Ethics of Human Enhancement

Next piece in the Guardian by Andy Miah:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/may/01/body-enhancement-cosmetic-surgery-genetics

We’re All Activists Now

From recycling to mass protests on social networks like Facebook, having an ethical conscience is becoming part of our daily lives. Now it’s the turn of governments and companies to change, writes Andy Miah

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/mar/20/ethical-living-food-animal-welfare

Bodies of the Future (2009, Apr 15, Edinburgh)

Bodies of the Future

Stelarc, Martyn Ware, Andrew Shoben, Dr Jonathan Freeman, Chaired by Michelle Kasprzak

What do we want our bodies to look like in the future? How will technology shape our relationship with the physical environment and the multifaceted identities we create? A panel including Stelarc (Brunel University), Martyn Ware (the Illustrious Company), Andrew Shoben (Greyworld), Dr Jonathan Freeman (Goldsmiths, University of London) and Michelle Kasprzak (Scottish Arts Council), will explore the shifting boundaries between the technologically adapted body and the concept of self and the sense of place.

Duration: 1 hour.

Organised by: PEACH, presence research in action www.peachbit.org

http://www.sciencefestival.co.uk/Events/Talking-Science/Bodies-of-the-Future

The Midas Project

This is one of the projects featured visually in Human Futures, by Paul Thomas

Interspecies

This new exhibition from The Arts Catalyst includes two of our contributors, Nicola Triscott, Director of TAC and Kira O’Reilly, contributing artist to the exhibition.

INTERSPECIES

Can artists work with animals as equals? Interspecies uses artistic strategies to stimulate dialogue about the way we view the relationship between human and non-human animals, in the year of celebrations of Darwin’s birth 200 years ago.

Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK
70 Oxford Street, M1 5NH
Exhibition open
24 January – 29 March 2009, Tue – Sun

www.artscatalyst.org

Interspecies comprises new works by four artists – Nicolas Primat, Kira O’Reilly, Antony Hall and Ruth Maclennan, and existing pieces by Rachel Mayeri, Beatriz Da Costa and Kathy High. All the artists in Interspecies question the one-sided manipulation of non-human life forms for art. They instead try to absorb the animal’s point of view as a fundamental part of their work and practice.

Kira O’Reilly presents an action/installed performance featuring herself and a sleeping female pig, Delilah, Falling Asleep With A Pig, taking place at the private view on Friday 23 January, and on Saturday 24 January. The work addresses the ethics of human and non-human animal interaction, acknowledging the implicit ambivalence in the appropriation of animals as a resource. The artist will inhabit a gallery redesigned for the comfort and welfare of a pig. At some point the pig and/or the artist will sleep. Documentation of the event will be shown in the exhibition.

Nicolas Primat is the only artist in the world that specialises in working with monkeys and apes in collaboration with primatologists. He will show video works resulting from his residencies at the Primatology station, CNRS, Marseille, working with baboons, at the Pasteur Institute, Cayenne, Guyana, working with Saimiris (squirrel monkeys) and at the Animal Park of Apenheul, Holland, working with Bonobo apes.

Anthony Hall’s work ENKI allows electric fish and humans to commune on the same level, avoiding the use of language as such; instead stimulating a shared empathy through physical connection. The project explores the possibilities of cross species communication and human to fish relationships, in particular the electric fish. Is it possible that a symbiotic relationship between human and electronic fish can be effected through passive and active electronic media?

Ruth Maclennan’s work for Interspecies explores the relationship between a bird of prey and the human being who trains it. Like eagles and falcons, the symbolic life of the hawk exceeds its ‘natural’ life, which is itself encouraged by human intervention—in breeding, nesting and the habitat. This is the latest stage in a project that looks at people, architecture, the city, and landscape, from the perspective of a cyborg ‘hawk-camera’.

Two existing works will also be shown in the touring exhibition: Rachel Mayeri’s Primate Cinema, which casts human actors in the role of non-human primates seeking mates, and Beatriz Da Costa’s PigeonBlog which provides an alternative way to participate environmental air pollution data gathering, equipping urban homing pigeons with GPS-enabled electronic air pollution sensing devices.

INTERSPECIES Events at Cornerhouse

Sat 24 January, 2 – 4pm
Artists’ Open Forum
Nicolas Primat, Antony Hall, Ruth Maclennan, Rachel Mayeri and Beatriz da Costa
Join us for this open forum, a unique opportunity to meet the artists and discover more about the ideas behind Interspecies.

