The Technologic Body Using by Artistic
Support in the Route of Post-Human
The art and
Scientific fiction, as a reference for changes that happens at the Human body
Heloisa Helena da Fonseca
Carneiro Leão
Artist, Master in Communication and Semiotics
at Pontifícia Universidade Católica of São Paulo and
Painting Professor at Faculdade Paulista de Arte
E-mail: heloisaleao@globo.com
Abstract
This paper summarizes the thesis: “The
Technologic Body Using by Artic Support in the Route of Post-Human (The Art and
Scientific fiction, as a Reference for Changes that Happens at the Human
body)”, who intend to show that, the human body, as an art object, can be found
at Scientific Fiction story, as Isaac Asimov’s book “The Bicentennial Man” and
contemporaneous artists work, as Stelarc. The uses of the body to support the
creation enforce the relationship of the men with the technology and the
environment, allowing questions concerning the future of the human body.
1. Introduction
The purpose of this study, Technological
body used as artistic support in the route of post-human, is to show that
the use of body as a creation support led us to the relation between man,
machines and environment, what made possible to question the future of this
body. In this sense, the dialog between man and his environment is the more
embracing meaning of the notion of communication and it refers to the
complexity of exchanges between man, machines and his environment.
In order to research the
changes operated in the body, science fiction and contemporary art were used.
Thus, the opposition between the science fiction history “Bicentennial Man” by
Isaac Asimov and Sterlac’s contemporary art, has the goal to find the
counterpoint between these two approaches. An important distinction must be
considered: in one hand Sterlac‘s view comes from human to machine, by the use of prosthesis to
compensate the obsolescence of human body, in the other hand Asimov’s view goes
to the opposite side, it comes from machine
to human. However, Andrews’s robot, a robotic creation, trends to
prostheses and extensions, as he becomes human.
2. McLuhan
The idea of this research emerged
after our contact with Marshall McLuhan theories, in “Understanding Media:
The Extensions of Man”. These theories show the means of communication’s
effects originated from Electroelectronic Revolution and the artist’s capacity
to understand the perceptive changes, which came from technological effects
over individuals. Thus, McLuhan believes that the artist can solve disequilibrium
problems made by the emergence of a new mean. “The artist can correct the
relations between feelings before new technology’s impact put the conscious
procedures to sleep.” [1]. McLuhan quotes Wydhan Lewis: “The artist is always
concerned on writing the history of future, because he is the only person who
is conscious of present nature” [2]. The author emphasizes the artist’s
function:
Every new technology creates an environment
that is considered corrupt and degraded. However, the new one transforms its
predecessor in a form of art (...) any extension of skin, hand or foot –
affects the whole psychological and social complex (...). The serious artist is
the only person who is able to face, unpunished, the technology, because he is
a specialist on perceptive changes [3]
Besides this, McLuhan shows that means of
communication are not isolated, but they are tune as complementary ones. In
this sense, the author uses the definition of hybrid means to exemplify those
that embrace two or more means:
The
hybrid or the meetings of two media constitute a moment of truth and revelation
from which the new form rises. It happens because the parallel between two
means keep us inside forms that wake us up from our narcissistic narcosis. This
is a moment of freedom and liberation from torpor and trance that was imposed
to our feelings [4]
McLuhan’s definition of
hybrid helped us to understand the body today. Exactly, because the meeting of
human and mechanic is building this moment of revelation with the goal to
understand the new man who comes from this hybridization. Thus, it is not so
far from the double of man, the clone. One can ask: is the traditional body becoming an artistic support or are the
contemporary art and science fiction tending toward to the questioning of this
body?
Not only McLuhan
concepts were fundamental to the first part of this research but other concerns
led this study, like the curiosity in understanding the dialog between man,
machines and environment. Thus, our intention is to show how inside the
evolution route of mankind, the technologies
have had and keep on having a decisive role in questions about individual and
environment changes.
3.
Dialog
between man, technology and enviroment
The artist
who are concerned about the relation man/machines, show the perceptive changes
that came from this relation and stress the mankind evolution process. Thus,
Sterlac’s concerns echoes Terrence Deacon, cognitivist dinamicist and Dr.
Professor at Harvard, who researches
mind evolution and argues a evolutionist theory; Arthur C. Clarke, scientist
and fiction writer; Edgar Morin, philosopher director of National Center of Scientific Research,
Professor honoris causa of Consenza University in Italy.
