human describing a human identity which is caught between the idea that the self is becoming the other then itself, and the image of that self which is being mediated by the very technology that determines it. Technology is such as Tv, film and the internet which impact on the human body, are also the vehicle for portraying that impact. The post-human body is therefore a body authored its Technologies, which is also retelling and reconfiguring what it means to be human. Consequently, the supposition and visual image of the post-human is both effect and fiction in that it is constructed as real by its representation and its theorization, while simultaneously being the product of the imaginary. The term post-human however, can appear to be an end point in which the human body is discarded as no longer 102

a viable species, as compared to organisms that have overcome their biological limitations through advanced Technologies. It seems the term trans-human, describing a transitional state in which the beings are multiple, engages with the notion of liminal personas in a more complex way as Donna Haraway suggests the prefix trans- cuts a line between nature artifice, and nature and culture. Meaning across or beyond, it implies a process and evidence of an connection. The notion of the trans-human points to a gentle transition, or even a subtle interaction between two objects, neither of which is mode obselete in the process. In this era, Haraways Cyborg Manifesto becomes a cornerstone in 1985. As a new subgenre of science fiction, Cyberpunk emerges in 80s and with this manifest Haraway declares Cyborg interpretation which is one of the most popular themes of the literature (Haraway 1991, 33-35) Parallel to Haraway works; Cyberpunk movement mounts the future of humanity in a dark, pessimistic, technophobic and apocalyptic atmosphere. From its beginning, the male dominance of the literature intertwined with cinema is explicit, but this time the difference appears in the new image of the women created by the male authors. The nature of digital technology, which relies of mental capabilities of human beings rather than their physical power, is a decisive element in Cyberpunk characterization of female figures. In line with this, Cyberpunk literature and cinema introduced a highly capable, talented, clever, challenger and technologic woman image to the audience. Hybridization of machines and human in Cyberpunk not only causes alternation and alienation, but also the disappearance of sexual roles. This metamorphosis is obvious both in Cyberpunk texts and in Cyberpunk movie images. For instance, Trinity, the female savior character of humanity in the movie The Matrix, who resembles the protagonist of Neuromancer, shows up as a totally androgynous image head to toe through her appearance. Not only Trinity but most of the protagonists of Cyberpunk tales depict unisex features with their images. This confusion of gender in Cyberpunk takes its origin from the problem of multiple identities replaced by technological. By Virtue of technological surgery, everybody can resemble each other and can be programmed with personality-based biochips that are able to supply recommendations and aid in case of need. Depending on that, a new human being can upgrade his/her talents and personality whenever he/ she wants. Moreover, individuals can also be programmed according to the needed job, talent and behavior for .the needs of socio-economical system. By contrast, the groundbreaking research of Feminist philosophers and theorists like Donna Haraway, literally new ways to think about bodies, minds, and acknowledge precisely because Cyberpunk movement puts the location of sex and gender into question. Further, Cyberpunk movement points out the closing gap between sexes in its projection of the near future, questioning the traditional role and dominance of males in the society. For instance, the main character of Idoru is a female virtual identity, and one of the main characters in Neuromancer is a female cyborg bodyguard, which exemplifies the peak of the domination of female cyborgs. As another example of this, it is important that most of the male heroes of Gibson are human whereas the female characters such

as Molly the razor girl, Angie in Neuromancer (1984) and Mona as the protagonist of Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) are modified (Idier 2000,255-257). The main argument is that the historical vital roles of males like hunting and protecting are no longer as important as in the past because in the technological society of the future, AIs and computers can restore and produce even biological functions and parts such as limbs and organs For instance, Gibsons Razor girl Molly in Neuromancer, had as remarkable an amount of surgeries as mirror shades in her eye sockets, ten double-edged, four-centimeter scalpel blades [in] housings beneath [her] burgundy nails and a jacked-up nervous system for the reflexes to go with the gear. She also carries a fair amount of silicon in her head. Through the effect of these modifications, Molly is faster, tougher, and stronger than any of the male characters in the novel and she is a techno-killer. In another saying, the female characters of Cyberpunk are quite different than present-day women and much more capable than simple human beings. The Outlook of the characters also matters in the feminine world of Cyberpunk where a strong independent female image is supported by rubber, latex, leather, metallic and shinny outfits. Most of them are good fighters and shooters who are always equipped with different kinds of technological artifacts or features (Atayman 2004, 101105). As feminist film theorist Barbara Creed reminds us, although the subject must exlude the abject, the abject must nevertheless be tolerated for that which threatens to destroy life, also helps to define life. In the case of a prosthetic limb, its addition highlights the importance of maintaining selfimage and bodily unity. The integration of the human body with its technology has thus become a benchmark for redefining the traditional humanist ideas of the human. (Creed 1993, 97-102) Cyborgs and trans-genders are two of the most potent metaphors in the theorization of the trans-human condition, for both can be described as liminal creatures. In contemporary science fiction works of 80s such as Neuromancer and Molly the imaginary fusion of the human being with cybernethics has been represented by the image of the cyborg. The cyborg body, as part human, part machine, exhibits both fragility and strength. Cyberpunk empowers women in both categories by questioning the continuity of the traditional functions of males and pointing out the disappearance of sexual roles. Even though disappearances of sexuality surfaces with the androgynous image of the main characters in Cyberpunk world, the essential factor here is the confusion of identity created by future technologies (Lee&Lam 1998, 973-977). As a result, cyberpunk not only carries out an explanation for the sexiest paradigms, but at the same time, it displays how man-made Technologies used by women to overwhelm patriarchy against males. Definitely, female approaches of the science fiction and cyberpunk are not limited with the mentioned fact, besides, the aliens and space creatures are commonly used to represent the other. Even though, the invader figures of the literature refer the communists in general, during the cold war period, they also conditionally, embody the Africans as well as women. In the current milieu, to be perceived as monstrous, or con-

sciously to construct oneself as monstrous, is to have an affinity with disorder, chaos, mutation and transformation, in an attempt to work against logic, rationality, normality, purity and science. It can often be seen as a way of both undoing and resurrecting the past and it fictions: in order to create some new forms, connections, leakages and abstractions. As Mary Shelly, the creator of Frankenstein said, Invention it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; it can give form to dark, shapeless, substance but cannot bring into being the substance itself. At the end, the science fiction and Cyberpunk do not gather the subject in an exact paradigm shift; they underline the obligation of re-thinking on the gender identities and their roles in society. Last but the not least, these future tales, point out importance of the possibility paradigm shift in near future, positively or negatively may happen by the variations of technology.

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References Atayman,Veysel. (2004). Postmodern Kurtarclar. Istanbul: Donkisot Yay. Creed, Barbara. (1993). The Monstrous- Femininne: Film, Feminism and Pschoanalysis. London: Routledge. Bronfen, Elizabeth. (1994). Revisiting the family: Mary Shellys Frankenstein in its Biographical/textual context. In Frankestein Creation and Monstrosity. Ed. Stephan Bann. London: Reaktion Books. Freud, Sigmund. (1971). The uncanny. Collected Papers,Vol 4. Authorized translation by Joan Riviere. London: The Hogarth Pres and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis. Gibson, William. (1984). Neuromancer. Newyork: Ace Books . Grant, Jennifer M. (2006). Sci-Fi Movies Facts, Figures and Fun. Hillside, London: AAPPL Artists and Photographers Press Ltd. Haraway, Donna. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs and Women: the reinvention of Nature. London: Fab. Haraway, Donna. (2006). Siborg Manifesto. Istanbul: Agora Yaynlar. Idier, Dominic. (2000). Science Fiction and Technology Scenerios: Comparing Asimovs Robots and Gibsons Cyberspace. Technology in Society 22 iinde. Newjersey: Princeton Publishing S. 255-272. Lee, G. B.& Lam S. S. K. (1998). Wicked Cities. Futures, S.30, 10, 967-979. United Kingdom: Elsevier Ltd. Shelley, Mary. (1992). Frankenstein. New York: Random House. (1816). Sponsler, Claire. (1992). Cyberpunk and the Dilemmas of Postmodern Narrative: The Example of William Gibson. Contemporary Literature, S.33, 4, 625-644. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Pres. Toker, Glen. (2007). Bilim kurguda Kadn. from http://www.ucansupurge.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3597&Itemid =81).

