THE FUTURE IS NOW

In the winter of 2007 I was working at a radio station in Madrid as a reporter for the evening program. One day the producer told me to check an article in the newspaper, it was about an Australian man that had implanted an ear on his arm. She thought it will be interesting to do a 5 minute funny piece. I read the article and the man in question was Stelarc, who according to his webpage is:
“…an Australian based performance artist whose work explores and extends the concept of the body and its relationship with technology through human-machine interfaces incorporating medical imaging, prosthetics, robotics, VR systems and the internet” (http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/)

I meet him at his hotel downtown Madrid, where he had come to be part of a performance at an art centre and also to check his ear implant with a doctor in a Madrid hospital. The project that brought him to the city was called “ear on arm”, and consisted in growing ear replicas using his own cells, and then surgically inserting them in his forearm. Then a wireless microphone would be implanted to allow wireless connection to the internet.
(http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/earonarm/index.html).

What was supposed to be a superficial interview about a “weirdo” with an ear on his arm turned out to be an intense interview about transhumanism. Of course my editor wasn’t interested, and due to many factors the audio interview remained in a folder in my computer for all this time. Until today, where I have decided to transcribe it and to do something useful with it. I think that the information that the interview has is a really good insight into the transhumanism movement and its philosophy. Stelarc is a warm, funny and intelligent individual. I will also admit that something in my guts tells me that these trends will not turn our future into a utopia but into a dystopia. Still I have my doubts about the consequences that this might have, but I also believe in freedom, and in a way death scares me, so who am I to judge? I see both sides of the argument.
It has been more than two years since that day, and I think it is time to share it. I hope that you find it interesting, and I will apologize for any grammar mistakes, English is not my first language and I am a lazy writer.
Anyway here it is (if someone wants to copy it and use it please feel free, knowledge should be viral)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Me: If our body is obsolete, is our species in a transition moment?. Is our destiny to transcend humanity?

Stelarc: Firstly there is evidence that we are still evolving. Of course evolution is essentially a much slower process; we can now intervene culturally and technologically so of course there is a possibility now that we can accelerate changes in the human body. I am not advocating any kind of social eugenics but the potential that we can reconsider what a body is how a body operates and the biological status quo of the body, for example the notions of birth and death. I mean these evolutionary imperatives we are born and we die in the one hand to shuffle genetic material within the human phylum to create diversity, on the other hand there is population control. Now if we no longer have to go by these imperatives then we have to question what we mean by existence. And if we for example can fertilize an egg outside of the female body and go a step further and sustain the foetus totally outside of the womb that will mean that your existence will begin without a birth. And then if we could replace malfunctioning components of your body with transplants or technological devices that will mean that you wouldn’t have to have a natural death. Of course accidentally you could still die, but it wouldn’t be a necessity any longer. In other words the realm of life, the realm of death would be contingent rather than necessary.

Me: Is the concept of Cyborg becoming obsolete due to the advances in genetic engineering?

Stelarc: Of course coupled with this possibility of genetic engineering is the possibility of microminiaturizing our machines to a nanotechnology level so consequently one can speculate that the future of technology will not be machines within our human landscape but rather the human body itself becomes a host for the machines. In other words all technology of the future might be invisible because is inside the body now so the body becomes the new landscape for technology.

Me: If science manages to create artificial intelligence. What will be the difference between a cyborg and a very intelligent robot? In your point of view what is what makes us human?

Stelarc: Well I think that the boundaries are constantly blurring, and we are sort of slipping and sliding between for example creative and improvised performances with humans on the one hand and very precisely and speedy operations with our machinery. But of course these capabilities will blur and I don’t think it will be meaningful anymore to distinguish between a biological body or a cyborg construct or a robot in itself. I think the parameters will simply be that there will be certain operational constructions that will more effectually function in the world and this might be still biological bodies and in other circumstances out of necessity might be robots in remote and hazard locations or there might be human-machine constructs like cyborg’s where a biological body with its improvised and creative skills needs to be augmented by its technological components.

Me: So is it like in the 2001 Kubric’s Space Oddity. When the computer Hal becomes aware of itself, of its own mortality it becomes “humanlike”?

