The Swan, Season 2 Beauty Pageant

Exoskeleton--from performance art to commerce

In 1999 Australian performance artist Stelarc demonstrated modified bodily agency through his invention of the Exoskeleton, a mechanical hydraulic and electronic extension of his body, which changed the nature of his mobility and in various experiments, expanded the ability of his individual digits on his hands to grasp finer and smaller things through mini digits on the tips of each.

I'm not sure how long this video will be available, but CNN has a video report on a Utah company, Sarcos, which is manufacturing exoskeletons for military use, and the report is chock full of unqualified fascination and celebration for the developments. In the absence of Stelarc's uncanny emphases on the distortion of the human element in such hybrids, this report on Sarcos seems like a commercial for ED-209, the fictional robotic law enforcement robot that went awry with murderous malfunction in the film Robocop. Anyway, check out this link to the hyped-up next generation military technology for robotic hybrids for military use. No mention of cost, or the effect on the human operator over time, but something tells me a day spent in the exoskeleton leaves the operator somehow changed.

Here's Stelarc demonstrating his Exoskeleton in 1999. Keep in mind that he typically drives the legs and other attachments with voluntary muscles from unrelated places in his body. For example, his third hand, which he performs with often, is driven by abdominal and leg muscles, not by his arm or hand muscles.

Sideshow freaks and repressive state apparatuses

Here is Erik Sprague, a former doctoral candidate and philosophy degree holder, known around the world for his amazing transformation from man to lizard as well as his modern sideshow performance art. A proud freak. Personally, I'm not a big fan of the nose flossing, or other sideshow undertakings Sprague does in his act, but he is clearly a thoughtful agent of change and his discussion of the medical procedures behind his body modification project is rich with observations about the social importance of regulating the human body. In particular, his filed teeth and bifurcated tongue have caused a movement to form around writing laws to make such body modifications illegal, thus invoking and Althusserian repressive state apparatus to protect us from turning ourselves into lizard people.

While Erik Sprague occupies the low culture sideshow stages, his high culture colleagues, Strelarc and Orlan, among others, explore related boundaries in their surgical interventions, which are displayed and exhibited in gallery spaces and universities.

Here's Lizard Man speaking about his origins and some of the procedures.

collage and montage

In May of next year, I have arranged a roundtable of artists and scholars to discuss technology and collage/montage. In this NY Times slideshow, the work of 16th century Italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo will amuse many, and it has a corresponding relevance to the Dada photomontage from the early twentieth century in which the human form again appeared in collage assmblies, grotesque, and newly politicized. In the excellent notes and the accompanying review, the New York Times writer Michael Kimmerman does a good job of tying Arcimboldo's paintings to the state of the art in technology and politics of the day.

Here's the link to the pics.

MacArthur "Genius" grants given to post-evolutionary scholars

Perhaps it's just my perspective these days, but the MacArthur foundation, which gives out $500k grants to selected individuals it deems as geniuses, seems to be endorsing post-human developments. University of Washington in Seattle reports here that three of their own received grants this year. Of the three, one has improved drinking water, but the other two are have accomplished things directly related to post-evolutionary reconfiguring humans. One is researching roboticized prosthetics for people, and the other is developing technology to keep people in a state of suspended animation.

Suspended animation makes me think of the hive-boudn humans in The Matrix, or the 1978 suspended organ transplant donor farm in Coma.

Brain Music Treatment--The Mood Organ is Here!!!

In his novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick invented a device that citizens hook into to administer moods for the day. Last autumn at the College Music Journal (CMJ) Music Marathon and conference in New York City (2006), a company called Brain Music Therapy was displaying their service in a booth, the production of a "brain music" audio track for people to use to treat commonplace diseases, including such blockbuster ailments as depression, insomnia, attention deficit disorder, anxiety, migranes and tension headaches. It sounds like new age piano music, but the idea is that it is recorded based on rhythms and data from your personal EEG, an electroencephalogram which measures electrical nerve activity from the skin of your scalp and ears.

Here's the link.

First observation: the girl in the "before brain music" photo is way hotter than the organized and efficient "after brain music" woman. Sure, before listening to brain music the woman couldn't even get her jacket on and off, but man, that brain music makes her look rather Stepfordian afterwards. Or perhaps it's just the lighting.

Second observation: language is deployed throughout this site in a way that promotes thinking about the body as a collection of replaceable parts, a system to be tuned. The body and mind can be kept in optimal functionality, all very jargon-laden and scientific sounding. But this is no mere gimmick, this is crucial to the reorganization of the human body as a site for commerce and exchange. Read through the website for awhile and the language of optimized performance starts to sound like you're buying a Lexus.

