Category Archives: Posthuman

From Tristan Tzaras Vingt-Cinq Poemes. Etching by Hans Arp. From the collection of the International Dada Archive, Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries Andrei Codrescu: Documenting Dada/Disseminating Dada

Shambaugh Auditorium Saturday, Feb. 18 at 7 p.m.

Dada was a volatile artistic, social and political movement that exploded in 1916 from the Zrich club Cabaret Voltaire, creating reverberations that can still be felt today. Its fuse was lit by refugees from World War One who decamped to Switzerland, a neutral country that became a magnet for artists, bohemians and other radicals.

As poet and NPR contributor Andrei Codrescu observed, The Dadaists had the bad luck to live during a World War yet unmatched for stupidity (though he was quick to add, Not that there are any smart wars). We are living in a similar world, but it is still only 1913, he told me, drawing parallels between the dawning days of the Trump administration and the lead-up to WWIs bloodbath. So, in a scientifically more advanced time, we are in the same position the Dadaists were: The only answer to the insanity of our war-hungry leaders is a resolute NO.

The Dadaists were contrarians; they were artists who wanted to abolish art, and were serious about their jokes. We destroyed, we insulted, we despised and we laughed, reminisced early Dadaist Hans Richter in his book, Dada: Art and Anti-Art. We laughed at everything. We laughed at ourselves just as we laughed at Emperor, King and Country, fat bellies and baby-pacifiers Pandemonium, destruction, anarchy, anti-everything, why should we hold it in check? What of the pandemonium, destruction, anarchy, anti-everything, of the World War?

Dadaists said their NO by mocking all Western art and philosophy, echoed Codrescu. They saw that only the creation of new forms of art, thinking, living and creative resistance would demonstrate the absurdity of war. As the author of The Posthuman Dada Guide, he will speak in Shambaugh Auditorium at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 18 as part of the University of Iowa Main Library Gallery exhibition, Documenting Dada/Disseminating Dada.

I discovered Dada in high school, in my birthplace, Romania, which was a communist country, Codrescu recalled. Coming to Dada through the poetry of Tristan Tzara, it opened the door for him, making it possible to use his imagination to survive Romanias police state. Im familiar with dictatorship and its silencing of dissent, Codrescu added. We are now on our way to authoritarian rule in the U.S.

The Posthuman Dada Guides subtitle Tzara and Lenin Play Chess serves as the books framing device: a hypothetical chess game that pitted Tzara against Russian communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. Tzara played chess on the side of art, anarchy, freedom, the unexpected and the end of war. Lenin played for ideology, class war and an orderly police state. For a while in the 20th century it looked like Lenin won the war. In the 21st, it looks like Tzara did. We will see. The game still goes on.

Codrescu hopes Dada tactics can help win a game whose stakes have been raised by sadistic chess masters like Donald Trump. Spontaneous action is the only activity that the police dont understand. They understand ideologies like communism, fascism, etc., but they have trouble with poetry. First thought, best thought, Allen Ginsberg said. Organizations understand organizations, but no one expects spontaneous dance, song or a sudden seizure by a pagan god. Dada is a constructive destruction party that lets the future in.

When asked about his favorite historical moment in this constructive destruction party, Codrescu mused, The first night at Cabaret Voltaire must have been something: Poets invented simultaneous readings, there were dances invented on the spot, fantastic masks by Marcel Janco, Tristan Tzaras antics, Hugo Balls nonsense poems, several languages in performance. There was a drunken audience of heartbroken, wounded soldiers, deserters and spies. It was the start of modern art in the 20th century. One evening that changed everything.

Dadaists mocked and molested bourgeois society with prankish acts that attempted to dismantle the museums and turn the streets into galleries. The first shot fired from Dadas anti-art machine gun was Marcel Duchamps first ready-made, Bicycle Wheel, in 1913. According to Duchamp, a ready-made is just an everyday object that can be turned into art by someone audacious enough to call it that. As early as 1913, Duchamp deadpanned, I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and watch it turn.

With Fountain, his most notorious ready-made, Duchamp bought a mass-produced urinal, signed the name R. Mutt on its white porcelain surface and then placed it in a gallery. On another occasion, he drew a mustache and goatee on a store-bought reproduction of Da Vincis Mona Lisa, naming it LHOOQ. When the letters in Duchamps title are read aloud in French Elle a chaud au cul its a pun on a phrase that translates colloquially as she is hot in the ass.

For a group that embraced irreverence and chaos, its no surprise that Dadaism quickly imploded by the early-1920s. But its anarchic legacy lives on and continues to serve as an antidote to todays post-truth era that is swimming in alternative facts. Reflecting on this, Codrescu said, The non-facts of people in power are dangerous lies. The disorder of distracters is not Dada: its brainwashing propaganda based on salesmanship and deliberate confusion. Dada undoes those with an overt sense of the absurd that puts the spotlight squarely on the contradictions of power.

Dada is flexible, he concludes, when the power lies, it reacts with an absurd but true transparent gesture. When power pretends to be of the people, Dada proclaims its aristocracy. Dada is a perpetual NO to whatever is being proposed by the manipulators in power.