Stlerac: That was a very clever film, as was Blade Runner. Both of those films tackle concepts of artificial intelligence of “replicants” of androids, so all of these ideas I think they are at present science fiction speculations, but there are medical developments, artificial intelligence developments and also in robotics and if we can imagine constructing chimeras; in other words creatures that are in part human in part machine part animal or insect this might be the most ideal embodied form, because to be an intelligent agent you need to be embodied and imbedded in the world. The question is what kind of a body? Are we satisfied with a body that malfunctions that is affected by micro organisms, a body that lives an average of 75 years in good health…this is a problem if you are already 60.

Me: In this scenario, do you think that there is the possibility that humanity might become fragmented? In one side rich people or citizens form developed countries having access to genetic therapies and on the other poor people being “stuck” with their imperfect ones?

Stelarc: Well unfortunately that scenario has always been the case, people that are better off are always going to receive better medical treatment are going to be in situation where they live in leisure and become better educated. But I think that these ideas of the fragmentation of the human phylum, perhaps a human species of various kinds of forms and functions will occur more when we begin to inhabit terrains off the earth. So if we start for example having colonies in the moon and other planets nearby then there might be the possibility of the fragmentation of humanity, and that is a very strong possibility.

Me: What would you say to a person that believes in the theory of creationism? That we are an imperfect creation, or that the fact that we can “improve” ourselves is what makes us perfect?

Stelarc: Both of those statements are problematic, in the notion of evolution is not a matter of being more or less perfect, is just that we become adapted to a particular bio sphere and so the form and function of the body is what it is, so we cant really say that it is a more perfect body or not. But on the other hand we should really question the actual parameters of the human body and also determine if for example if at the moment if we can indefinitely preserve a corpse with plasticization, we can indefinitely sustain the life of a comatose body so now what exist becomes blurred. What is living and not living is a question, for example; is a virus a living thing or a not living thing?. When a virus enters a body it becomes very active with catastrophic results, but outside the body we don’t detect that a virus is alive in the way we think about life. The very notion of existence is question. We have to question how we redefine what it is to be human.

Me: Do you think that humanity is spiritually/mentally/psychologically prepared to have that kind of debate. It seems that technology is going one direction, while human kind is the same species that was killing each other in the middle ages in the name of religion and race. Is it necessary a revolution to understand the implications that these changes have for humanity?

Stelarc: Well unfortunately we cannot do this in an equitable way. There is always going to be religious fanatics. Systems that is too rigid to accept change. Change is only going to happen dynamically and systemically; in other words, that we do enough of these things that gradually the changes start happening in a natural way. However when we talk about the mental and the spiritual we are not clear what we mean. There is nothing inside my head, there is no self there is no soul, I don’t even think that I have a mind of my own in the traditional metaphysical sense. So we have to really question now the metaphysical assumption, the platonic, Cartesian and Freudian, constructs of internal essences. We don’t have to construct everything to happen inside within our bodies. What is more important is what happens between people in the medium of language when we are communicating in the social institutions that we inhabit, in culture…

Me: As an artist. Don’t you think that being aware of our mortality is what has contributed to create magnificent art? If we became immortal, wouldn’t that not only affect in our conception of ourselves, but also the art we produce might also loose an edge?

Stelarc: I think certainly in the cycles of live and death, the renewal that occurs with young people this has contributed greatly to our culture. But I don’t think that if we can extend our longevity that will dilute the intensity of our existence I mean at the moment 75 years in good health is an arbitrary time length. I think I will still have a passion for living and existing even if my longevity was much greatly enhanced. Heidegger said that existence is authenticated by death; in other worlds you cannot have one without the understanding of the other. I found that statement problematic, just an expression of the biological status quo, but now that the biological status quo can be challenged the body can be reengineered and I think it will result in the construction of chimeras, mixed machines, bodily flesh….

Me: Howard Bloom talks about the global brain, the collective mind, how to understand humanity one has not to analyse individual mammals but bacteria. You told me before that you don’t think you have a mind of your own. What do you think about these theories?

Stelarc: That sort of dynamic systemic analysis of living things of the biosphere is an important one. I don’t necessarily mean that we have to go to a point of the collective mind, a Tielhard de Chardinian noosphere. This again falls into the kind of yearning for transcendence its kind of spiritual baggage, metaphysical assumptions. The discourse needs or be more tentative; it will have to consider the Hybrid and will have to think of the development of human kind in a much more extended scale also within a much more extended special horizon. I think is inevitable that human beings will colonize other spatial bodies. And then the fragmentation of the human phylum will occur.

Me: Would you consider yourself and existentialist?