Third observation: if the therapy actually works, it is regulating performance through adminstration of a feedback loop. This is basic cybernetics, Norman Weiner's theory about the human-machine interface. Data is collected from the EEG rhythms and intensities, manipulated into audio information--brain music--and played back based on a deliberate and systematic schedule. The company even advises revising as necessary (recording a new audio loop, $$) once the new patterns have taken effect. It could be a scam or it could be a brilliant new discovery--related companies are selling equipment, and training in neurofeedback therapy, and such therapies are being administered by licensed psychiatrists and psychologists. Clearly, the American Medical Association is going to resist any alternative medicine--there's too much money in treating the big pharm diseases that brain music claims to heal. But even if this therapy helps me sleep better at night, I am uneasy about spending more time being disciplined by information, or any media at all.

Still curious? Check out www.cnih.net, the website for The Center for Neurofeedback and Integrative Health, Inc. The new technology, and systems analysis approach to emotional and mental health are explained in detail here. The average treatment period is about six months, with twice weekly sessions.

Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln - Disneyland History-458

This animatronics "robot" was state of the art in the 1960 when Disneyland first installed it. While technologies of mechanized movement have been as commonplace as ChuckECheese restaurants, Disney's attention to detail in the animatronic mask and arm movements seems pretty good when we compare it to contemporary efforts to create robotic Japanese women.

CES 07: Honda Asimo Humanoid Robot demo

Heeeeere's Asimo! I wouldn't want to spend an evening dancing with "it" as they so rudely refer to the robot, but it has taken a long time to get it to ascend and descend stairs without falling.

Dancing Sony Robots

So you think you can dance? Try shaking your groove thing with a mechanical butt. The most challenging thing so far in humanoid robots, at least for emulating our bodies, is biped locomotion. Asimo, Honda's robot is the best at this, but these Sony robots have the moves. Well, sorta...

AKIBA ROBOT FESTIVAL 2006: Actroid Female Robot

Here's one of many Japanese talking and arm waving robots--all female from what I have found on youtube.

Neil Young - Sample And Hold

Here's a songabout a robotic love companion. Not meant to be funny, this song expresses the same desire that companies like realdoll are trying to satisfy with their product.

Flight Of The Conchords - The Humans Are Dead

Here's a comic song about the end of humans at the hands of robots. Perhaps I am just looking for an excuse to post my favorite new band tot he blog, but this is funny, even as it toys with a standing nervousness in the general psyche of people regarding robots.

post-evolution or just better healthcare for aging?

Check out this Washington Post graphic overview of new transplantable organs for the aging body. In a post-evolutionary world, nature gives way to intervention and networked bodies. The first step is reconceiving of the body not as a natural housing for the person, but as a temporary vessel to be modified and tampered with as needed to adapt to the environment. This is no longer adaptive mutation, but something far more deliberate and manufactured.

William Burroughs NIKE CM

Here is one of my personal heroes, William S. Burroughs, whoring himself out to NIke in the 1990s--as these things go, he at least makes an interesting defiant statement about technology. As egregious as NIke is in their aggressive business practices and exploitation of labor, they have mastered the art of advertising cool. How little this ad has to do with sneakers confounds me as much as my desire for a pair of Burroughs brand Nike's makes me wonder who the heck I am inside.

Stelarc - The Body is Obsolete - Contemporary Arts Media

Here is a primer on Stelarc, narrated by the artist himself. His philosophical position is that the body is not a seat for the soul, but rather one input-output device in a universe of other input-output devices of equal value. So, his body suspensions, while they may have the look of new primative piercing actions, have none of the spiritual resonance (nor even fashion concerns) typically associated with piercing and suspensions. His most recent act has been to have a third ear installed beneath the skin of his arm. By deforming his body for the sake of art, Stelarc demonstrates the harsh reality that post-evolution requires: an abandonment of the natural as sacrosanct, a relinquishment of the body as a temple for the soul. For thos who still feel the body is the seat of indentity, Stelarc's work will be confrontational.

Literature and Science as a broader field

Here is a link to a pretty vast web resource for the larger field in which our Post-Evolution class fits. Prof. Ian Roberts of Missouri Western University has put this together.

Official narrative: figuring out how much human modification is just right...