Sun 25 January, 4pm
Kira O’Reilly in Conversation
Join performance artist Kira O’Reilly and curator Rob La Frenais, as they discuss Kira’s exhibition piece in relation to her work on sleep and dream research with humans and pigs.

Mon 26 January, 6 – 8pm
Wed 28 January, 2 – 4pm
Workshop: Primate Cinema – How to act like an animal
Participate in a performance workshops led by Interspecies artist Rachel Mayeri, exploring how primates communicate. Through discussion and video clips, learn about animal behaviour in the wild and in cinema and find out about primatology. You will get the chance to engage in physical theatre techniques and learn how to improvise movement and social interactions as non-human primates.

Cornerhouse, 70 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 5HN
Box office: 0161 200 1500
Opening hours: Tues – Sat: 11.00 – 18.00  Thurs until 20.00
Sun 14.00-18.00
e: info@cornerhouse.org
www.cornerhouse.org

Nature review

Human Futures is being reviewed in Nature in their 22 January edition. Keep your eyes open!

College Art Association (25-28 Feb, 2009, LA)

The Human Futures book will be available at this major event for professionals in the visual arts, taking place in Los Angeles. A number of our contributors is speaking here Eduardo Kac and Paul Thomas:

Wednesday, February 25, 9:30 AM–12:00 PM
Concourse Meeting Room 406AB, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center

The Makrolab and Luminous Green: New Formations of the Collective
Marko Peljhan, University of California Institute for Research in the Arts, University of California, Santa Barbara  (images in HF)

Leonardo/International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology
Shifting Paradigms in Media Art, Science, and Technology Education in a Global Context
Friday, February 27, 5:30 PM–7:00 PM

The Contextualization of Art in Expanding Areas of Research
Paul Thomas (images in HF)

Database Aesthetics: Artists sorting through Bits & Flesh
Saturday, February 28, 9:30 AM–12:00 PM
Concourse Meeting Room 406B, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center
Chair: Victoria Vesna, University of California, Los Angeles

Time Capsule
Eduardo Kac, School of the Art Institute of Chicago  (Essay and Images in HF)

Cosmetic Cultures (2009, June 24-26, Leeds, UK)

In one of the Chapters of the Human Futures book, Professor Sandra Kemp discusses modifications of the face. This conference looks like it covers some of this ground and looks like a really interesting meet:

Cosmetic Cultures to be held in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies at the University of Leeds from the 24 to 26 of June 2009.

Papers on any element of ‘cosmetic cultures’ are welcomed but the conference seeks to move beyond well rehearsed ‘Beauty Myth’ arguments.

Beauty has often been conceptualised as the concern only of women (or the only concern of women!) and as idealised in ‘whiteness’or ‘Westerness’. Whilst many have found significant evidence to support these claims, work in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies has already flagged up the importance of men, masculinities and beauty, both in the ‘West’ and ‘East’ and has disrupted the idea that whiteness alone presents idealised beauty in all parts of the world, or even in this one. Whilst beauty ideals may be important in one sense, this conference also aims to explore beauty practices. The subject’s engagement in beauty practices may be ‘transformative’ in line with current ideals, and undertaken in the clinic, or it may
be everyday and mundane, practices in the home or ‘salon’.

Themes will include:

National beauty cultures and histories and the intersection between local and globalised ideals;
Beauty practice ranging from ‘spectacular’ makeover cosmetic surgery to mundane beauty technologies such as diet and exercise, skin tanning/ lightening, hairstyling, hair removal and tattooing/piercing.
Intersections of ‘race’, class, gender and beauty cultures and practices; men, masculinities and beauty;
LGBI and Trans beauties; surgical tourism;
TV makeover shows;
Work in the ‘beauty industry’, including medical practices and cultures, beauty salons and cosmetics marketing and manufacture as well as (fashion and glamour) modelling.

By encouraging participants to explore beauty cultures, practices and politics in their broadest sense we hope to advance current debates and develop an international network of researchers.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

* Professor Carolyn Cooper – University of the West Indies
* Professor Kathy Davis – University of Utrecht
* Dr Debra Gimlin – University of Aberdeen
* Dr Meredith Jones – University of Technology, Sydney
* Professor Toby Miller – University of California, Riverside
* Professor Elspeth Probyn – University of Sydney

200 word abstracts and panel suggestions should be emailed to: Matthew Wilkinson at m.wilkinson@leeds.ac.uk  no later than 1 March 2009. Please mark all emails with ‘Cosmetic Cultures’ in the subject line.