Deacon
emphasizes that humanization is the evolution point on which the instruments
become the principal source of selection, in the body and brain. The brains
became bigger at the same time the man started painting and making instruments.
In Deacon’s view, the man humanizes himself because the use of instruments and
not the opposite argued by so many theorists. According to him, the kind of
instrument was fundamental in the course of humanization, provided that it is
determinant. Deacon shows that, when changes operated by technology are deep,
they need to be followed by a genetic transformation and concludes that because
of it the human brain has changed too.
In the same direction,
Clarke shows that the success of more simple instruments originate the total
tendency of human evolution and lead it to civilizations. The professor
emphasizes that the old tendency in believing on the fact that the man invented
the instruments is mistaken in his view the instruments invented the man.
According to this
approach we can ask: wouldn’t the
process between man and machine be responsible for evolution?
In the same
direction, Morin says:
In
the point where we could see Homo sapiens disconnect himself from nature
by a majestic jump and produce with his beautiful intelligence, the technique,
the language, the society, the culture, we can see otherwise, the nature, the
society, the intelligence, the technique, the language and the culture
co-produce the Homo sapiens in the route of a process that has last some
millions of years. [5]
It’s important to remember
that the suspicion has always being around human inventions, producing on
beings’ imagination an impression of
destructive ghost arrive, feed by the
fear of loosing their places in the world stressed by the possibility of being
controlled by machines.
The fear of unknown can be
seen since Prometeus, Old Greek, on histories of science fiction that, along
time, showed the man involved on the construction of a being, as Fausto by
Goethe, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and so many others. In all these histories
the destruction of the creator by the creature has always happened.
However, on Asimov’s
histories, there is a pacific relationship between man and machine what
provides another view about this relation. Asimov is the Three Laws of
Robotics’ creator which was responsible for the
new directions on robots histories. They are:
In order to emphasize the fear
of man vis-à-vis the new discoveries we quote Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,
in his book: ‘Wind, Sand and stars” (Terre des
Hommes)
The use of an intelligent instrument doesn’t make you a dry technician.
It has seemed to me that people who are horrified a lot with our technical
progress mislead the goals with the mean.
(...) No doubt, the airplane is a machine- what a analytical instrument!
This instrument allowed us to discover the true physiognomy of the Earth (...)
If sometimes we think that the machine
dominate man, maybe that’s because we haven’t got yet enough perspective to
judge the effects of transformations that are as fast as the ones we are
suffering. What is a hundred years of machine history compared with two hundred
thousands years of man history? We
haven’t finished to lodge ourselves in this mine and
electrical centers’ landscape. We haven’t felt
ourselves as residents of this new house that we haven’t built yet. Everything
has changed so quickly around us: human relations, conditions of work, costumes
(...) Every progress has expelled us to a farther place from acquired habits; in
truth we are emigrant that haven’t found our country” [7]
In this sense, the
discussions about new technologies have two approaches: the critical and
defensive ones. Every invention has a positive and a negative side. It depends
on the way it is utilized. Thus, if men were seen as a result of their
discoveries, a negative view about their instruments, about their machines, can
show a contradictory and blind position. Because of it, histories of science
fiction help to understand the body and its relation with technology and
McLuhan thought about technological discoveries and their interference in
individuals’ social and physiological complex is pertinent.
In this direction,
Asimov argues that technologies must be faced in a positive approach,
consciously according to the period. According to him, modern man needs to define himself
because his perception is divided into the necessity to face the risks of changes originated form new
artifacts, and to regress from
these new know ledges. We can say that the way new technologies are used is the
obligation of modern man, provided modernity is to understand and transform the present
moment.
One of the important focuses of this
research is that the future characteristic can be found both in the science
fiction and in the contemporary art once they allow a set of questions related
to the man-of-tomorrow.
4. Stelarc
and the Bicentennial Man.