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The Representation of the Other in a Surreal Horror Movie:

From Hostile Confrontation to Productive Synergy between Self and Other
by Yukihide Endo, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine (Japan) cochranth@ybb.ne.jp

Introduction: The Other Within Ourselves In contemporary advanced capitalist societies, Japan included, all possible distinct personalities have been reduced to one everyman or everywoman that can be typically represented by a nameless, characterless office worker. From their subjective perspective, such anonymous people existing as mathematical variables live in safe and stable environments. They feel satisfied with their overall well-being, but their narcissistic happiness makes them sink into spiritual drowsiness and inactivity. Thus, they are willing to wear school uniforms or conform to workplace dress codes that allegedly serve to create image, identity and opportunity. Although these quality-oriented standards of perfection are ironically fulfilled in a way that denies peoples individual personalities, the people are not aware of this self-denying contradiction. While faithfully observing social norms, they are far from being suspicious of their own self-same identity. Tetsuo the Iron Man (Japan; 1989), the film on which my presentation is focused, brings to the fore the epitome of self-sameness that is brutally and cruelly challenged by a force that can be seen as a monstrous embodiment of otherness. Directed by the internationally acclaimed Japanese cult filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto, this film thematically depicts the conflict between self-same identity and its other or otherness. The films narrative develops as its protagonist is trapped and confronted by an other that is shown as originating from within the self. Images of monstrosity in the film are not at all those of total strangers; rather, these images are subconsciously acquainted with and familiar to the self from which they emerge. The Flesh-to-Metal Transformation This film portrays the transformation of human beings into something akin to steel. The fusion of flesh and metal by an unknown force turns humans into ragged robots or cyborgs moreso than scrap metal heaps. Although plot explication tends to be expected in order to help the viewer enjoy a narrative film, surreal films like this usually avoid it. The director Tsukamoto is predominantly known as a surrealist filmmaker whose works are much more visually focused than narratively oriented. As such, the films plot does not play a major role in establishing the key elements that constitute the central theme of the dissolution of the dichotomy between self (flesh) and other (metal). However, for the sake of comprehending how the film is constructed, the following synopsis is provided: In an urban community much like Tokyo, one Everyman (represented by a male office worker wearing a uniform-like business suit) encounters in a strange way a man called a male metal fetishist in a car accident. The office workers car runs over the metal fetishistand kills him. Thereafter, this ordinary person is

possessed by or obsessed with the dead metal fetishists lingering ghost, who stalks and even attacks him. His anxiety also involves another metal fetishist who is a woman with a clumsily constructed metal hand which serves as a weapon; she also assaults him. More importantly, something strange occurs within the protagonist himself. He finds that his own body begins to mutate gradually into a human-shaped metal. His mutation is extreme and devastating. For example, his penis physically transforms into a huge rotating power drill and, while having sex with his girlfriend, he kills her. The protagonist as a typical Everyman (played by Tsukamotos favorite actor Tomoro Taguchi) and the male metal fetishist (played by Tsukamoto himself) can be deemed twins because both play each others shadow or double. But they are not on equal terms because, albeit unknowingly, the protagonist abandons his everyday reality and seek his selfidentity. It should be noted here that the film begins with an emphatic visual depiction of the metal fetishist surgically implanting a metal tube into his own leg in a deranged manner. This man is obsessed with cyborgizing himself through merging with metal materials. Thus, he deserves to be called Tetsuo the Iron Man. On the other hand, when his twin brother (i.e. the protagonist, who is initially not a metal fetishist), encounters him, he begins to reveal inadvertently his own hidden identity as another metal fetishist; in other words, he also deserves the name Tetsuo the Iron Man. Their encounter turns out to be inevitable and irresistible because it enables the original metal fetishist to initiate the protagonist into a new state of existence in which the he will be able to face and accept a figure of otherness that reflects the other within the Self (himself). But his awareness of this inner lateritic necessitates sacrifice of peace and security in everyday life. A fierce duel ensues between the two men in which the original metal fetishist induces the protagonist to engage in human-to-metal mutation. Their fight results in both men merging into a strange creature made of metal. At the end of the film, the two indignantly demand that the entire world transform into metal and become thoroughly rusty and thoroughly corroded. Thus, they choose to defy the status quo of the everyday world that repudiates the concept of otherness. Dismantling the Self/Other dichotomy
a. The abject

As the protagonist undergoes a process of mutation leading to a flesh-metal hybridization, the film emphatically portrays his monstrous corporeal distortions. These images of distortions confound, disrupt and transgress the normative boundaries of not only the human body, but also of 105

humanity itself. This depiction of human corporeality as monstrous reinforces the negative perception of the body that is associated with disfigurement, defilement, deviation, or profanity. The depiction of monstrosity also illuminates the state of being marginalized and ostracized, as initially theorized by Julia Kristeva in the early 1980s. She contends:
What is abject is not my correlative, which, providing me with someone or something else as support, would allow me to be more or less detached and autonomous. The abject has only one quality of the object that of being opposed to I. If the object, however, through its opposition, settles me within the fragile texture of a desire for meaning, which, as a matter of fact, makes me ceaselessly and infinitely homologous to it, what is abject, on the contrary, the jettisoned object, is radically excluded and draws me toward the place where meaning collapses. A certain ego that merged with its master, a superego, has flatly driven it away. .It lies outside, beyond the set, and does not seem to agree to the latters rules of the game. And yet, from its place of banishment, the abject does not cease challenging its master. (Kristeva 1-2)

foreign or outlandish originates from within our very own subconscious minds. This paradox is derived from the semantic intertwining between both German words heimlich [homely] and its apparently sheer antonym unheimlich[unhomely]. Steven Schneider concisely explains how Freud constructed a theory of the uncanny.
Freud proceeds by teasing out a secondary (and to some extent contradictory) meaning of the German word heimlichconcealed; kept from sight; withheld from others so that they cannot get to know of or about ita meaning which serves to ground his alternative explanation of uncanny phenomena, according to which the uncanny is in reality nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression. [Freud 363] Or as he puts it a little later on: [T]he unheimlich is what was once heimlich, familiar; the prefix un is the token of repression. [Freud 368] To support his radical thesis, Freud traces the most prominent uncanny themes back to infantile sources. Conceptual connections are established between, for example, womb phantasies and the terrifying thought of being buried alive, the castration complex and the shocking sight of a severed limb, the instinctual compulsion to repeat and the eerie recurrence of unexpected events. (Schneider <www.othervoices. org/1.3/sschneider/monsters.html >)

At the end of this excerpt, she draws the readers attention to the persistent silent resistance of those constructed as abject and other. Noting this resistance, Christine L. Harold notes:
In this sense, the abject Other never remains at the margins; it never remains stagnant, creating stable boundaries for the self. (Harold 869)

