Human / Machineand the

Talisman

GRIN Technologies

Genetics

Robotics

Information Technologies

Nano Technologies

“…6, 7 go to HELL go to HEAVEN”

…or somewhere in between

Blade Runner, 1982. Ridley Scott

What is Human ?

Anatomy and physiologyLife cycleGeneticsRace and

ethnicityHabitatPopulationHuman

evolutionIntelligence

CultureOriginsLanguageMusicEmotionsSexuality

Body ImageEconomicsArtifactsScience, TechnologyMind, psychologyPhilosophyMotivations…

Self-Reflection…‘Humanism’…

The Thinker, 1880. Auguste Rodin

HumanismDignity and worth for all people

Rationality and judgment

Truth and morality in support of human interests

Autonomous liberal subject

Inherent conflict of religion and science

Posthuman as a threat ?

“Mankind’s a dead issue now, cousin.”- Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix

Man and Machine

“The New God…must be humanized lest it in turn dehumanize us.”

- Paul Strand, 1924

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Master-Slave Circuit

Blade Runner, “I can see you…”

Evolution

Artificial Intelligences

Uploaded Consciousness

Techno-Biological augmentations

Considering the Posthuman

“The body” is no abstract notion

Artificial Life / Artificial Intelligence

Photo collage from flickr.com

Tags, flickr.com

Artificial Intelligence - “Top Down”

Artificial Life - “Bottom Up”

Artificial Life - “Bottom Up”

• Evolutionary computation

• Genetic algorithms

• Genetic programming

• Swarm intelligence

• Ant colony optimization

• Cellular automata…

Computational simulation of biologic systems

Draughtsman-Writer, 1700s. de Maillardet

Digesting Duck, 1739. Jacques de Vaucanson

What is life ?

Grower, 2004. Sabrina Raaf

Grower, 2004. Sabrina Raaf

What is intelligence ?

Artificial Intelligence - “Top Down”

Creatures 1 screenshot, released 1996. Mindscape

Tamagotchi

The SIMS 2

13th Floor, 1999. Josef Rusnak

Second Life World Map

Second Life, Club

Visual Semiotics

Midway between the unintelligible and the commonplace, it is metaphor which most produces knowledge.

Aristotle, Rhetoric

Michael is a snake.

Blade Runner, Pris and the Mannequins

Blade Runner, The Eye

Blade Runner, ‘My Mother’

Blade Runner, Game of Chess

Blade Runner, Owl

Blade Runner, Roy with Dove

Blade Runner, ‘Orgami Unicorn

Personifying Objects through Metaphor

GPS Table, Dunne and Raby

Magic, Illusion, Talisman

Laurie Anderson and her ‘Talking Stick’from Songs and Tales from Moby Dick

Drawing with Three Hands, Stelarc

Laser Eyes, Stelarc

Stretched Skin, Stelarc

"Simply, the body has created an information and technological environment which it can no longer cope with. This sort of Aristotelian impulse to continuously accumulate more and more information has created the situation where human cortical capacity just can't absorb and creatively process all this information. This is one of the human and technological pressures that make for the computer. It was necessary to create technology to take over what the body can no longer do. It's created a technology that far surpasses certain capabilities of itself ... we've created the potential of life without humanity. The only evolutionary strategy I see is triggering an evolutionary dialectic, to incorporate technology into the body ... technology, symbiotically attached and implanted into the body creates a new evolutionary synthesis, creates a new human hybrid - the organic and synthetic coming together to create a new sort of evolutionary energy."

Stelarc

Remote, Stelarc