For further info, visit the conference website: http://www.wun.ac.uk/genderstudies/leeds_2009/main.html

Best wishes

Films of Human Futures event on FACT.tv

Check out the films from the 30 October event:

Envisioning the Future

Life After Death in the 21st Century

Unsustainable Futures?

Human Futures & Unsustainability

Transmediale

Lots of content at this festival that is discussed in Human Futures.

transmediale is an international festival for contemporary art and digital culture. Located in Berlin, it presents advanced artistic positions reflecting on the socio-cultural impact of new technologies. It seeks out artistic practices that not only respond to scientific or technical developments, but that try to shape the way in which we think about and experience these technologies. transmediale understands media technologies as cultural techniques which need to be embraced in order to comprehend, critique, and shape our contemporary society.

The festival includes exhibitions, competitions, conferences, film and video programmes, live performances and a publication series called ‘transmediale parcours’. Moreover it cooperates with club transmediale (CTM), which deals with electronic music and club culture.

FESTIVAL
Each year in January & February, transmediale presents renowned artists, scientists and media practitioners from all around the world. Through each year’s specific theme, the participants engage with a wide international audience and examine global developments in digital media, art and technology.

The competition for the transmediale Awards is one of the festival’s highlights. With an average of 1000 submissions from more than 50 countries, the competition demonstrates transmediale’s increasing international significance. Each year, two awards are granted, the transmediale Award for artistic distinction and the Vilém Flusser Theory Award for outstanding theory or research-based digital arts practice.

The exhibition works alongside architects to present curated works of renowned artists, as well as a selection of the submissions for the transmediale Awards, within a unique cultural space. Every second year, the exhibition is curated externally and shown for a prolonged period of four to six weeks.

The conferences and workshops present a series of scientific and cultural discourses on the respective festival theme. In recent years, speakers such as Diedrich Diedrichsen, Wulf Herzogenrath, Humberto Maturana, Antonio Negri, Stellarc, Einar Thorsteinn or Peter Weibel have given keynote addresses.

The film and video programme encompasses a wide, contemporary spectrum of feature films, short artistic video works and special programmes, all presented on the big screen. The ‘transmediale video selection’, a compilation of the best screenings, is shown all around the globe each year.

The performance programme presents cross-disciplinary projects in the fields of installation, sound, performance and video on stage, showcasing the search for new forms of expression between artistic genres.

The transmediale parcours is the latest in a line of transmediale publications that have established themselves throughout the last 20 years as widely sought-after guides to contemporary digital, media and technology-based art and culture. Expanding upon this tradition, the transmediale parcours was launched in 2008 to reflect upon the research as well as artistic and critical backgrounds behind each festival’s theme.

Andrew Marr radio programme

On Monday 15th December, Andy Miah will be appearing on Andrew Marr’s BBC Radio 4 programme Start the Week. This flagship programme for the BBC is presented by one of its leading journalists. Andrew Marr recently took over the BBC1 Sunday morning politics and news show, previously hosted by David Frost.

On the Monday show, Andy will be talking about the Human Futures book and what it means for how we should attend to immediate and long term social needs.

Steve Kurtz, Bioart and Strange Culture

This fascinating film from Lynn Hersmann-Leeson reveals the story of Steve Kurtz, an artist who works with cell cultures who found himself at the centre of an FBI investigation into his work. His plight is the focus of the chapter by George J. Annas in Human Futures on Bioterror and Bioart. Here’s a clip of the film’s trailor:

and here’s an interview with Kurtz:

Pipilotti Rist @ FACT

Pipilotti was the solo artist for one of FACT’s major exhibitions this year. Her work features in the introductory chapter by Mike Stubbs and Laura Sillars. For a taste of Rist’s work, here’s a well-known embed, one of the first I saw of her work. The exhibition was stunning and buying a copy of Human Futures will get you some rare printed material of Rist’s work…

The Fragmented Orchestra @ Ding Dong

The Human Futures book will be presented at Ding Dong, FACT’s new exhibition for December. A central part of the exhibit is The Fragmented Orchestra, which one the PRS Foundation prize and one of the Chapters of Human Futures. Come to Ding Dong on 10 December and the artists’ breakfast on 11 December to meet the authors/artists/musicians and get a signed copy of the book.

