The normalization of the cyborg: from futuristic artistic expression of mutilation to daily aesthetic beauty

The concept of mutilation as a permanent scarring of the integrity of the body has been overcome by the representation in visual culture of the cyborg, the bionic human and the genetically and bionically engineered mutant. Mutants with bionic prosthetics in the X-Men film trilogy, the bionic man in The Six Million Dollar Man (1974) and his companion The Bionic Woman (1976) as well as The Terminator (1984) with its sequels have contributed to create a new aesthetic perception of the artificial. From the Cyborg Manifesto to theories of Post-humanism and Trans-humanism, the arts have embraced the opportunity of realizing the conjunction between human and machine envisaged at first by Tommaso Marinetti in the Futurist Manifesto. Stelarc has contributed with his performances and body implants to explore new aesthetic forms that conceive the prosthesis as an evolutionary empowering design. If in the arts this approach has created aesthetic debates and polarizations between bioconservatism and technoprogressivism, how is the reality of mutilation approached by people in their daily lives? The paper analyzes whether the aesthetic perception of prosthetics is that of a permanent sign of mutilation or that of a new technological empowerment. “In the last two to three years many men have asked to have prosthetics without coverage, leaving the metal part visible. They tell me that a leg like this is more futuristic! Maybe they feel more masculine because the metallic leg gives them the sensation of being bionic, half human and half machine. Men under fifty especially request it. At the opposite end of the spectrum, women ask for symmetric prosthetics very similar to the one they lost.” Interview with Dr. X at the Limb Fitting Centre, London. If the visual arts have created an experience and imagination of post-humanity as the futuristic merging of human and machine that the public perceives as increasingly achievable, what are the new frontiers of aesthetic exploration? Are the aesthetics of post-humanity becoming those of a ‘normalization’ of cyborgology? The paper will argue that the contemporary aesthetics of futuristic empowerment look to artists and designers in order to deliver new modes of aesthetic consumption for a technology no longer perceived as reconstruction of a mutilation but as the empowering necessary framework to facilitate the transition from human to super-human

Landscape History and Theory: from Subject Matter to Analytic Tool

This essay explores how landscape history can engage methodologically with the adjacent disciplines of art history and visual/cultural studies. Central to the methodological problem is the mapping of the beholder � spatially, temporally and phenomenologically. In this mapping process, landscape history is transformed from subject matter to analytical tool. As a result, landscape history no longer simply imports and applies ideas from other disciplines but develops its own methodologies to engage and influence them. Landscape history, like art history, thereby takes on a creative cultural presence. Through that process, landscape architecture and garden design regain the cultural power now carried by the arts and museum studies, and has an effect on the innovative capabilities of contemporary landscape design

Form, science, and narrative in the anthropocene

A significant strand of contemporary fiction engages with scientific models that highlight a constitutive interdependency between humanity and material realities such as the climate or the geological history of our planet. This article looks at the ways in which narrative may capture this human-nonhuman interrelation, which occupies the foreground of debates on the so-called Anthropocene. I argue that the formal dimension of scientific knowledge-as manifested by diagrams or metaphors used by scientists-is central to this narrative remediation. I explore two analogical strategies through which narrative may pursue a formal dialogue with science: clusters of metaphorical language and the global structuring of the plot. Rivka Galchen's novel Atmospheric Disturbances (2008), for instance, builds on a visual representation of meteorological patterns in a storm (lifted from an actual scientific paper) to stage the narrator's mental illness. Two other contemporary works (Orfeo by Richard Powers and A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki) integrate scientific models through the overall design of the plot. By offering close readings of these novels, I seek to expand work in the area of New Formalism and show how formal choices are crucial to bringing together the human-scale world and more-than-human phenomena

Pocohontas's baptism : Reformed theology and the paradox of desire

Seeking to elucidate certain elements of Reformed theology, the writer explores the conversion narrative concerning the baptism, in the early 17th century, of the Native American woman Pocahontas. She explains that in a letter detailing his anxieties about his relationship with Pocahontas, the English settler John Rolfe denies the desire of carnal affection while celebrating his longing to convert Pocahontas. She highlights this link between the desire for the flesh and the desire for the spirit, and she traces the ways in which these longings operate in Rolfe's letter and in the baptismal theology informing the conversion of Pocahontas. She suggests that an analysis of the desires of the convertor and of the connection between the feared yearning for the flesh and the sacred desire for the divine reveal important aspects of Reformed thought

Staging the ‘Forgotten Genocide’ in the Aftermath of the Dirty War: Una bestia en la luna by Richard Kalinoski

The most recent Argentine military dictatorship (1976-1983) and the Armenian Genocide (1915-1923) share legacies of state-sanctioned denial and impunity, which have left survivors and subsequent generations grappling with issues of memory and mourning. The intersection of these two collective memories in Argentina, home to a sizable Armenian population, offers a glimpse into how post-dictatorial and post-genocidal memory politics have borrowed from and shaped each other. This article examines the positive reception in Argentina of Una bestia en la luna by the U.S. playwright Richard Kalinoski. While the work treats the struggles of two survivors of the Armenian Genocide and sets its dramatic action in the U.S., Kalinoski’s use of photography to warn against the dangers of silencing memory engages non-Armenian spectators in postdictatorial Argentina

Energetics of the brain and AI

Does the energy requirements for the human brain give energy constraints that give reason to doubt the feasibility of artificial intelligence? This report will review some relevant estimates of brain bioenergetics and analyze some of the methods of estimating brain emulation energy requirements. Turning to AI, there are reasons to believe the energy requirements for de novo AI to have little correlation with brain (emulation) energy requirements since cost could depend merely of the cost of processing higher-level representations rather than billions of neural firings. Unless one thinks the human way of thinking is the most optimal or most easily implementable way of achieving software intelligence, we should expect de novo AI to make use of different, potentially very compressed and fast, processes

An empirical investigation of sparse distributed memory using discrete speech recognition

Presented here is a step by step analysis of how the basic Sparse Distributed Memory (SDM) model can be modified to enhance its generalization capabilities for classification tasks. Data is taken from speech generated by a single talker. Experiments are used to investigate the theory of associative memories and the question of generalization from specific instances