This curious, complex and paradoxical blend of familiarity and alienation is of great importance in the theory of the uncanny. The apparent unfamiliarity or alienness of monstrous beings paradoxically reflects the presence of something vile, offensive, obnoxious or nauseating embedded deeply within us. Freud states:
In the first place, if psycho-analytic theory is correct in maintaining that every affect belonging to an emotional impulse, whatever its kind, is transformed, if it is repressed, into anxiety, then among instances of frightening things there must be one class in which the frightening element can be shown to be something repressed which recurs. This class of frightening things would then constitute the uncanny [. . .]. (Freud 363)

It is Judith Butler who furthered Kristevas concept of the abject by underlining the abjects indispensable contribution to identity formation of each individual.
This exclusionary matrix by which subjects are formed thus requires the simultaneous production of a domain of abject beings, those who are not yet subjects, but who form the constitutive outside to the domain of the subject. The abject designates here precisely those unlivable and uninhabitable zones of social life which are nevertheless densely populated by those who do not enjoy the status of the subject, but whose living under the sign of the unlivable is required to circumscribe the domain of the subject. This zone of uninhabitability will constitute the defining limit of the subjects domain; it will constitute that site of dreaded identification against which and by virtue of which the domain of the subject will circumscribe its own claim to autonomy to life. In this sense, then, the subject is constituted through the force of exclusion and abjection, one which produces a constitutive outside to the subject, an abjected outside, which is, after all, inside the subject as its own founding repudiation. (Butler 3)

He brings to the fore the return of the repressed (Freud 363) within ourselves when it emerges in the guise of the abject and monstrous other. The Origins of the Other
a. The

Other originating from within ourselves

Harolds paraphrasing succinctly captures the main thrust of this passage. According to Harold, Butler argues that the abject constitutes an integral part of the vital subject, serving as a force of identity formation and reformation (870). Thus, the abject beings -- i.e. the protagonist and his double in Tetsuo the Iron Man -- that are characterized as unbearably hideous and monstrous can play a crucial role in the protagonists exploration of his new identity through his encounter with the other within himself.
b.

theorized by

The monstrous Other as an embodiment of the uncanny Freud

When conceptualizing the term the uncanny, Freud theorized that in psychoanalysis something alien, exotic, 106

In Strangers, Gods and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness (2003), Richard Kearney, an American specialist in the philosophy of religion, has explored the ways in which humanity, divinity and monstrosity are constructed literally, culturally and socially, and how these three concepts are intertwined and interact with one another. Through his exploration, he intends to achieve reconciliation between sameness and otherness for the sake of peace in the global community. Kearneys book elaborately demonstrates th significance of perceiving and comprehending the other, which not only resides deep within ourselves, but which also lays beyond ourselves. Kearney argues that strangers are both within us and beyond us (229). He denounces wo sorts of essentialist perceptions of the other as being completel external, and as a reflection of subconscious desire and anxiety, respectively. Despite his emphasis on both loci, however, he is inclined to focus more on the other outside ourselves than the one within.

Perhaps this is because, as his specialty suggests, his maiconcern lies with reducing and terminating the violent conflicts and confrontations that are taking place in various parts of the world. In the conclusion of the book he writes:
It may be that we find more of ourselves than we lose in befriending those monsters that are ultimately neither fremd [alien or outlandish] nor foe, embracing the strangers in ourselves and others. For such mindfulness brings peace and transfigures fear. (232)

But Tetsuo the Iron Man does not take issue with Kearney; instead, it implies that the abject other, in the form of a flesh-metal hybrid monster, originates exclusively from within ourselves. In other words, although unaware, each individual is accompanied by its own other in such a way that both mutually serve as their own double.
b. A significant communality underlying isolated selves, each of which has encountered the other

zation as a social phenomenon. Set during the space age in a not-so-distant future, the story centers on a mysterious amalgamation of human and metal spreading throughout the earth following the return of a spacecraft which was exploring Io, a moon of Jupiter. The story indicates that the civilization, having excessiviely developed for te benefit of egoistic human settlers on Io, could not help but hybridize with huge cybernetic machines made of metal. Consequently, there emerged on this planet a great number of anomalous or amorphous human-metal hybrids which hybridized as an attempt to survive the devastating change to their living environment, and thus avoid complete annihilation of humans. This seems to be an extreme version of cyborgization. It is suggested in the film that this situation helped to engender a virus that causes humans to merge with metals, and that all the crew members of the spacecraft were infected with this particular virus. An interesting similarity exists between these two pieces of art. Although Tsukamoto has not publicly admitted that Morohoshis The City Inhabited by a Growing Number of a New Human Species influenced Tetsuo, both artists at least share the same social and cultural milieu of Japan and the world. This could be true despite the fact that A New Human Species preceded Tetsuo by fifteen years. Also, another analogy can be noted among the following different genres. Some critics and readers have argued that Morohoshi might have been inspired by J. G. Ballards The Crystal World (1966) which depicts the mysterious process of crystallization of living things permeating in the African jungle. It is not important who influences whom, because the point at issue here is not a mechanical description of the cause and effect relationship, but rather how these three literary and visual artists pursue or have pursued their individual creativity by drawing inspiration from the 1960s and 1970s avant-garde perspectives on humanity shared one way or another by them. The imaginative messages from their characteristically individualistic perspectives intersect and reinforce each other, and demonstrate that their artistic creativity is so provocative as to be considered not only postmodern, but also posthuman because of their outrageous perception and depiction of humanity. Their works challenge, each in its own way, the widely accepted notion of a unified, uniformed selfhood. These works defiantly suggest the fragility and unreliability of all these notions. In this context, the crucial issue is one of the other because it challenges and subverts preconceptions regarding the representation of the self. Tsukamotos surreal representation ster: the aesthetics of monstrosity
of the

The psychoanalytical approach adopted thus far tends to define the interconnectedness between the self and the other within the confines of the inner world of the individual. This exclusory focus on realms of the human unconscious has created a feeling of claustrophobia in psychoanalysts. Therefore, although it is widely accepted that Freudian psychoanalysis has contributed to the intellectual world of the 20th century and beyond, a few whole-heartedly eulogize Freudian psychoanalysis. For instance, in his book review, Peter D. Kramer:s Freud: Inventor of the Modern Mind (2006) Nassir Ghaemi points out the limitations of psychoanalysis. He writes:
. . . [Marx] was a brilliant thinker too, with many useful ideas, which, like those of Freud, have become incorporated into modern thought. Yet as it would be folly to pretend that economics (or even part of it) can be replaced by Marxism, so it is folly to think that most (or even part) of psychiatry (or psychology) can be reduced to psychoanalysis. Few self-respecting economists believe the first lie; many psychoanalysts still seem to believe the second. (Ghaemi, unpaged)

After being isolated from its social context, the human unconscious mind that gives rise to the other should be socially contextualized so that we can gain new insights or perspectives on humanity. Here, it should be noted that the other depicted as a monster in the film can be placed against the cultural background in which the young Tsukamoto was raised. He grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, during a time when youth challenged the older generations modernist predilection for systematizedness, completeness, and comprehensiveness. Thus, he is not an exception in conceiving the idea of a flesh-metal hybrid and expressing it as art. There is a precursor for Tsukamotos provocative imagination. The manganot anime but comic stripsartist Daijir Morohoshi, who is eleven years his senior. One of Morohoshis earliest works, the sci-fi comic A New Human Species (1974), commanded critical attention in Japan and Morohoshi has now become an internationally recognized manga artist. It is The City Inhabited by a Growing Number of a New Human Species (1974; originally titled Seibutsu Toshi) that introduced the concept of flesh-metal hybridi-