According to Stelarc, the actual
human body is limited, obsolete, and then it needs to be remodeled. In
conformity to the artist, the biological body hasn't succeeded in accompanying
the advances of technology, consequently Stelarc affirms that:
Man produced an environment composed by
data that are completely strange to their subjective experience. We have
constructed a world of powerful, quick and precise machines, where its
efficiency is beyond our body competence. We have computers able to win a
champion of chess. Computers are able
to overcome a chess champion. Our body is captured in a world that isn’t adjusted
to the biology. For this reason, I consider that, body has become obsolete. It
doesn’t mean that I’m ‘against’ the body. The point is: Will we accept the
limits of evolution concerning death and birth? We can change the body
genetically saying, but we can also add technological components. The idea of
cyborg is already a reality, if we consider the medical meaning. [8]
In contraposition, the book ‘The
Bicentennial Man’ by Asimov, he approaches Andrews’ wish to turn itself into a
human being. Andrews is a machine that suffers the technological effects on its
own body, hence, turning itself similar to a human configuration. The Andrew’s
mechanic seeks for the human, internalizing the desire of being a human, in
such a way that, it abdicates the immortality in order to become itself mortal.
Stelarc questions the environment
trough the use of the body and makes use of the new technologies to talk about
the obsolete body. Is it possible to think the human body doesn’t suffer
mutation as a consequence of the technological advantages speed? How can we
support the thesis that the body interacts with environment and technology? Is
it possible to accept Stelarc’s affirmation about how human body is
obsolete?
Stelarc’s concernments of being
mechanic and Andrew’s humanization perfectly show the actual moment of human
evolution. The hybrid being who is rising from the body’s mutation is explained
by Donna Haraway (Professor of History of Consciousness at University of
California) who wrote the ‘A Cyborg Manifest’ argues that the cyborg is a
fusion of animal and machine. The author emphasizes that:
(…) Being a cyborg has nothing to do with
the freedom of self-construction, it has to do with webs (…) technology is not
impartial. We are inside the things we do, as well as, these things are inside
us. We live in a world of connections – who is done and undone (…) we are
talking about completely different ways of subjectivity. We are talking
seriously about mutant worlds that have never existed before on this planet.
This is not only about ideas. It is about a new flesh (…) the truth is that we
are building our own selves, the same way we build an integrate circuit or
politic systems (…) in order to survive we have to be aware to the speed of
techno culture complex realities. [9]
5. Conclusion
The present moment has got a complexity that
has never been found before in the history of humankind, it opens a route to
the infinity of questions related to mutations consequences produced by new
technologies. What will this new man be like? How can we define the elaboration
of the body, as an artistic support that seeks a new man?
One thing is evident; however, man and machine
have always been in a constant process of interaction. Therefore, the questions
raised both in science fiction and contemporary art indicate a futuristic view
of a long interactive process.
Emphasizing the doubts about the post-human
being we quote Saint-Exupéry [10] who shows how tools help human being to know
himself: ‘By facing an obstacle, man learns how to know himself; however to overcome it, he needs the tools’.
Proceeding on his reflections, Saint
Exupéry finishes his book ‘Wind, Sand and
stars’ (Terre des Hommes) mentioning the following
maxims ‘Only the Spirit, blowing on the clay, can creates the Man’. We can
raise the hypothesis that only the Spirit, blowing on new technologies can
recreate the Man. According to these thoughts, is it possible for the actual
machines to enable another view around human being and his environment?
Wouldn’t exist the possibility for this new man to re-establish feelings more
human? Wouldn’t be possible for the pos-human man to be more human than the
human being?
Going on these inquires about
future: The contemporary artists have
probably been doing a link between the tradition of the body and this new body
that is arising, between what is present in the collective perception and what
is covered, between what is considered out and what is entire. What will the
configuration of the body be like, as an artistic support that seeks for the
post-human’s route? Will there be a continuation in the relation between
man/machine and environment or we need a Creator's leap?
For all the interactions
that have occurred between man and machine, we need the computer’s emergency lead us to think post-human as a result of an accelerated
construction. Would it be a fact or a heresy to consider by analogy, the
numerical origin in India (where ‘1’ symbolizes masculine and ‘0’ feminine) and
the computers logic (that creates from the combinations of ‘1’ and ‘0’, be
creating the idea of Adam and Eve? Would it be possible to intuit that
humankind is living in a new paradise? Would the post-human represent the
expulsion or permanency in the ‘paradise’?
6. References
[1] McLuhan,
1964: 86
[2] Lewis apud McLuhan, 1964:85
[3] McLuhan
1964:12, 18, 34
[4] McLuhan1964:75
[5] Morin 1973:53
[6] Asimov 1975:7
[7] Exupéry.1979:37, 38
[8] Stelarc. 2002:5
[9] Haraway apud Silva, 2000:25
[10] Saint-Exupéry 1979:2
7.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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