Kembrew McLeod marches to the beat of his own Dada drummer. This article was originally published in Little Village issue 215.

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Prairie Pop: NPR's Codrescu breaks down Dadaism's ongoing influence - Little Village

Most experts say we are not ready for the massive job losses that will happen because of automation.

In most instances, we think we are interested in innovation, but we are mostly interested in incremental innovation, such as changing the proverbial flavour of the ice cream, adding a blade to a razor, or buying a welding robot.

A bigger step is social innovation, the changing of mindset, attitude, and culture. As Edgar Shein (1985) said, culture determines and limits strategy.

Many have figured out that if we dont learn to think differently, we will not solve our big problems.

A better toothbrush may be important, but it has little to do with finding ways to address complex issues such as racism, terrorism, violence, let alone the inability for rich nations to get people working, feed impoverished children, or address mental health issues.

The key to social innovation is deep listening, according to thinker Pauline Oliveros, the kind of dialogue that builds understanding, acceptance, and partnership.

It wasnt long ago, when people with differences women and minorities of all kinds endured violence and state-level oppression. Canadas residential schools are a clear example of state-sponsored and legalized violence.?

But social innovation processes allowed the world to change, for equity to evolve, and eventually, in many cases, become the rule of law.

But letting go of old ways is challenging. The process may require a long period of healing and an active phase of reconciliation.

The work done in South Africa, for example, under their Truth and Reconciliation agenda is not so much about boosting poverty rates directly, but empowering and healing so that oppressed people can address generations of collective trauma.

Social innovation may help us come together, but of all the kinds of innovation, I consider quantum innovation as the most misunderstood.

A quantum social innovation is the leap from one state of social consciousness to another.

Some think that quantum innovation is impossible because it requires a system to evolve in ways that are posthuman.

What is posthuman? It means getting beyond a limiting anthropocentric perspective where humans are the centre of everything something Indigenous people all over the world have known for millennia.

Those who study consciousness, neuroscience, computation, biological evolution, and creativity point to studies in evolutionary adaptation, quantum physics, and photosynthesis to identify non-linear change where a system, species, or structure evolves far beyond the rational addition of its components.

What we have discovered is that quantum change is all around us. The sub atomic level reveals evidence that not only is time not linear, but that one particle can be in two places at one time.

This is the kernel of what is known as quantum computing.

The biological perspective reveals many examples of quantum change, such as how cells or photons do more than regenerate, but evolve to create new forms.

Neuroscience tells us that consciousness extends beyond our brains to our bodies and perhaps even beyond.

In my view, artificial intelligence (AI) offers us potentially new ways of addressing our human limitations and offers a chance to refocus our energy on ethics.

New automobiles with assisted technologies are a clear example of the ways in which machines are assisting human beings.

We have already created new interfaces with machines that may give us a peek into a future where machines help us in unexpected ways.

The question that many ask in the field of artificial intelligence is what will we do when robots put 60 per cent of human beings out of work.

Many commentators see a global depression coming because soon robots will eliminate millions of jobs.

Before this happens, we must think about these challenges to human productivity and the human economy.

Might robots make us enough money so that we dont have to work? It depends on who owns them or programs them doesnt it?

Did you know that the current economy could not function without robots?

Artificially intelligent agents make the stock markets fairer by taking the human element out, so that trades can be conducted ethically and so that catastrophic events can be mitigated.

Just as artificially intelligent umpires will make our sports, like tennis, fairer, the same will happen to arenas where there is human error or emotion.

Ethics is the key discipline when addressing artificially intelligence and automation.

Soldiers who work with sentient machines (i.e. bomb disposal robots) consider their machine partners as persons and give them human levels of loyalty and respect.

Is this loyalty to the inanimate ethics?Can sentient machines help us make better ethical judgements and eventually help us be better, more compassionate humans?

Can robots assist us to create jobs? Can they identify and predict where we will face not just say weather and traffic issues, but where violence and conflict might emerge?

Can they lead us into useful court/medical/negotiation simulations where win-win outcomes will help us avoid conflict, ecological exploitation and war? Or will they simply steal our jobs, put our global economy into a tail spin, and deliver us into self-extinction?

In my view, machines can help us if we focus on evolving ethical ways for human beings to advance our mutual well-being with the planet.

What will we do? Instead of just asking how machines can help us be more innovative, let us ask machines to assist us in becoming more ethical and humane.

Stan Chung, PhD is the author of I Held My Breath for a Year available at stanchung.ca.

Original post:

Will we control innovation or will it control us? - The Daily Courier (subscription)

Most experts say we are not ready for the massive job losses that will happen because of automation.

In most instances, we think we are interested in innovation, but we are mostly interested in incremental innovation such as changing the proverbial flavour of the ice cream, adding a blade to a razor, or buying a welding robot.

A bigger step is social innovation, the changing of mindset, attitude, and culture. As they say, culture beats strategy every day.

Many have figured out that if we dont learn to think differently, we will not solve our big problems.