Here’s some information about the exhibit:

The Fragmented Orchestra is a huge distributed musical structure modeled on the firing of neurons within the brain’s cortex. It is designed by its composers to perform a profound and unique score to thousands of listeners across the UK. This instrument, a model of a brain, will be distributed across 24 public locations throughout the UK, and at least one central venue (FACT, Liverpool). The piece will operate continuously over the period of three months.

At 24 diverse locations, ranging from football stadia, motorway crash barriers, school playgrounds and an offshore buoy with a ringing bell, a small ‘neuron unit’ will be mechanically attached to the resonant surface of an existing physical structure. All of the neuron units are connected to each other, via the internet, to form a tiny ‘cortex’ and will ‘fire’ signals back and forth when stimulated by sound. The ‘neuron units’ will act as a musical interface and gateway into The Fragmented Orchestra.

When a ‘neuron’ fires, fragments of sounds from its location are transmitted to the central venue in which each neuron unit is represented by its own loudspeaker. Performers, including individuals and groups from each locality, can play each neuron unit and listeners can hear a unique array of rhythms, timbres and pulses created by the cortex at work.  The music at the central venue will also be shared with listeners at each of the remote locations through the use of Feonic™ technology, which turns any resonant surface into a high quality loudspeaker. A website will also enable people to tune into each of the neurons as well as the central location.

Jane Grant is predominately a visual artist working with film, sound, video and installation. She has exhibited widely in the UK and is currently Principal Investigator at the University of Plymouth of an AHRC funded project, which merges the human voice and breath with neuronal firing patterns to be shown at ArtSway in 2008. John Matthias is a musician and physicist. He has worked with many artists including Radiohead, Matthew Herbert and Coldcut and has performed extensively in Europe including at the Pompidou Centre, Paris. He is a lecturer in Sonic Arts at University of Plymouth. Nick Ryan is a composer, producer and sound designer. He won a BAFTA for his ground breaking interactive radio drama The Dark House, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and has composed extensively for film and television.

“The sounds created at 24 resonant locations around the UK would be captured and transmit to each other in a collective composition, based on the same principles as the connections in the human brain. This is music writ large across the country and, through complex technology, we can all create, listen and play a part in it.” New Music Award panel

Would you be interested in taking part in this musical experiment? Do you think that this technology will create music? Click here to let us know your thoughts…

Responses so far

“As an artist and supporter of sound based artistic practice, I’m really interested in this sort of cross discipline work and have recently been doing research in architecture and music; folk musics as distributive technologies, I can’t wait to see how it will be realised.”

“There seems to be a surge of works of music and sound that are essentially distributive and expanded in their performance; no fixed settings; no fixed audiences microscopic elements distributed across many places… physical networks across an atomised society. I’m really interested in this sort of cross discipline work; folk musics as distributive technologies. I cant wait to see how it will be realised.”

Laura Sillars on Web 2.0 and Cultural Leadership

Laura Sillars is co-author with Mike Stubbs of one of the Introductory chapters to Human Futures and as well as a chapter with Oron Catts, one of the leading bioartists in the world. As Head of Programme at FACT, Laura was part of an initiative to learn new ways of bringing web 2.0 thinking to cultural leadership earlier in the year:

Using Web 2.0 Thinking for Cultural Leadership

Kira O’Reilly @ Performing Medicine

This great series of Conversations, includes one of the HF contributors Kira O’Reilly.

THE MEDICAL GAZE
Detachment and empathy in medicine and art

2 December | 7-9pm | £10 (£8 conc)
Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG

How do different artists represent, challenge, and engage with the ‘’medical gaze’? What can medicine and the arts learn from each other about how each identifies, deconstructs and then reassembles the objects or subjects of its attention? Do artists and doctors face similar dilemmas in patrolling the ethical dimensions of their work?

Speakers

Artists Bobby Baker and Kira O’Reilly
Kamaldeep Bhui, Professor of Cultural Psychiatry, Barts and the London

Book Online | Tel: 020 7887 8888

The Fragmented Orchestra

The final major exhibition for FACT is The Fragmented Orchestra, which has a written overview within the Human Futures book. At FACT.tv you can view more about it:

Biomedical Ethics Film Festival (Edinburgh, 14-16 November, 2008)

Euthanasia: A Good Death?
Biomedical Ethics Film Festival on the topic of Assisted Dying

14-16 November 2008 – Edinburgh Filmhouse – 88 Lothian Road, Edinburgh EH3 9BZ
Box Office Tel: 0131 228 2688
See: http://www.filmhousecinema.com/seasons/biomedical-ethics-film-festival/

Is euthanasia a good death? What is the difference between euthanasia and assisted suicide? Why has euthanasia been so much in the news lately?
These are some of the questions which will be asked in a three-day biomedical ethics film festival taking place in Edinburgh between the 14th – 16th of November 2008. During this event, films will be presented all supporting reflection on the subject of assisted dying.
At the end of each film, a discussion will be taking place with a panel of 3-4 invited experts in bioethics, science, law, medicine and politics who will support, but not take over, a debate lasting about 30-45 min with the general public attending the film.