Other

as a mon-

After being completely transformed into a flesh-metal hybrid monster, the protagonist is shown as a misshapen monstrosity that looks like an assembly of tumor-ridden lumps. This portrayal seems to bespeak the hidden vileness of humanity. Obviously, however, the film is not a medical documentary that depicts abnormalities and anomalies, but a vigorous attempt to open up new dimensions of artistic exploration in which Tsukamoto and his viewers can delve into the depths of their selfhood. In this exploration, Tsukamoto intuitively perceives the interconnectedness between self and other. He also senses that the other is characterized by extraordinariness and could possibly impress one with 107

wondrous features that are awesomely and miraculously beautiful if, and only if, one could survive the shocking encounter with the other having the ugly or frightening appearance of a monster. This surrealistic sensitivity of the film director is in line with traditional Surrealism. Alexander Kozin briefly describes one of the Surrealist tenets; that is, surreal beauty defined as being marvelous:
In opposition to the bankrupt values of the petite bourgeoisie that feared everything that is wondrous, surrealism offered the rediscovery of the wonder in the abnormal in the sense of the most surreal. At the same time, this very surreality should never leave reality; it should reside in reality itself and will be neither superior nor exterior to it. According to Breton (1936), The marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful; indeed, nothing but the marvelous is beautiful (p. 9). The search for the beautiful involved initially incompatible objects, states, and events. Taken outside of their respective nexuses of meaningfulness and recombined in new states, meant to explode the solid mundane go of the world, on the one hand, and create an insight into the world before the socialized formulae. (Kozin 474)

The French Surrealists sought to be ragingly avant-garde and defiantly alternative in the way they conceived and created works of literary and visual arts. Although distant in time and space, Tsukamoto made full use of his surreal sensitivity to what lies behind monstrosity and created Tetsuo. Thus, both Breton and Tsukamoto have some communality in the expression of aesthetic properties. In this film, Tsukamoto chooses to depict the other with whom the protagonist has an encounter in order for him to dive into himself or, simplistically speaking, know himself better. But this awareness requires extremely violent force so as to cross the barriers of mundane existence that stifle and silence those who challenge the safety and serenity of mundaneness. The revelation of the depths of the self that the protagonist seeks thus involves and necessitates the violent force provoked by monstrosity. Conclusion While the self remains self-sufficient or self-complacent, it continues to exclude and alienate anything outside of it. More often than not, the self is confined to the closet of subjectivity and stays unaware of, and even ignores, the presence of the non-self, i.e. the other. Yet an enhancement of sensibility for and sensitivity to the interconnectedness between self and other encourages us to explore new dimensions in recognizing ourselves in relation to other people. It should be noted, however, that we need to face --and overcome-- the psychological barrier know as the non-self (the other). This opponent is extremely hard to tackle. Tsukamotos Tetsuo portrays this other as a horrible and wondrous monster in order to emphasize the sheer difficulty in challenging and productively interacting with the other. It is this encounter with the other that paves the way not only to the enhancement of individual selfhood, but also to that of social relationships through constructive interaction with this other.
Reference Butler, Judith. (1993). Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge. Freud, Sigmund. (1990) The Uncanny, in The Penguin Freud Library Volume 14: Art and Literature, trans. and ed. James Strachey. London: Penguin. Ghaem, Nassir. (2007). Freud: Inventor of the Modern Mind. Metapsychology 11.49. 21 Dec. 2009 < h t t p : / / m e t a p s y c h o l o g y. m e n t a l h e l p . n e t / p o c / v i e w _ d o c . php?type=book&id=3954> Harold, Christine L. (2003). Rhetorical Function of the Abject Body: Transgressive Corporeality in Trainspotting, in Journal of Advanced Composition 20 (2000): 86581. <]www.jacweb.org/Archived_volumes/.../ JACV20_4_Harold.pdf > Kearney, Richard. Stangers, Gods and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness. New York: Routledge. Kozin, Alexander. (2007). The Uncanny Body: from Medical to Aesthetic Abnormality. Janus Head 9.2: 463-484. 23 Dec. 2009 <http://www.janushead.org/9-2/index.cfm > Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror. New York: Columbia UP , 1982. Moroshoshi, Daijir. (1983). The City Inhabited by a Growing Number of a New Human Species (Seibutsu Toshi). Published in the weekly magazine, Shne Jampu. Tokyo: Kdansha, 1974. Also collected in the anthology, The Japans Best Sci-Fi Novels of the Year 1974 (1974nen Nihon SF Besuto Shsei), ed. Yasutaka Tsutsui. Tokyo: Tokuma Shuppan. Schneider, Steven. Monsters as (Uncanny) Metaphors: Freud, Lakoff, and the Representation of Monstrosity in Cinematic Horror. Other Voices, 1-3 (January 1999). Also available online: 20 Dec. 2009 <http://www.othervoices.org/1.3/sschneider/monsters.html#Note_24>.

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Living Viral Tattoos? Crisis Alert!

Tagny Duff tagny3@sympatico.ca

When we humans walk in a city, run through the halls of a busy airport, roll through a bus terminal or a train station, we are traveling through not only streets, hallways and stairs, but through microbes. Viruses, bacteria, yeast float in air, in walls, in moving human bodies. We move these microbes, just as they move us. The limitations of barriers and borders are not clear, if they exist at all. We move with an interkingdom of unnatural participationsi. Unnatural participations occur when nature acts against itself. Epidemics, contagious diseases, strange couplings and anomalous events modify assemblages. The unnatural creates movement disturbing the order of things, classification systems and the equilibrium of filiation. Such movement roams through instability, the what will have beenii. Humans exist in a precarious relationship with the microscopic interkingdom. We try to defend our bodies against attack from unnatural co-minglings. We try to maintain an equilibrium. Germs are disinfected. Aseptic technique destroys all potential contaminants. Humans constrict border passages to control the flow of bodies, successfully or unsuccessfully controlling the growth of microbial populations to maintain the equilibrium of the human population. This creates new forms and conditions: such as super bugs, new strains of infectious diseases, all contributing to the conditions of far-from equilibrium: crisis. Crisis is an unstable status, a phase change, a turning point, a moment of change where the outcome is unknown, but perceived to have negative consequences. Crisis signals a major shift, both productive as growth and potentially destructive. In many ways, what humans perceive of as crisis, such as pandemic, may be productive of evolutionary growth of bacteria and microbial entities. The growth of bacteria may be catastrophic for the human population but is also a continuation of genetic modification of life forms on the planet, a process that has been ongoing for four billion years. Crisis and unnatural participations The crisis of humanity is articulated in multiple narratives of catastrophe. One such narrative reoccurring in the 20th and 21st century is the story of alien invasion or the takeover of human life by robots and other cybernetic creatures of war. The fantasy of humans battling it out with machines only to end in catastrophic tragedy for the human race is still with us, but it is shifting. Popular films such as The Terminator/Robocop (1994), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1959, 1993), Metropolis (1927) illustrate such narratives. The recent popular American television series Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009) reflects a change in attitude towards 112