A better toothbrush may be important, but it has little to do with finding ways to address complex issues such as racism, terrorism, violence, or even the inability for rich countries like ours to get people working, feed impoverished children, or address mental health issues.

The key to social innovation is deep listening, according to Pauline Oliveros, the kind of dialogue that builds understanding, acceptance, and partnership.

It wasnt very long ago, when people with differences--women and minorities of all kinds-- endured violence and state-level oppression. Residential schools are a clear example of state-sponsored and legalized violence.

But social innovation processes allowed us to change, for equity to evolve, and eventually become the rule of law.

But letting go of old ways is challenging. The process may require an active forgetting or relearning, a long period of healing, and an active phase of reconciliation.

The work done in South Africa, for example, under their Truth and Reconciliation agenda is not so much about boosting poverty rates directly, but empowering and healing so that oppressed people can address generations of collective trauma.

Social innovation may help us come together, but of all the kinds of innovation, I put quantum innovation as the most misunderstood.

A quantum social innovation is the leap from one state of social consciousness to another, the kind of change that has made meditation an important social signal for this era.

Some think that quantum innovation is impossible because it requires a system to evolve in ways that are posthuman.

What is posthuman? It means getting beyond a limiting anthropocentric perspective where humans are the centre of everything--something Indigenous people all over the world have known for millennia.

Those who study consciousness, neuroscience, computation, biological evolution, and creativity point to studies in evolutionary adaptation, quantum physics, and photosynthesis to identify non-linear change where a system, species, or structure evolves beyond its current form.

What we have discovered is that quantum change is all around us. The sub atomic level reveals evidence that not only is time not linear, but that one particle can be in two places at one time. This is the kernel of what is known as quantum computing.

The biological perspective reveals many examples of quantum change such as how cells or photons do more than regenerate, but evolve to create new forms.

Neuroscience tells us that consciousness extends beyond our brains to our bodies and perhaps even beyond.

In my view, artificial intelligence (AI) offers us potentially new ways of addressing our human limitations and offers a chance to refocus our energy on posthuman ethics.

New automobiles with assisted technologies are a clear example of the ways in which machines are assisting human beings.

We have already created new interfaces with machines that may give us a peak into a future where machines help us in unexpected ways.

The question that many ask in the field of artificial intelligence is what will we do when robots put 60% of human beings out of work?

Many commentators see a global depression coming because soon robots will eliminate millions of jobs.

Before this happens, we must think about these challenges to human productivity and the human economy.

Might robots make us enough money so that we dont have to work? It depends on who owns them or programs them doesnt it?

Did you know that the current economy could not function without robots?

Artificially intelligent agents make the stock markets fairer by taking the human element out, so that trades can be conducted ethically and so that catastrophic events can be mitigated.

Just as artificially intelligent umpires will make our sports, like tennis, fairer, the same will happen to arenas where there is human error or emotion.

Ethics is the key discipline when addressing artificially intelligence and automation.

Soldiers who work with sentient machines (i.e. bomb disposal robots) consider their machine partners as persons and give them human levels of loyalty and respect. Is this loyalty to the inanimate ethics?

Can sentient machines help us make better ethical judgements and eventually help us be better, more compassionate humans?

Can robots assist us to create jobs?

Can they identify and predict where we will face not just say weather and traffic issues, but where violence and conflict might emerge?

Can they lead us into useful court/medical/negotiation simulations where win-win outcomes will help us avoid conflict, ecological exploitation, and war?

Or will they simply steal our jobs and put our global economy into a tail spin?

In my view, machines can help us evolve if we focus on evolving ethical ways for human beings to advance our mutual well-being with the planet.

What will we do? Instead of asking how machines can help us be more innovative, let us ask machines to assist in becoming more ethical.

Stan Chung, PhD is the author of I Held My Breath for a Year available at stanchung.ca.

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The Ethics of Innovation: Creativity, Machines, and Artificial Intelligence - Kootenay News Advertiser

Lynn Hershman Leeson Civic Radar February 10May 21, 2017

Opening night party: February 10, 710pm

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) 701 Mission Street San Francisco, CA 94103 United States Hours: TuesdaySunday 11am6pm, Thursday 11am8pm

T +1 415 978 2787 F +1 415 978 5210 info@ybca.org

ybca.org Facebook / Twitter / Instagram

Lynn Hershman Leeson: Civic Radar spans the length of the San Francisco-based artists career, from the early 1960s to the present. Originally curated by Peter Weibel and Andreas Beitin and organized by ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany, the survey exhibition has been reconfigured at YBCA by Director of Visual Arts Luca Sanromn. Civic Radar focuses on Hershman Leesons feminist investigations of identity and viewers relationships to various modes of surveillance, as well as her contributions to the fields of social performance and engaged practice.

A fearless pioneer whose performances were fueled by indignation of the vulnerable position of women in American society, her work has been a harbinger of experiments in social practice, new media, and interactive and net-based art decades before technology and digital culture would reshape our experience of reality.

Presenting nearly 250 works, Civic Radar begins with Hershman Leesons early drawings, paintings, and sculptures, then explores her shift toward performance, installation, and conceptual work, displaying her enthusiastic embrace of evolving media. The exhibition covers photography, film, video, and digital media, including sound, interactive, and social media exploring the effects of modern technology on the selfparticularly the female self.