Stelarc: Well I am sympathetic with a whole range of philosophical stances, I think that existentialism is one, I am also fascinated with behaviourism but I think that what enrich our understanding of the world are all these philosophical view points. Although I am not sympathetic to a Cartesian interpretation of a separate mind and body I am much happier with a Merleau Ponty analysis, on the other hand I find Deleuzze, Guattari, and Baudrillard as kind of contemporary philosophers and theorist very interesting. But then if you go back to Kant, the idea that time and space isn’t so much an external thing but is rather what constitutes our experiences in the world. These are very fascinating concepts. Nietzsche is one of the most important philosophers, poetic, passionate incisive, very cruel often in his psychological analysis. He once said that the human being or the living being is only a species of the dead. And also Nietzsche said that a dancer has an ear on his toe…

Me: Now you have one in your arm…..

Stelarc: I missed out badly, didn’t I; I put it in the wrong place…

(Laughs)

Me: Do you think that sex is going to became obsolete? And if it does, if we use other means of reproduction, maybe the gender differences will disappear, and with that the traditional family, the structure of society. Do you see that kind of scenario?

Stelarc: Well I think it is being reconsidered at the moment. We know that male couples and female couples now have children. There is artificial insemination, adoption. Families are not only male and female anymore. They can be thought at very differently, flexibly. We can even go beyond that and consider the necessity of having men at all…we can know fertilize the egg without a man sperm. So yes there will be this kind of erasing of sex as the means of reproduction but of course the whole idea of reproduction can disappear if evolution is not the process that we use to develop and reengineer the human body. The question is not if we will erase the gender differences, but if we will erase sex and reproduction all together.

Me: So now man is an agent of evolution more than ever before…He is directing evolution. Do you think that this was part of the “plan”, for man to take control?

Stelarc: Well this is kind of retroactive analysis. We are not proposing any kind of social eugenics, of any kind of political intervention in how you look, in what you do and which implants you are allowed to have in your body. But rather that if you look at your human body and how it operates in the world, that we shouldn’t accept the biological status quo, for example we could extend our sensory apparatus so that we can detect a wider band of the electro magnetic spectrum, we see the world only with our five senses of course we now have developed instruments that allow us to view in infrared, in ultraviolet in X ray, so we can see the world now with our technologies in a much more broader electro magnetic range. We can also now perform remotely; any wireless device will allow you to project your physical presence to another body in another place.

Me: So with this technological and scientifically revolution, maybe what we have perceived as “ghosts” or “spirits” , any kind of paranormal and “mysterious” event could now be explained as part of our multidimensional reality, as energy fields…are we in the process of unlocking the mysteries of the world?

Stelarc: Well this has always been historically a gradual process, not everything will happen in the next 25 years, but certainly a lot of interesting things are happening for example at the moment there is a branch of research called organ printing and this is hybridising typing techniques with biotechnology so imagine instead of printing something with colour inks, you could print with cartridges of living cells, so you could print layer by layer a complete ear or a kidney or in the future a heart. This idea of organ printing means that we will not have to harvest organs from other bodies, we don’t have to worry about stem cells and the ethics involved with it, all of the sudden it becomes an engineering problem, not an ethical one. Anton Artaud and Deleuze and Guattari talk about a body without organs, but as we proliferate with these printed organs we will have actually organs awaiting bodies. At the moment if you had some kind of fatal of organ failure you have to wait until you get a donor, that is why in some case organs have to harvested from third world countries, and of course this creates a serious ethical problem. But if we can print and grow organs, those will disappear and we could extend longevity. Our bodies are poorly designed for organ failure, they are analogue systems, if an element fails the whole system fails, that is why we will have to consider redesigning in a more modular architecture so then there is a possibility than we could more easily replace malfunction organs.

Me: Do you think that science fiction has been a precursor of reality? For example do you think that Isaac Asimov could be the Jules Verne of the 21st century? If you read science fiction, what are the authors that you read?

Stelarc: Well I read a lot of it when I was younger, but now most of my reading is in cognitive sciences and philosophy and just keeping up with the latest research. Having said that I think that science fiction is important literature, I think that it can speculate and redirect research in certain directions; on the other hand it is a genre that is reflecting the state of research at this present moment. I think that writers like William Gibson, and Bruce Sterling are two writers that I would immediately think off, but I know them so (laughs) I have to say that… but I think that in sense now that science has so accelerated change that that can make the case that science fiction has become obsolete as a genre…..