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has a report on human enhancement that tries to wrangle with the way economic and other differenes in the populace might be exasperated by scientific and technological enhancement. Although this sort of expository prose is not as sexy as the cultural fare exploring the same materials, this is the realm of the experts who end up on government and policy-making panels. - MF

Arthur Kroker--Born Again Ideology

Here is a video of Arthur Kroker, a venerable cyber theorist who tends to come off as an advocate of cyberlife rather than an objective critic. Nonetheless, Kroker is a respected critic in the field and the website for his journal, ctheory.net has a great editorial board, good articles, and interviews with top post-evolutionary theorists such as N. Katherine Hayles and Stelarc. This vid is a snapshot of Kroker speaking in terms of God and cyberspace. See also Margaret Wertheim's work and David Noble's book on religion and technology for more on this theme. - MF

Gunslinger

This is a long, beautifully edited remix of the film, kind of recasting the robot gunsllinger (Yul Brynner's character) as the lead in a video game or music video. While I don't love the music, I do love the mix and the proficiency through which the editor found all the scenes with the gunslilnger and assembled them to tell the story extremely well. It also points out that we are here fetishizing the post-evolutionary character, the robot gunslinger who was so very close to being one of us. For, in his monotone unyielding persistence to kill, he demonstates something perversely akin to human passion. That dimension comes through fairly well in this remix. - MF

Westworld Trailer

Here's another trailer from Westworld.

Westworld

Here's some more 1970s era robot film--another systems analysis cyborg. These films present a fully synthetic android, and thus are one step removed from later cyborg visions such as the tissue-mechanical hybrid Terminator. In the sequel to Westfworld, the robots are running a theme park through which they capture and replicate world leaders and substitute back into public one of their own, a manufactured robot. Like Stepford, Futureworld portrays a doppelganger consiracy through which real people fall prey to identity theft and expermination. It is related to the Body Snatchers theme, but with a human-made technology twist.

Thirty Seconds of Stepford

More Stepford! Bryan Forbes added the element of Johanna (Katherine Ross) being a photographer. It was not in Ira Levin's novel. But, the photography, and use of photos in the film, create a whole new dimension of metacommentary on representation and technology.

Stepford Wives Trailer

One of my favorite movies of all time! This film rocks with socio-political critiques, conspiracy theory, and a systems theory fantasy of a perfectly closed system, or near perfect. Obvious plot holes matter very little (like, uhhm, might not the kiddies notice mommy is a little too even keeled too much of the time? And why doesn't mom ever age? Why doesn't mommy bleed when I stab her with a kitchen knife?). What matters is the great acting, the uncanny representation of New England archetypes, and the sinister arrogance of Diz Coba, the evil mastermind!

I will post further (later) on this film as an example of a systems analysis cyborg.

Metropolis - Molochmaschine (Moloch machine)

Here's the Moloch scene in its glorious entirety. This also gives a glimpse at Lang's vision of the compressed vertical city that so famously influenced the portrayal of futuristic Los Angeles in Blade Runner.

More importanly, can you dig Freder's crazy pantaloons! I think I see new fashion craze in pants like his. Next season, probably.

Metropolis (trailer)

Here's a trailer for the great film. Watch for a glimpse at the machinery turned into a monster--it is that scene when a worker cries out in horror "Moloch" and the machine eats workers and children. Also, note that the trailer includes clips of Maria the angelic heroine of the film, and Maria the robot, who uses her sexuality to rule over the workers and bring them to self-destruction. The original cut of hte film was over seven (!!!) hours long.

Even more Stepfordian paranoia!

Today I want to follow up on the Realdoll and electronic sex toy post from yesterday by elaborating on this high-tech fantasy, which is more often than not a male fantasy, of creating a submissive automaton for sexual gratification. I think it is a flawed persuit, personally. Perhaps I am too mired in my own Freudian cliches and so forth, but I am uncomfortable with the onset of synthetic romance, a coital union that is virtually free of emotional bond (except, perhaps, for the affection one can develop for an object) that complex human interaction between lovers can yield.

In Fritz Lang's 1927 film, Metropolis, a mad scientist creates a robotic doppelganger for Maria, the spiritual and political saviour of the proletariat in a futuristic society of mechanized slavery. It really was ahead of its time. Among the themes it introduces is the "machine" as Moloch, an ancient Jewish god to whom the people sacrificed children. Allen Ginsberg refers to it in his epic 1955 poem "Howl". If you have not seen Metropolis, you should, but I introduce the film here because of a web site called "Maria 2.0", which is a well-researched site with links to many places that collectively illustrate the state of the art in contemporary techno-industrial knowledge and products that would help fashion a human-like robot. If this whole endeavor makes you feel awkward and uncomfortable, or nervous, you should check out Masahiro Mori's 1970 theory of the uncanny valley," which is one of the links on the Maria 2.0 site. The uncanny valley is a theory of discomfort felt by people when technology becomes too humanlike.