In her recent works the artist addresses the influence of digital culture on our most intimate selves, along with the latest scientific developments in the field of regenerative medicine and genetics research, for instance 3D bioprinters that re-create human body parts. These are featured in a new version of the immersive installation The Infinity Engine (2014ongoing)a replica of a genetics lab that was first prototyped at YBCA in the 2013 exhibition Dissident Futuresthat generates infinite narratives about the future of the human species in the posthuman age.

Exhibition programs:

Techno Reveries and Alter Egos: The Films of Lynn Hershman Leeson Saturdays, March 425, 2pm, Screening Room

Saturday, March 4, 2pm, !WOMEN ART REVOLUTION (2010, 83 minutes, digital) Saturday, March 11, 2pm, TEKNOLUST (2002, 82 minutes, digital) Saturday, March 18, 2pm, CONCEIVING ADA (1997, 85 minutes, digital) Saturday, March 25, 2pm, STRANGE CULTURE (2007, 75 minutes, digital)

YBCA conversation: Lynn Hershman Leeson with Eleanor Coppola, moderated by Amelia Jones Wednesday, March 15, 7pm, Screening Room

Civic Radarbook discussion with B. Ruby Rich and Peggy Phelan, moderated by Elizabeth Thomas Wednesday, April 19, 7pm, Screening Room

Tania Libre screening Please check ybca.org for screening dates and times

This new film on the Cuban artist Tania Bruguera documents the personal and emotional fallout of Brugueras unjust detentions through sessions with psychiatrist Dr. Frank Ochberg, one of the founding fathers of modern psycho-traumatology.

Lynn Hershman Leeson: Civic Radar is curated by Peter Weibel and Andreas Beitin, and organized by ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. The presentation at YBCA is organized by Luca Sanromn, Director of Visual Arts, YBCA.

YBCA Exhibitions 20162017 are made possible, in part, by Mike Wilkins and Sheila Duignan, Meridee Moore and Kevin King, and the Creative Ventures Council. YBCA Programs 20162017 are made possible, in part, by The James Irvine Foundation. Additional funding for YBCA Programs20162017: National Endowment for the Arts, Adobe, Abundance Foundation, Gaia Fund, Grosvenor, and members of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Free First Tuesdays underwritten by Directors Forum Members. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is grateful to the City of San Francisco for its ongoing support.

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Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) - E-Flux

The ACADIA 2016 Conference will foster design work and research from the worlds of practice and academia that lie at the intersection between procedural design, designed environments and autonomous machines. More specifically, this conference will seek to explore recent work within the current trend in computational design to develop and apply quasi-cognitive machines; the integration of software, information, fabrication and sensing to generate mechanisms for interfacing with the physical realm. The conference will invite the submission of papers and projects that explore and interrogate these questions through interdisciplinary endeavors involving fields such as material science, biology, art, computer graphics, civil engineering, and human-computer interaction.

AIA member attendees will receive 1.5 LU or LU/HSW CEUs per paper session and 1 LU per keynote presentation

FABRICATED, a panel discussion, will mark the close of the 2016 ACADIA workshops and the launch of the conference. The panel will be comprised of workshop leaders Brandon Clifford, Matt Jezyk, Dave Pigram and Lauren Vasey, and moderated by workshop co-chairs and Taubman College assistant professors Wes McGee and Catie Newell. After a brief reflection on the workshops that have just completed, the conversation will focus on the current and future works of the panelist as it relates to the 2016 ACADIA theme Posthuman Frontiers. At the conclusion of the workshops, the Taubman College FABLab will be open for tours.

e: 2016@acadia.org

ACADIA would also like to acknowledge the generosity of Autodesk in their support of additional scholarships and awards including the Autodesk ACADIA Student Conference Travel Scholarships, and the Autodesk ACADIA Research Excellence Awards to support outstanding peer-reviewed papers and projects.

Elizabeth Diller

Elizabeth Diller is a founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), an interdisciplinary design studio that works at the intersection of architecture, the visual arts, and the performing arts. With Ricardo Scofidio, Diller was the first in the field of architecture to receive the genius award from the MacArthur Foundation, which stated their work explores how space functions in our culture and illustrates that architecture, when understood as the physical manifestation of social relationships, is everywhere, not just in buildings.

DS+R established its identity through independent, theoretical, and self-generated projects before coming to international prominence with two of the most important planning initiatives in New York: the High Line, and the redesign of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts campus. In addition to the recently openend Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center at Columbia University, and The Broad museum in downtown Los Angeles, Diller is Principal-in-Charge of The Shed, a new center for artistic invention, and the renovation and expansion of MoMA, both in New York. Diller graduated from the Cooper Union School of Architecture in 1979, and taught at the school from 1981-1990. She is a Professor of Architecture at Princeton University.

Diller is a recipient of the Smithsonian Institutions National Design Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Design, and the Brunner Prize from the American Academy of the Arts and Letters. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and International Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. In 2013, Diller was awarded the Barnard Medal of Distinction, and DS+R was presented a Centennial Medal of Honor from the American Academy in Rome. Diller was selected by Time magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.