Friday the 14th of November 2008 – 18.00 hrs

Reverend Death
Channel 4 Documentary directed by Jon Ronson with Jon Ronson, 2008
The Reverend George Exoo is a seemingly jolly, but not very successful Unitarian minister from West Virginia, USA, who has drifted into helping non-terminally ill people commit suicide.
At the start of filming, Jon Ronson believed that everyone should have the right to terminate their own lives. However, as the film progresses, he begins to change his mind and starts to have serious reservations about what Rev. Exoo does and about the motives of his new assistant Susan, who claims she’ll help practically anyone kill themselves if the price is right: ‘For George it’s a calling,’ she says. ‘For me it’s a business.’

Saturday the 15th of November 2008 – 13.00 hrs

The Sea Inside (Spanish: Mar adentro)
Spanish/Chilean director Alejandro Amenábar, 2004, Rated PG
Drama based on the real-life story of Ramón Sampedro (played by Javier Bardem), a Spanish ship mechanic left quadriplegic after a diving accident who fought a 28-year campaign in support of assisted suicide and his right to end his own life.
The Sea Inside won the 2004 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, the 2004 Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, and 14 Goya Awards including awards for Best Film, Best Director, Best Lead Actor, Best Lead Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Screenplay.

Sunday the 16th of November 2008 – 13.00 hrs

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (French: Le scaphandre et le papillon)
Directed by Julian Schnabel, 2007, Rated 12
The film describes the real-life experience of Elle magazine editor-in-chief Jean-Dominique Bauby after suffering a massive stroke that left him mentally aware of his surroundings but physically paralysed with the exception of some movement in his head and left eye.
The French edition of the book, on which the film was based, was entirely written by Bauby blinking his left eyelid during July and August 1996. It received excellent reviews, sold 150,000 copies in the first week, and went on to become a number one bestseller across Europe.
The film won awards at the Cannes Film Festival, the Golden Globes and the BAFTA Awards, as well as four Academy Award nominations.

The film festival is organised in partnership with: (1) the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics,
(2) the Edinburgh Filmhouse (venue for the event) and (3) the Edinburgh and South-East Scotland Branch of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

ISEA 2009 Pre-Symposium

Last week, Mike Stubbs and I gave a public lecture at the ISEA 2009 pre-symposium in Belfast. We debated Liverpool, Gunter von Hagens, La Machine, bioethics and bioart, the future of humanity, the role of public art in the 21st C, the role of arts institutions, and much more.

Justina Robson

Just in: Leading British science-fiction writer Justina Robson to speak at the HF symposium.

Biography:

Justina Robson was born in Leeds, and studied philosophy and linguistics at the University of York. She worked in a variety of jobs – including secretary, technical writer, and fitness instructor – until becoming a full-time writer.

Robson attended the Clarion West Writing Workshop and was first published in 1994 in the British small press magazine The Third Alternative, but is best known as a novelist. Her debut novel Silver Screen was shortlisted for both the Arthur C Clarke Award and the BSFA Award in 2000. Her second novel, Mappa Mundi, was also shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award in 2001. It won the 2000 Amazon.co.uk Writer’s Bursary. In 2004, Natural History, Robson’s third novel, was shortlisted for the BSFA Award, and came second in the John W Campbell Award.

Robson’s novels have been noted for sharply-drawn characters, and an intelligent and deeply thought-out approach to the tropes of the genre. She has been described as “one of the very best of the new British hard SF writers”[1].

Living Next-Door to the God of Love is a loose sequel to Natural History, inasmuch as it is set in the same universe. Keeping It Real marks the beginning of a series, the Quantum Gravity Books.

On 27th July 2008 she spoke on BBC Radio 3 about Doctor Who and various other sci-fi shows for 25 minutes during the interval of the Doctor Who Prom.