cyborg clones and machines. Relationships between humans and the cyborg clones (the Cylons), while fraught with antagonism, war and violence, are also implicated within complex and ambiguous moments of allegiance and love. As humans gain more confidence and mastery with digital and electronic networks and gadgets, the idea of humanmachine interminglings becomes more acceptable. The human is more at ease with electronic and digital vibrations, voices and faces that we now hold in our hands, our heads and our flesh, bones and blood with everything from iPods, PDA`s, laptops, pacemakers,etc. The augmentation and merger between human and machine is no longer a serious threat; no longer a crisis. The crisis has shifted to the unseen; the undead virus that moves through air, cellular matrix, unprotected data, and unprotected flesh. It is in the hidden cell of a terrorist network; the bacteria that mutates and exceeds the capacities of antibiotics; and the yeast that proliferates in the gut. The human, just as other animals, plants and microbes, is faced with the reality of sharing bodies; loose, wet and amorphous cells moving within the world. Given the openness of bodies to exchange materials, forces and relations, the affect of unnatural participations- so necessary to the ongoing movements and evolution of bodies- is for the most part, unknown. It is the unknown, these unseen co-minglings through the holes in bodies that generate both fascination and fear. In 1890 Robert Koch published the four postulates establishing a method for evaluating causal relations between microbes and diseases. As a result a new technique isolating humans from microscopic pathogens was applied. Koch`s postulates proved the scientific validity of Germ Theory, establishing the currently held belief that microorganisms cause disease. Aseptic technique developed in the mid 20th century, is now routinely used to kill unseen microbes and prevent infection. Such a practice attempts to prevent the crisis of fever, illness and death. Insecurity around human capability to control the microcosm is the current preoccupation of global crisis. Viruses, more than other infectious microbes are at the forefront of the crisis: be that of the so-called global economic crisis or the H1N1 pandemiciii. Both crises, not coincidentally occurring simultaneously, are reflective of the deeply intertwined relation between bodily health and global economic health. Faster computer processing and newly developed bioinformatic technologies are applied to control and monitor the flow of bodies. Aseptic technique is replaced by thermal scanners at airports, CCTV systems, and GPS tracking devices. The increasing focus on prevention of pandemic and economic health preemptively assumes crisis and catastro-

phe. This generates a call for action and mobilization. Borders are strengthened, quarantine is enforced, and currency fluctuates. The expectation of the invasion of viruses and virulent microbes loomsiv, just as Y2K generated a hysterical expectation of the impending disaster of a global computer meltdown. Viruses: the unnatural shapeshifters The ability of viruses to wreak havoc in genomic structures, computer algorithms and health is on the forefront of global media news. They are shapeshifters in the sense that viruses move and create change through contagion. In the life sciences, viruses are not classified as lifeforms until they infect a host cell. There is much debate about the vitality of RNA and DNA strands, the molecular structure of viruses, as scientists now frequently construct synthetic viruses in the lab and use them to deliver genes to specific parts of cellular targets. Viruses remind us that there is something more than the code of life based on the presupposition that life operates similarly to a computational algorithm, without falling into vitalist position that privileges cellular life above all else. Synthetic biological viruses are, in fact, exemplary of living entities that challenge assumptions of life and liveness, provoking a reconsideration of the interrelation between digital and biological life and biodigital media. As Eugene Thacker argues, bioinformatics, the convergence of digital, biological and computational media, now exceeds the analog-digital dividev. The division between biological life and computational algorithms is not so clear with the proliferation of ubiquitous wireless networking and supercomputing. For example, synthetic viruses are custom-designed in DNA sequencing databases with computer software such as BLAST. The sequencing forms the recipe for recombining DNA plasmids. These plasmids are inserted into living cells and tissue, becoming wet-ware for gene therapy and other aspects of experimental laboratory and medical science. These viruses transgress the division between organic and artificial, living and dead, provoking questions around current cultural and symbolic associations with the viral and technology.vi Viruses are the remixers of human genetic variation, they are the creators of the human cellular mashup well before Web 2.0 emerged with such an ideal. They take from various cellular matrices and remix them. They transverse species under the appropriate circumstances. (They know no copyright or ownership of genes). Scientists estimate that up to eighty percent of unknown human genome called junk DNA are viral entities that are not as of yet, understood and classified. In other words, viruses have as huge a role to play in the growth and development of life (and bodies) as they do in altering genetic material aiding in its destruction. They interact with circumstances and environments, responding to, as they generate forces of movement. Viruses have been remixing genes for billions of years with the collaboration of environmental forces, the impersonal growth of the planet and universe. Microbes and synthetic cloned entities and chimeras comingle in bodies and the environment, as they do in laboratory science and the representation in visual media and

popular culture. They are part of the technological assemblage. As artists begin to apply knowledge and technology from the life sciences and microbiology, it is necessary to confront the fear of crisis and catastrophe currently circulating around the artistic presentation of unnatural participations, as it is in the global hype around viral pandemics. The artist working with the public display of unnatural participations. The artist who works with life and art, biomedia or biological material cannot avoid engaging in this perception of crisis and disaster at this moment in time. The paranoia and fear around biological media is often mistakenly associated with bioterrorism (Critical Art Ensemble 2009). The assumption that such biological materials are biohazardous, dangerous and difficult to handle can supercede the realities of public health and environmental risks. Ultimately, the concern for public safety and media controversy over the public display of such unnatural participations between lifeforms and materials, such as transgenic, synthetic, clones entities, may prevent the public display of such work, even if no such actual threat. The following case study explores such a situation. Living Viral Tattoos. For the last three years I have worked with biological synthetic virus and human tissue as artistic material towards the production of various performances, videos, sculptures and installations. Living Viral Tattoos (2008) is a sculptural project that has raised many concerns around the nature of biological material and public safety as discussed previously in this text. Living Viral Tattoos is a series of sculptures made of human and pig skin and biological synthetic virus. The sculptures were made in vitro in a science laboratory. The synthetic virus called Lentivirus, a derivative of HIV strain 1, was placed on donated human skin (waste tissue from surgery) so that transfection and contagion would occur at the cellular level. They were living sculptures for the duration of approximately five hours, before they were fixed (killed). Once the cells were no longer alive, a staining process was conducted to visualize antibody reactions to antigens created by cellular bonds. The areas on the skin that were transfected by the viral host cells then appeared bluish/brown. This scientific process was intentionally appropriated to visualize viral tattoos in the form of bruises. Once the visualization of colour was completed, the sculptures were placed in jars of paraformaldehyde for a year and then moved into PBS. The virus, cells and tissue are inert now and the biomaterial reveals areas of bluish brownish stains. Theoretically speaking, the work is no longer living as a biological entity, as the tissue no longer has a metabolism. The sculptures pose no health risk. The metabolically inert material cannot replicate or infect. It is more sterile and less dangerous than a human cough. The sculptures are easily displayed on a shelf in a gallery, on the desktop in my office, in the display case of a science centre. 113