Iris Van Herpen

Normal rules dont apply...

Iris van Herpen stands for a reciprocity between craftsmanship and innovation in technique and materials. She creates a modern view on Haute Couture that combines fine handwork techniques with digital technology .Van Herpen forces fashion to the extreme contradiction between beauty and regeneration. It is her unique way to reevaluate reality and so to express and underline individuality.

The essence of van Herpen is expressing the character and emotions of a woman and to extend the shape of the feminine body in detail. She mixes craftsmanship- using old and forgotten techniques- with innovation and materials inspired by the world to come.

For me fashion is an expression of art that is very close related to me and to my body. I see it as my expression of identity combined with desire, moods and cultural setting.

In all my work I try to make clear that fashion is an artistic expression, showing and wearing art, and not just a functional and devoid of content or commercial tool. With my work I intend to show that fashion can certainly have an added value to the world, that it can be timeless and that its consumption can be less important then its beginning. Wearing clothing creates an exciting and imperative form of self-expression. 'Form follows function' is not a slogan with which I concur. On the contrary, I find that forms complement and change the body and thus the emotion. Movement, so essential to and in the body, is just as important in my work. By bringing form, structure and materials together in a new manner, I try to suggest and realize optimal tension and movement.

Iris designs require every time a unique treatment of material or even the creation of completely new materials. For this reason, Van Herpen prefers interdisciplinary research and often collaborates with other artists or scientists.

Philip Beesley

Philip Beesley is a practicing visual artist, architect, and Professor in Architecture at theUniversity of Waterlooand Professor of Digital Design and Architecture & Urbanism at theEuropean Graduate School. Beesley's work is widely cited in contemporary art and architecture, focused in the rapidly expanding technology and culture of responsive and interactive systems.

Beesley was educated in visual art at Queen's University, in technology at Humber College, and in architecture at the University of Toronto. He serves as the Director for the Living Architecture Systems Group, and as Director forRiverside Architectural Press. His Toronto- based practice, Philip Beesley Architect Inc., operates in partnership with the Europe-based practice Pucher Seifert and the Waterloo-based Adaptive Systems Group, and in numerous collaborations including longstanding exchanges with couture designer Iris van Herpen and futurist Rachel Armstrong. PBAI/PS combine the disciplines of professional architecture, science, engineering, and visual art. The studio's methods incorporate industrial design, digital prototyping, instrument making, and mechatronics engineering. Beesley has authored and edited sixteen books and proceedings, and has appeared on the cover of Artificial Life (MIT), LEONARDO and AD journals. Features include national CBC news, Vogue, WIRED, and a series of TED talks. His work was selected to represent Canada at the 2010 Venice Biennale for Architecture, and has received distinctions including the Prix de Rome, VIDA 11.0, FEIDAD, Azure AZ, and Architizer A+. Beesley's work is supported by partnerships and by SSHRC, NSERC and Canadian arts and technology funding.

Theodore Spyropoulos

Theodore Spyropoulos is an architect and educator. He is the Director of the Architectural Associations world renowned Design Research Lab (AADRL) in London. He has been a visiting Research Fellow at M.I.T.s Center for Advanced Visual Studies and co-founded the New Media and Information Research initiative at the AA. He has taught in the graduate school of UPENN, Royal College of Art Innovation Design Engineering Department and the University of Innsbruck.

In 2002 with his brother Stephen Spyropoulos he co-founded the experimental architecture and design practice Minimaforms. Using design as a mode of enquiry, the studio explores projects that enable new forms of communication. Embracing a generative and behavioral approach the studio develops open systems that construct participatory and interactive frameworks that engage the everyday. Their work has received international attention which have included nominations for the International Chernikhov Prize in architecture, named one of the top ten international public art installations by the Telegraph for their work Memory Cloud and most recently they were awarded best idea / creative work in the 5th Chinese International Beijing Biennale. Recent projects include two thematic pier landmarks and the illumination concept for a Renzo Pianos master planned 760 acre National Park in Athens, a large scale land art work in Norway, a vehicle in collaboration with artist Krzysztof Wodiczko, a behavior based robotic installation for the FRAC Centre and immersive ephemeral environment for the city of Detroit.

The work of Minimaforms has been acquired by the FRAC Centre, the Signum Foundation and the Archigram Archive, and has exhibited at MOMA, Barbican Centre, Onassis Cultural Centre, Detroit Institute of Arts and the ICA. Recent projects include two thematic pier landmarks and the illumination concept for a Renzo Pianos master planned 760-acre National Park in Athens, a large-scale land art intervention in Norway, and a proposal for self-organizing model named Emotive City. They have been featured in international media including BBC, BBC radio, Robert Elms Show, Wired Magazine, Fast Company, Guardian, Blueprint, and Icon Magazine. They were named Creative Reviews One to Watch.