The Maria 2.0 site includes a lot of expert information, from medical micro-data on human sexuality, to sites detailing state of the art technologies for synthetic speech and hearing, for artificial intelligence, and other scientific developments necessary for a humanoid robot.

A word to the feminists out there, or others who may be irked at the implicit sexism in this discussion. I am not promoting the development of artificial humanoid in the form of female sex slaves. While that should seem obvious, in these days of scandal and misunderstandings, I want to provide a clear position statement. Ever since Donna Haraway published her Cyborg Manifesto in 1982, cyborg studies has maintained a close affinity and heritage of radical socialist feminsim. As a marginalized group, feminists of all stripes see opportunity in the new cyborgian landscape to even the playing field some, to create new relations and distributions of power. Among the many feminist scholars joining Haraway in the theoretical investigation of cyborg and related topics are N. Katherine Hayles and Susan Squier. To be sure, the rich herritage of feminism in cyborg studies does not preclude visions of Maria 2.0 from being developed, but it does put many insightful perspectives into the mix.

I'll close this post by tying back to the context of post-evolution. The pursuit of a sex robot is not necessarily post-evolutionary--except to the degree that it destabilizes our embodied subjectivity and draws our attention to the connection and interface with the apparatus of pseudo humanity. In the case of sexual substitution, it seems the in-depth focus on the "connection points" does in fact deprivilege the human as a unified subject and instead focuses on sexuality as an isolated function that can be reproduced in a mechanical fashion, no matter how fancy or elaborate that mechanical substitute is. The attention nonetheless is drawn towards the interface. - MF

Black Sabbath Iron Man(Live in Paris 1970)

Okay, if you tire of all the techno androgyny, then perhaps so old fashioned headbanging from 1970 will make up for it. This song comes up whenever I ask students to cull popular culture for cyborg related material, so here it is as a tonic to the techno for all you metalheads.

Tubeway Army - Gary Numan - Are Friends Electric

Okay, so any discussion of rock and pop music as it relates to post-evolution should include this brit and his band, the Tubeway Army, who had a great original techno sound in 1979, and his aesthetic approach and lyrics were quite thoughtful and engaged with issues of cloning, technology, and electronic developments, like the whole universe of computers. This predates the Internet and Depeche Mode and all that techno that would follow. With age, Numan has lost some of his youthful androgynous look which is quite often used in technobands to reflect the nature of technology's affect on the animalistic side of humanity, but his music still holds up.

DEVO jocko homo

Okay, here's a kitchy 1978 answer to evolution. If you knew Devo's punk roots, you'd find it ironic that they appear to be in agreement with the fundamentalist intelligent design folks in contesting Darwinism. Mark Mothersburough scores films and tv now, and Devo toured in 2007.

Kraftwerk - The Robots

Here is Kraftwerk at their robotic best!

Are you ready for post-evolution miscellany?

Greetings blog travellers. In my attempts to use the various free Internet dimensions to support my teaching and research, I am starting this blog to post youtube videos and other cultural fare that is related to post-evolution, cyborg culture, robots, and other fun stuff. I may set up another blog down the line for punk stuff, and for my other cultural studies interests, but for the moment I expect my audience for this blog will be mostly myself and my students in English 297 Post-Evolution in fall 2007. I expect these entries will be random, irregular, and uneven in their usefulness, but I'm hoping the context of a blog will provide a comfortable space for me to fashion this loose catologue of post-evolution ephemera.

It all started with my desire to post this Kraftwerk song, "We Are the Robots," from 1977. Oh my do these guys kick ass. Germans love the discipline and aesthetics of technology and humanity blended together, and this band even extends their approach to into a daily work ethic that has them going to the studio and approaching their music making like engineers showing up at the office. I expect they are more likely to strip wire and customize a mixing board than get drunk and fuck, but one look at their haircuts and you know they understand the implicit meaning of technology: uniformity, discipline, and a groovy techno sound.

Okay, so it turns out I am still learning the protocols of Internet blogs and myspace and all that crap and so the video I wanted so badly to post, the one that inspired it all, doesn't even work. But it is worth te trip to youtube to see so I will leave it in place for now.