Yet, it is technically possible to consider these biologically dead cells and viruses undead. For example, we could take RNA or DNA samples from the tissue, find the structural pattern, and replicate the viral clone with recombinant DNA at a later point in time. The symbolic associations humans attach to preserved flesh also contributes to a suspended notion of liveness: a suspended mode of phase change that can be revitalized at a later time either through the image, the genetic or biological structural form. The work speaks to the unnatural participations applied in biotechnology; particularly in tissue culture engineering of viruses, mammalian, plant and microbial bodies. Such co-minglings are productive of a continuing relation of movement across species, shifting the stability of temporal and spatial horizons. The couplings in this work are multiple: cross filiations not usually experienced in the material manifestation of art. Pig, human, HIV virus, cell lines, artist, scientist, plastic surgeon, art gallery, media festival, science laboratory, computer algorithms, biotech companies intermingle in unexpected assemblages that counteract filiation of genre, species and logic. A living viral tattoo? Not possible. Yet manifested. This strangeness triggers deeply held societal fears around the potential for these technologies to contribute to both regeneration of the body and extend its current lifespan and/or to create a catastrophic accident. The exhibition of Living Viral Tattoos as crisis In many cases, art works crossing into the threshold of the unnatural are prevented from entering the arena of reflection and discourse for fear of crisis. This is explored in the following situation that arose around the presentation and eventual cancellation of an art installation Living Viral Tattoos. This work was selected by a jury for the International Symposium for Electronic Art (ISEA) in 2009 under the Posthumanism stream. After receiving a notice of this acceptance and proceeding with the necessary precautionary protocols for shipping and displaying the work, I was told that the work could not be exhibited. In an attempt to prevent an accident or public reaction around the work, the exhibition of Living Viral Tattoos was cancelled by the Ormeau Baths gallery in Belfast, and later by the organizers of the festival. This cancellation ironically made the work exemplary of the panel description of posthumanism, which is: manifested through a range of biopolitical events, along with an aesthetic staging of bioethical encounters [that] ruptures the polarized views of bioconservatism and technoprogressivism, provoking a series of conflicts that demand multi-layered conceptual apparatus to unravel.vii The cancellation of the Living Viral Tattoos illuminated the fluctuating views of bioconservatism seen in the reaction to the material manifestation of unnatural participations of viruses, human tissue and cells. It also reveals how technoprogressive ideologies that in theory support the exhibition of biosynthetic materials may be inadequate for practical matters such as providing necessary resources for exhibiting biological art works. In other words the rhetoric of the event supported theorizing the posthuman, while the concrete application of these questions the use of biological material - is currently not supported. This concrete lack of 114

support may be due to lack of resources, skills and interest necessary to accommodate such biological materials within an artistic context. The details of the works cancellation are noteworthy in that they exemplify the current state of such lack of resources and at times, irrational concern for public safety. Such reflections upon the process and details are useful and productive. The intention here is to consider how the cancellation of the work may be used as a case study for assisting in the exhibition of biological works in the future, and to contemplate some issues specific to biomateriality and bioflow in art today. This reflection acknowledges and recognizes the difficulties and tremendous personal efforts of the organizers to address these issues and concerns. The main reason given for the cancellation of the work was the concern of introducing biohazardous materials into the gallery. Originally the sculptures were in low volumes of paraformaldehyde, which is a chemical substance classified as biohazardous, although it is frequently used for display of specimens in science museums. However, the organizers were notified on two separate occasions that the sculptures had been moved to phosphate buffered saline (a non-toxic solution) for the exhibition context, removing any kind of biohazardous material or substance. What resulted was a confusion about the meaning of biohazard as it is applied to biomedia and its display in an artistic context. At the time the first cases of H1N1 had appeared in Northern Ireland and the UK, adding to the climate of uncertainty. The focus on transmission of contagion found in public service announcements, airport signage, and border crossing at the time added to the anxiety around biohazardous materials.viii As Critical Art Ensemble wrote recently hyperstimulating the imaginary of individuals with fears of a loss of bodily integrity is one of capitals most common energizing spectacles.ix Biohazard becomes synonymous with bioparanoia where all forms of biomaterial are suspect for transmitting dangerous substances, even when no reasonable threat exists. The first sign of concern around the issue of biohazard occurred a month before the exhibition, when the board of the Ormeau Baths Gallery informed the festival organizers that the work would not be exhibited. I was told it was on the grounds of safety and insurance issues. When I offered to provide more information regarding the safety of the work, I was told not to contact the gallery. To the credit of the ISEA organizers, they attempted to resituate the work at the University of Ulster. However, this was not to be. The most glaring issue arose when the university researchers, having spoken to the UK Human Tissue Authority, were told that they needed a license to show the work which would take months to obtain. I immediately responded by telling the organizers that there was a mistake. The Human Tissue Act 2004 (covering Northern Ireland) states that licenses to publicly display human tissue are required for materials obtained from deceased human bodies only. The Living Viral Tattoos sculptures contain skin donated consensually from a living human donor with the expressed understanding that it would be used in an exhibition context. Therefore, the sculptures do not require a

license under UK law. This was later confirmed by the tissue license officerx. Despite all this, with an invitation to show the work, the shipping arrangements confirmed, and a plane ticket about to be purchased, my participation in the show was canceled. The artist, scientist, and/or amateur enthusiast working with biomedia becomes the focus of debate, and responsible for all risk analysis. In this particular case, most of the preparation for the exhibition involved obtaining forms to legitimate the production and display of the work. Like other scientists and researchers, in order to make the work, I also had to pursue multiple streams of official ethical approval before the work could begin.xi No matter how many ethics approvals, discussions and explications about the nature of the work; the focus returns to concern for safety. Will the audience be physically and emotionally safe? Will the donor of the tissue be protected? In a crisis-prone society, worst case scenarios are the norm and every possible preparation to prevent accidents is in place. The reality is that despite the best of intentions and most thorough of preparations, the artist can insure and foresee only so much in relation to basic safety. For gallery directors, organizers, artists, administrators etc., to assume the entire responsibility for the safety of public audiences may censor the publics right to encounter the work. Is the audience not also partially responsible for their own participation and conduct within the exchange of ideas? The art world is not immune to the increasing scrutiny and surveillance of global bioflow, particularly because it is embedded within government, industry and private funding policies and economic agendas As such, the art world (and those of us included in its orbit) wittingly and unwittingly enact preemptive security measures. Towards visions of unnatural participations: Despite the growing prevalence and striation of regulations upon bioflow across national borders, international travel routes and artistic venues, there is also an increased mobility across various strata. Humans with access to internet and telecommunications technology communicate through digital networks with greater ease than ever before. Bioflow navigates through the unnatural participation of biological and digital bodies. Such movement creates new configurations of shape, temperature, materials, speed, and scale often exceeding the striation of biocontrol. The movement that occurs in the excess of biocontrol can be perceived as a worlding of human-animals, microorganisms and viruses where contagion is not crisis, not disaster; but desired, valued as a mode of intermingling. We do not have to look very far to see such worldings. Transgenic, chimeric couplings can be seen in the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch. His paintings of sexual and ecstatic unions across species are rendered mere years after the dark moments of the Black Plague, (The Bubonic Plague). These works remind humans of the interconnection with forces of life beyond the human. Impure. Unholy unions. Fantastic and brutal. Within such interminglings contagion is a crisis that is lived and experienced. Although Bosch painted scenes to depict the evil perils of carnal desires such renderings reveal the worship of the haeccity of unnatural partici-