Previously Theodore has worked as a project architect for the offices of Peter Eisenman and Zaha Hadid. In 2013 the Association for Computer-Aided Design in Architecture awarded him The ACADIA award of excellence for his educational work directing the AADRL. His published books include Adaptive Ecologies: Correlated Systems of Living (2013), Enabling (2010) and forthcoming Behavior (2016).

http://www.minimaforms.com

Mario Carpo

Reyner Banham Professor of Architectural Theory and History, the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL London.

After studying architecture and history in Italy, Dr Carpo was an Assistant Professor at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, and in 1993 received tenure in France, where he was first assigned to the cole d'Architecture de Saint-Etienne, then to the cole d'Architecture de Paris-La Villette. He was the Head of the Study Centre at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montral from 2002 to 2006, and Vincent Scully Visiting Professor of Architectural History at the Yale School of Architecture from 2010 to 2014.

Mr. Carpo's research and publications focus on the relationship among architectural theory, cultural history, and the history of media and information technology. His award-winning Architecture in the Age of Printing (MIT Press, 2001) has been translated into several languages. His most recent books are The Alphabet and the Algorithm (MIT Press, 2011; also translated into other languages); and The Digital Turn in Architecture, 1992-2012 (Wiley, 2012).Mr. Carpo's recent essays and articles have been published in Log, The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Grey Room, L'Architecture d'aujourd'hui, Arquitectura Viva, AD/Architectural Design, Perspecta, Harvard Design Magazine, Cornell Journal of Architecture, Abitare, Lotus International, Domus, Artforum, and Arch+.

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ACADIA | 2016 Conference

N. Katherine Hayles (born 16 December 1943) is a postmodern literary critic, most notable for her contribution to the fields of literature and science, electronic literature, and American literature.[1] She is professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Program in Literature at Duke University.[2]

Hayles was born in Saint Louis, Missouri to Edward and Thelma Bruns. She received her B.S. in Chemistry from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1966, and her M.S. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1969. She worked as a research chemist in 1966 at Xerox Corporation and as a chemical research consultant Beckman Instrument Company from 1968-1970. Hayles then switched fields and received her M.A. in English Literature from Michigan State University in 1970, and her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Rochester in 1977.[3] She is a social and literary critic.

Her scholarship primarily focuses on the "relations between science, literature, and technology."[4][5] Hayles has taught at UCLA, University of Iowa, University of MissouriRolla, the California Institute of Technology, and Dartmouth College.[3] She was the faculty director of the Electronic Literature Organization from 2001-2006.[6]

Hayles understands "human" and "posthuman" as constructions that emerge from historically specific understandings of technology, culture and embodiment; "human and "posthuman" views each produce unique models of subjectivity.[7] Within this framework "human" is aligned with Enlightenment notions of liberal humanism, including its emphasis on the "natural self" and the freedom of the individual.[8] Conversely, Posthuman does away with the notion of a "natural" self and emerges when human intelligence is conceptualized as being co-produced with intelligent machines. According to Hayles the posthuman view privileges information over materiality, considers consciousness as an epiphenomenon and imagines the body as a prosthesis for the mind .[9] Specifically Hayles suggests that in the posthuman view "there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation..."[8] The posthuman thus emerges as a deconstruction of the liberal humanist notion of "human."

Despite drawing out the differences between "human" and "posthuman", Hayles is careful to note that both perspectives engage in the erasure of embodiment from subjectivity.[10] In the liberal humanist view, cognition takes precedence over the body, which is narrated as an object to possess and master. Meanwhile, popular conceptions of the cybernetic posthuman imagine the body as merely a container for information and code. Noting the alignment between these two perspectives, Hayles uses How We Became Posthuman to investigate the social and cultural processes and practices that led to the conceptualization of information as separate from the material that instantiates it.[11] Drawing on diverse examples, such as Turing's Imitation Game, Gibson's Neuromancer and cybernetic theory, Hayles traces the history of what she calls "the cultural perception that information and materiality are conceptually distinct and that information is in some sense more essential, more important and more fundamental than materiality."[12] By tracing the emergence of such thinking, and by looking at the manner in which literary and scientific texts came to imagine, for example, the possibility of downloading human consciousness into a computer, Hayles attempts to trouble the information/material separation and in her words, "...put back into the picture the flesh that continues to be erased in contemporary discussions about cybernetic subjects.[13]

In the years since Hayles' How We Became Posthuman was published, it has been both praised and critiqued by scholars who have viewed her work through a variety of lenses; including those of cybernetic history, feminism, postmodernism, cultural and literary criticism, and conversations in the popular press about humans' changing relationships to technology.