pations. These forces are embodied in the merger of nonhuman entities with the human-animal, chimeric beasts, and uncanny scales of bodies. When poet William Burroughs spoke about the word as a virus, he meant that ideas produce strange couplings that break the stability of established ground. The past moves through the future. What has been written and thought can be contaminated, made impure and contagious. For Burroughs, this contagion is necessary in order to recreate what is known to the unknown. From this point of view the word is transgenic. It has shapeshifted through space-time across the page, through breath of mouths living and undead, in strange soundings that are no longer recognizable. When performance artist Kira OReilly takes the corpse of a pigxii, climbs inside it, strokes it, or sleeps with a living pig next to her naked body, she is creating an unnatural participation that can only be understood as caring for viruses, cells, blood and everything that is the pig. Becoming pig is embodied as a high form of unnatural participation. When I grow and mix Lentivirus, RFP, with HaCat cells, human breast tissue, pig skin purchased from the butcher, I am willingly existing within an unnatural participation across species, organic, synthetic, living and undead entities. This is a frightening activity. This remixing of bodies implicates my own body as part of a technological assemblage that is not objective, contained or controlled. This is the hidden underbelly of science. Unnatural participations are the unspoken norm. These strange materials and articulations that I find myself growing in an incubator, a sterile hood and an artistic context is the amplification of technological assemblages. The landscape of these co-minglings requires a shift in point of view. This is a necessary leap if the new assemblages of bodies across biodigital networks are to be thought, experienced and generated. Imagine this scenario as a durational performance occurring across microscopic ecologies: Cells mate with bacteria and swim through the blood of pig and human. Colonies of bacteria proliferate and overtake the cells causing an explosive break and spill. Toxic waste streams through plasma while synthetic antibodies push down quickly through a metallic tunnel. X-rays illuminate the shape of bones creating pathways for migrating viral host cells. Buds multiply on the circumference of the porous surface of a cell and release. They float and attach themselves on the next cell, and insert a portion of their surface. They start to slow down. The temperature cools until they are frozen. The cells slowly move again. New cells circulate around them. The bacteria is gone. The plasma is cleaner, less cellular waste floods the channels. Human muscle cells collect with, pig, bird, and rabbit antibodies. The cells hold a gene from a firefly, chemical particles from battery acid, and mitochondria busily eating away at cellular debris. This performance is occurring and will have occurred in most laboratories in universities, biotech companies, in some cases, the amateur scientists basement. It will have been occurring in the environment of the human-pig body 115

across larger spans of time than accounted for in human history. Contagion moves these unnatural participations. Such movements are impersonal. This does not insinuate that, as humans, we cannot be moved by fear and crisis of contagion. From a certain point of view crisis is a reflection of necessary and desired phase change for health and evolution. From another, it is a human experience of illness, death, and poverty. All of these points of view are conjoined. The point here is to acknowledge the place of contagion and the viral as a rich intermingling of potential. It is also to acknowledge the tendency, at this juncture in time, to emphasizes catastrophe and impending crisis for the humananimal and its technological assemblage with machines and microbes.

Acknowledgements I am borrowing from the term explored in A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Translated Brian Massumi. University of Minnesota Press. 1987. Unnatural participations or nuptials are the true Nature spanning kingdoms of nature. Propagation by epidemic, by contagion, has nothing to do with filiation by heredity, even if the two themes intermingle and require each other.(241).
1 2

By this I mean the potentiality and indeterminability of events.

In January 2010, the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, made up of 47 countries that work to protect human rights are holding a conference titled: Faked pandemics: a threat to health. This debate considers the role of pharmaceutical companies and WHO officials in overstating the threat of H1N1.
3

The WHO has likened the H1N1 viral epidemic to the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918.
4

Thacker, E. (2005). The global genome: Biotechnology, politics and culture. MIT.
5

This does not suggest that viruses transcend such division. Viral movement is situational and implicated by the environmental specificity of its host.
6 7

Quote is taken from the ISEA website, www.isea.org

One of the organizers mentioned that it was important that we be culturally sensitive towards the Irish and the devastation of the mad cow disease (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy) on the agriculture industry. The wish to minimize the potential for accident, in this an accident not possible to occur given the material and context, is expressed in such a concern.
8

Ed Costa B., Philips K. (2008) Critical art ensemble from tactical biopolitics. art. activism and technoscience. Cambridge, MAMIT Press
9

A member of the jury committee contacted the Human Tissue Authority to inquire about the issue and was given the contradictory information.
10

The project received ethical approval from Human Ethics and Biosafety committees from both Concordia University and University of Western Australia. The process took approximately six months between submitting the applications and receiving approval to begin working on the project.
11 12

116

From the performance Inthewrongplaceness (2005).

Clash of the Brainwaves:

A Cyber Musical Duet Between a Plant and a Human Being
Bugra Karabey METU Informatics Institute b.karabey@ieee.org

Abstract Brain-computer music interfaces have been investigated and utilized in numerous studies. Also the synthesis of music by a plant has been envisioned and performed within a few works including our previous work Cry of Nature. In this previous study the bioelectric potential differences on a plant have been used to generate/compose music. Within Clash of the Brain Waves, a joint effort between a plant (via its bioelectric potential changes) and a human being (through the brainwaves) will be utilized in generating/ composing music in an interactive format as a duet or a jam session between the plant and the mankind. Computer domain and the relevant software will act as the catalyst and a melting pot for this interaction. Keywords: Bio-art, plant-computer interaction, brain, computer musical interface, plant-human-computer art 1. Introduction In previous Brain Computer Musical Interface (BCMI) applications, different means were utilized to map the Electroencephalogram (EEG)s with the music synthesis process. Not only the EEGs but also electromyogram (EMG)s (muscle tension), blood pressure measurements, skin conductivity, heart rate, temperature and respiration rates have been embedded into the process. In most of these cases customized sensors have been used. However recently there emerged commercially off the shelf available tools for brainwave analysis that offers the readings of neuronal discharges in the brain, that is alpha and beta brainwaves, electrooculogram components (the positional differential between the front of the retina and the retinal pigmented epithelium which changes relative to the eye orientation) and electromyograms (the neuromuscular signals along with the electrical discharges resulting from the depolarization of the muscle cells). So using such an interface for the human part of the duet and utilizing our already available plant-computer interface from our previous works we will come up with a musical jam session environment between the plant and the human being. In the Clash of the Brainwaves the inputs from the plant and the human being will be utilized within a generative music platform based upon probabilistic music generation platform Noatikl and Max/ MSP patches, to come up with novel melodies by this peculiar pair of beings. 2. Related work 2.1 Bioelectric potential activities within plants, their measurement and prior usage for musical activities

Bioelectric potential differences within plants are the result of the ion concentration differences between inside and outside plant cells. Analysis of the plant bioelectric potentials for communication with human beings have been proposed and in such studies the effect of temperature, humidity, light or human touch to the plants electrical properties have been documented [1], Even the existence of a human being in the vicinity of a plant effects this potential change [2]. Versatile probe designs exist in some studies and using such tools bioelectric potential changes in the range of tens of millivolts have been measured (for a jute plant between minus 18 mV to +40 mV) [3]. Also within [4] extracellular electrodes have been suggested with the note that although the piercing electrodes inflict damage (thus short term potential activity just due to this reason) these effects are temporary and these probes can be used for days and even weeks (which we opted to use for our work). Although there is no nerve structure within plants [5], within vascular plants the xylem and phloem tissues may be considered as transmission mechanisms for ions and thus result in potential changes and act like nervelike structures. In the past there exists studies on robotic interfaces driven by a plant [6], and also plant based data has been utilized as a basis for generating music, however in an offline (not realtime) manner by using the pre-recorded data [7]. Some other artists utilized plant bioelectricity for visual interactive installations [8]. Also as was mentioned in [9] Mamoru Fujieda wired up plants using a Plantron interface and further mapped the measurements into MIDI and finally to musical scores. Afterwards these scores (of offline plant bioelectric measurements) were performed by ensembles and recorded and published as CDs. John Lifton also wired six large plants using the legacy Altair 8800 computer for the installation Green Music. Further this setup was used by Richard Lowenberg for a short film in which human and plant biosignals create music simultaneously but within a disjoint context. We believe our approach presents a novel musical pursuit based upon the realtime interaction between the plant and the environment, and most importantly within a computer/software environment that act as the melting pot and/or the middleware for these two different species. 2.2 Brain computer musical interfaces Human brainwaves were first measured in 1924 by Hans Berger [10]. Although these results were not utilized for nearly a decade, in 1934 a paper backed up by Bergers results was published in the Brain Journal [11]. First usage of brainwaves within a musical context was by Alvin Lucier in 1965 with his composition Music for the Solo Performer. 117