Reactions to Hayles' writing style, general organization, and scope of the book have been mixed. The book is generally praised for displaying depth and scope in its combining of scientific ideas and literary criticism. Linda Brigham of Kansas State University claims that Hayles manages to lead the text "across diverse, historically contentious terrain by means of a carefully crafted and deliberate organizational structure."[14] Some scholars found her prose difficult to read or over-complicated. Andrew Pickering describes the book as "hard going" and lacking of "straightforward presentation."[15] Dennis Weiss of York College of Pennsylvania accuses Hayles of "unnecessarily complicat[ing] her framework for thinking about the body", for example by using terms such as "body" and "embodiment" ambiguously. Weiss however acknowledges as convincing her use of science fiction in order to reveal how "the narrowly focused, abstract constellation of ideas" of cybernetics circulate through a broader cultural context.[16] Craig Keating of Langara College on the contrary argues that the obscurity of some texts questions their ability to function as the conduit for scientific ideas.[17]

Several scholars reviewing How We Became Posthuman highlighted the strengths and shortcomings of her book vis a vis its relationship to feminism. Amelia Jones of University of Southern California describes Hayles' work as reacting to the misogynistic discourse of the field of cybernetics.[18] As Pickering wrote, Hayles' promotion of an "embodied posthumanism" challenges cybernetics' "equation of human-ness with disembodied information" for being "another male trick to feminists tired of the devaluation of women's bodily labor."[15] Stephanie Turner of Purdue University also described Hayles' work as an opportunity to challenge prevailing concepts of the human subject which assumed the body was white, male, and European, but suggested Hayles' dialectic method may have taken too many interpretive risks, leaving some questions open about "which interventions promise the best directions to take."[19]

Reviewers were mixed about Hayles' construction of the posthuman subject. Weiss describes Hayles' work as challenging the simplistic dichotomy of human and post-human subjects in order to "rethink the relationship between human beings and intelligent machines," however suggests that in her attempt to set her vision of the posthuman apart from the "realist, objectivist epistemology characteristic of first-wave cybernetics", she too, falls back on universalist discourse, premised this time on how cognitive science is able to reveal the "true nature of the self."[16] Jones similarly described Hayles' work as reacting to cybernetics' disembodiment of the human subject by swinging too far towards an insistence on a "physical reality" of the body apart from discourse. Jones argued that reality is rather "determined in and through the way we view, articulate, and understand the world".[18]

In terms of the strength of Hayles' arguments regarding the return of materiality to information, several scholars expressed doubt on the validity of the provided grounds, notably evolutionary psychology. Keating claims that while Hayles is following evolutionary psychological arguments in order to argue for the overcoming of the disembodiment of knowledge, she provides "no good reason to support this proposition."[17] Brigham describes Hayles' attempt to connect autopoietic circularity to "an inadequacy in Maturana's attempt to account for evolutionary change" as unjustified.[14] Weiss suggests that she makes the mistake of "adhering too closely to the realist, objectivist discourse of the sciences," the same mistake she criticizes Weiner and Maturana for committing.[16]

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N. Katherine Hayles - Wikipedia

Nathaniel Mauka, Staff Writer Waking Times

When Seth Lloyd, a professor of Quantum-Mechanical Engineering at MIT first suggested that the Universe was a giant, quantum computer, the notion garnered a few peoples attention. Lloyd believes that everything in the Universe is made up of chunks of information called bits, disputable as a seeming extension of the materialistic view of the world where stuff is all there is, with no ability for a sentient being to escape the Matrix. Those green, streaming numbers in the opening scene of the film, in fact, would account for everything if it were up to Lloyd, but he is not alone in assuming that we live in a Universe with such a limited description.

There are purportedly a number of billionaires in Silicon Valley and elsewhere who are using Lloyds popularized view as a jumping board to develop technologies which would free us from a bit-made actuality otherwise known as the computer simulation we collectively call the Matrix. Lloyd thinks that even atoms are made of bits. If this were the case, then a simple reprogramming of the 1s and 0s ought to give us an innumerable number of options, but even a quantum computer has limitations.

Mathematician, Peter Shor was able to show that a quantum computer can solve some of the most impossible problems in nanoseconds, but just like Artificial Intelligence, you cant fake real experience and sentient reality. More importantly, what are the implications of giving the machines power over our lives, even if some of them have made redundant activities less bothersome?

Ray Kurzweil once wrote that the exponential growth of AI will lead to a technological singularity, a point when machine intelligence will overpower human intelligence. Lloyd argues that a great quantum computer has already taken over. Stephen Hawking has also warned that Artificial Intelligence could take over humanity so if we were to juxtapose these scenarios over one another, even you and I are just bits, certain to experience an impending doom.

Other large corporations just took over the Internet, the last bastion of fairinformation sharing on the planet. Do Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and others in this technocracy threaten not just the democratic governance of technology, but the absolute sovereignty of ourselves?

Transhumanists have already popularized the notion of cyborgs and super human powers augmented with hardware machinery and software computer parts. The game is half played.

Katherine Hayles wrote in her 1999 publication How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics,

In the posthuman, there are no essential differences, or absolute demarcations, between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot technology and human goals. Humans can either go gently into that good night, joining the dinosaurs as a species that once ruled the earth but is now obsolete, or hang on for a while longer by becoming machines themselves. In either casethe age of the human is drawing to a close.

In a technocracy, power is given only to those who can make decisions based on technological knowledge. The system of governance which holds technology as God cannot fathom the subtleties of human emotion, nor express compassion, morality, or achieve spiritual ascension.

As William Henry has put it, Are you ready to cede your body to the global body and to Transhumanist technology under [the] Transnationalistss control? Really this is a world a Universe no different than the one imagined by the cabal for thousands of years. An elite few create a One World Government, only in this case it expands into solar systems and planets we have yet imagined visiting. The United Nationshas even called this Universal Plan a way to extend peace, but we should not be fooled.

If you dont agree with the technocratic agenda, fear not that youll be on the other end of a gun. Youll be micro-chipped instead. Or, youll pick out your implantable device, or your retina lenscreated by Google. In one of the most secretive start-ups ever, Magic Leap, has raised more than billion dollars to create an implantable contact lens that injects computer-generated images or floats virtual objects into your very real world view. DARPA has already developed numerous technologies to infiltrate your brain, and even to take control over your peripheral nervous system. You wont have personal relations with other human beings. Your avatar will do it for you.

Humanity is undergoing a metamorphosis, but there are two directions we could take. Lloyds version is only one. Another involves ascending spiritually, instead of relying on technology and artificial intelligence in order to outsmart mortality. WhileGoogle and Big Pharma, along with the Department of Defense promise an extra 500 years to some among us, those who have obtained true enlightenment, as suggested by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, can experience something much greater than a little bit of extended time in a skin suit.

Nathaniel Mauka is a researcher of the dark side of government and exopolitics, and a staff writer forWaking Times.

This article (Rise of the Posthuman Technocracy) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution toNathaniel Maukaand WakingTimes.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution and author bio.

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Rise of the Posthuman Technocracy : Waking Times

Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA)

Duration

30 Jun 2016 to 04 Sep 2016

Rebecca Baumann, Ian Burns, Hayden Fowler, Siyon Jin, Airan Kang, Sanghyun Lee, Soyo Lee, Wade Marynowsky, Moon Kyungwon & Jeon Jooho, Patricia Piccinini & Peter Hennessey, Kibong Rhee, Justin Shoulder, Giselle Stanborough, Stelarc & Nina Sellars, Wonbing Yang

Anna Davis & Houngcheol Choi

New Romance: art and the posthuman brought together artists from Australia and Korea whose works encouraged us to ask what it means to be human, and what it might mean in the future. Drawing inspiration from science fiction, robotics, biotechnology, consumer products and social media, they offered experiences that raised questions around the idea of the posthuman; a concept that signals new understandings of humanity and a breakdown of boundaries between what we think of as natural and artificial.

Born across five decades, from the 1940s to the 1980s, the artists employed an eclectic array of technologies in their works. These technologies ranged from the highly specialised to the mass-produced and were used to create everything from crossbred cacti and LED books to dancing robots and a pneumatically powered blender mixing human biomaterials. The thread that linked these diverse artworks was an exploration of new kinds of encounters, not only among technologically connected humans but also between so-called intelligent objects, plants, animals and all manner of hybrid entities.

The artists also reflected on issues such as hyper-consumerism and alternative futures; inviting us to consider how our relationship with the natural world is changing, through our increased ability to alter our environment and through the threat of ecological apocalypse. Several of the artists took on the role of inventor or even mad scientist; experimenting with living organisms, building strange machines and constructing artificial worlds. Some investigated how our emotions are triggered when interacting with kinetic objects, while others tried to see the world from a nonhuman perspective.

These curious and inventive works made visitors wonder what the future might hold.

Over the opening weekend of the exhibition, 30 June 3 July 2016, The Festival of New Romance marked the commencement of New Romance: art and the posthuman with a mix of events, talks, performances and workshops that aimed to celebrate Korean culture and showcase the contemporary art practices on show in the exhibition.

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Song: Posthuman Aritst: Marilyn Manson Album: Mechanical Animals

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Marilyn Manson: Posthuman - YouTube

The Posthuman offers both an introduction and major contribution to contemporary debates on the posthuman. Digital 'second life', genetically modified food, advanced prosthetics, robotics and reproductive technologies are familiar facets of our globally linked and technologically mediated societies. This has blurred the traditional distinction between the human and its others, exposing the non-naturalistic structure of the human. The Posthuman starts by exploring the extent to which a post-humanist move displaces the traditional humanistic unity of the subject. Rather than perceiving this situation as a loss of cognitive and moral self-mastery, Braidotti argues that the posthuman helps us make sense of our flexible and multiple identities.

Braidotti then analyzes the escalating effects of post-anthropocentric thought, which encompass not only other species, but also the sustainability of our planet as a whole. Because contemporary market economies profit from the control and commodification of all that lives, they result in hybridization, erasing categorical distinctions between the human and other species, seeds, plants, animals and bacteria. These dislocations induced by globalized cultures and economies enable a critique of anthropocentrism, but how reliable are they as indicators of a sustainable future?

The Posthuman concludes by considering the implications of these shifts for the institutional practice of the humanities. Braidotti outlines new forms of cosmopolitan neo-humanism that emerge from the spectrum of post-colonial and race studies, as well as gender analysis and environmentalism. The challenge of the posthuman condition consists in seizing the opportunities for new social bonding and community building, while pursuing sustainability and empowerment.

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Amazon.com: The Posthuman (9780745641584): Rosi Braidotti ...