Richard Teitelbaum a member of the Italian electronic music group Musica Elettronica Viva used both EEG (electroencephalogram) and EKG (electrocardiogram) signals to control electronic music synthesis. David Rosenboom was also one of the pioneers of brain musical interfaces and within his Laboratory of Experimental Aesthetics he has devised various methods to utilize brainwaves for musical purposes and has written papers and even books [12], and produced an album called Brainwave Music. Work of Jacques Vidal (though not within a musical context) was also influential in brain computer interface systems [13]. After the 1970s numerous artists utilized brainwaves for musical purposes; a Montreal group made up of Pierre Droste, Andrew Culver and Charles de Mestral, Atau Tanaka who used the Biomuse that integrates the muscle movements (EMG) and eye movement (EOG) to the process Brouse and Miranda with their numerous works (BCMI Piano and others) [14] [15] and also Janez Jan!a who developed Brainscore and led the project Brainloop. Even an underwater brain concert has been performed during the ICMC 2007 using an electroencephalophone. 3. Clash of the brainwaves Within our work Clash of the Brainwaves, we have envisioned to come up with a platform that enables a plant (or plants) to combine their musical efforts with a human being and namely his brainwaves. Our platform will act as a melting pot and will catalyse the plant initiated bioelectrical signals with the mankind generated brainwaves. 3.1 Methodology As was mentioned above the brain computer interfacing field has reached a certain maturity mostly due to the needs in the medical arena. Numerous artists have utilized these means within their artistic work. As a direct consequence of the ubiquity of these interfaces in the medical field, a BCI (brain computer interface) that cost a huge amount in the past, nowadays can be accessed via commercially off the shelf available alternatives at a fraction of this price. Such solutions even exist for the gaming community and although their electrical precision may not be up to par with the medical/professional alternatives, we believe they are adequate for our purpose. Also within our work Cry of Nature we have devised a platform that enables the usage of plant bioelectric signals in a way that the plant acts as a plant theremin or a bio theremin. So our intention within the Clash of the Brainwaves is to offer a platform in the computer/software domain that enables joint effort of these two previously isolated environments. Our platform consists of the system architecture outlined in Figure 1. Plant biosignals are measured using extracellular piercing electrodes. We have observed that after the insertion at least an hour is required for the signal level to stabilize. These signals are further amplified with a custom designed/built analog amplifier with very high impedance and further converted to MIDI via the Eobody unit from Eowave. In the mankind domain the alpha and beta brain118

Figure 1. Block schematic for the Clash of the Brainwaves

waves and in parallel to these the electrooculogram (eye movements) and the electromyogram (face muscle movements) are measured using the Neuro Impulse Actuator platform. This is a cost effective solution that also offers ease of use and as was mentioned before as our aim is not medical analysis the precision of the measurements were adequate for our purpose. This product is also beginning to be used by the gaming community. 3.2 Musical outcome and findings As we have successfully utilized our plant-computer interface with our work Cry of Nature, our observations for this initial work were also valid here. Namely the reaction of the plant to environmental factors like heat, light, humidity was of a slowly moving nature. So these changes most successfully effect the drone like qualities within the musical composition. However the reactions for a human in the vicinity or the touch by a human were very fast responses and they were useful for sound parameters that are responsive to such abrupt changes. As an example the modulation index of an FM synthesizer or triggering of a percussive sample. In the brain interfacing side the NIA (Neural Impulse Actuator) works by reading neuronal discharges in the brain, that is alpha and beta brainwaves and also electrooculogram components (the positional differential between the front of the retina and the retinal pigmented epithelium which changes relative to the eye orientation) and electromyograms (the neuro-muscular signals along with the electrical discharges resulting from the depolarization of the muscle cells). We have observed that the electrooculogram and electromyogram signals were really easy to use and can be used to trigger samples or to change the parameters of a synthesizer and/or filter easily. However the alpha and beta brainwaves necessitate a long training process to hone ones skills in manipulating these. As an example the alpha waves (8-14 Hz) were more active when the eyes are closed and the brain was in a relaxed mode, whereas the beta waves (higher frequencies) necessitate alertness. We suggest to use these parameters in triggering samples (or switches within the DAW) as their analog or continuous level usage is really hard to implement.

As a result we have utilized the plant signals to modify the parameters of Max/Msp synthesis patches (as theses signals are of a continuous nature) and also the tempo of the piece in Noatikl. Whereas the brainwaves and EOG and EMG signals were utilized to trigger percussive samples and also switches (filters etc) within the DAW. They can also be used to make changes within the Noatikl generative music platform for scale rule, harmony rule or rhythm rule selections (as they are suitable for triggering). Our experience resulted in a jam like atmosphere with the composition moving in a collaborative manner due to the

human players mind activity and mostly to his physical interaction with the plant. Also it is worth noting that the electrical grounding of the human player and the electromagnetic noise level within the environment (screens, mobile phones etc) were critical success factors. 4. Conclusion and future work Within this study we have devised a system that enables a plant and a human being to create a real time composition by utilizing the brainwaves of the human and the bioelectric signals of the plant. As was discussed above using our setup the plant player was more successful in tweaking the knobs and parameters of filters/synthesizers whereas the human player was better at triggering samples or making harmony/rhythm choices within the generative music platform. Training process to manipulate the alpha and beta waves for the human player was cumbersome wheras the electrooculogram and electromyogram signals were easier to manipulate. We believe that Clash of the Brainwaves enabled the mutual cooperation of two different species within the context/domain of music. Although it is definitely debatable if the plant has any clue of the process or it has any positive/negative affiliations with the process it was still interesting to listen to the outcome of this collaboration that most of the time offered unpredictable musical results. We believe our work presents a novel approach to the plant-computer-human (or man-machine-botany) interfaces and although there exists studies on plant computer interaction and brain computer interaction, our work offers a pioneering twist both in the form of a trio made up of man-machine-plant and also within the context of a joint musical effort between plant and mankind. Within this trio the computer/software domain act as the middleware and/ or the melting pot that enables the cooperation of these two distinct species. As a future work we intend to connect more than one plant and potentially one man to come up with a Band of Brainwaves or Brainwaves Ensemble in which each plant or human player is responsible for different musical parameters (analog to playing different instruments) and come up with a more colorful jam environment.

Figure 2. Plant based player (Cry of nature) setup Figure 1 shows the setup for the plant based player (our former work Cry of Nature) and in Figure 2 the human player connected with the EEG, EOG, EMG interface jams with the plant within the Clash of the Brainwaves setup.

Figure 3. Man-Machine-Botany Interfaces

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amberKonferans09 Siborglastramadklarmzdan msnz? Trkgc Caddesi No:3A Tophane 34425 Beyoglu Istanbul tel: +90 212 243 22 04 BIS, Beden-Islemsel Sanatlar Dernegi / BIS, Body-Process Art Association Istanbul 2012 isbn: 978-605-88807-3-3 Tasarm / Design: Berrin Sun, Melis Balc, Mine Ylmaz 125

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