art 315 Issues in Contemporary Art

Hey everybody. I'm assuming you can hear me, so I'm just going to start a couple housekeeping things. You probably noticed or hopefully notice that I did post your third paper assignment, the third and final paper. It's very straightforward. Basically, I am asking you to Curie an exhibition of at least three artists. So what you will be doing in this curation is you will have thesis or theme, an idea for your exhibition. Hopefully, that arises out of stuff that we've talked about and looked at the semester. For example, let's say post-colonialism. Like I wanted to do an exhibition on post-colonialism. So you are going to put together artists who explore the idea. And then you are going to write about what these artists say about post-colonialism. Post-colonialism, like what is it? What is your idea about it? How did you choose these artists? And what do they as a group have to say about the topic? Okay, So yes, it would be nice if it's a topic that we've touched on this semester. But more importantly, it should be a topic of interest to you. Okay? If you have any questions about what you're thinking about, just shoot me an email and let me know. The due date on the final paper is anytime up to The last day of finals. Okay. So you can manage your time. However, is best for you. There is no rough draft for paper three. I mean, no rough draft that you have to submit to me, but I know that because you're all in this process now of good writing that you you always write rough drafts anyway, right? So if you have a rough draft that you would like feedback on, feel free to send it along. And I will give you comments and send it back. But the final paper itself submit anytime you are able to finish it. But no later than the last day of final exams, which is May 27th. Okay. So with regard to that, I am still sorry to say working on your rough drafts of paper to so I am hoping to get those back to you before the weekend. Like I said, I'm doing them in the order that they came in. Technically. I have the due date on those as next Wednesday a week from today. But if you wanted to take a little bit longer, given that I have taken longer, that would be fine. Okay. I just I don't want to gum up your your schedules, but do be mindful of how you're using your own time. Okay? Okay. That's basically it for announcements. What we're going to be talking about tonight is post humanism. And this actually the topic will span. Why? Okay, sorry, I'm back. I totally lost my train of thought anyway. Okay, to talk about post humanism, be at both tonight and next week. What I think is really important for us to think about. And what I'd been doing with these last, last group of lectures, or actually I should say post. The 93 Whitney Biennial lecture, is essentially looking at how, how are we thinking about art these days. And I think one of the things that, you know, that 93 with me and I'll blow up over the politics and identity and individuality and otherness and all that kind of stuff that happens. What it really opens the door for is how are we looking at art as a way of sort of approaching the world, right? I think one of the things that happens with postmodernism is our perspective broadens quite a bit in terms of what art can be. Who is an artist and the kinds of things that aren't talks about. So what I've done then is sort of then look at different ways of looking at the world through art, okay? And giving you some hopefully critical tools to think about that for yourselves. So Emily Post humanism is a big part of that. And this is so weird. Okay? We're screen-sharing, right? Like my screen looks different for some reason. A late tell you. No. Okay. I'm going to stay. Yes. I proves commander current assignment. Robotics. Technological in nature. Yes. Yes. Yes. Suffice it to say he's an expert on commodity. It's your contention that Lieutenant Commander Data is no sentient being. And then what are entitled to all the rights reserved for all life forms within this federation. Data is not essentially it's no problem. Would you enlighten us what is required for sanctions? Intelligent, self awareness, consciousness, proof to the court, time sanctioned. As we all know, you're essentially and so I'm saying chatbots commanded it is not. That's why I mentioned. While you are self-aware, that's the secondary or criteria. Let's deal with the first intelligence is commanded data intelligence. It has the ability to learn and understand and to cope with new situation like this hearing is about self-awareness. What does that mean? Why? Why am I self-aware? Because they were conscious of your existence and actions. You are aware of yourself and your own ego. Monday to what you're doing now. I'm taking part and illegal hearing to determine my rights and status. Am I a person or property and what's at stake? All right to choose perhaps my very life, I rise. My status, my right to choose. My life seems reasonably silverware to me. Commander. This is exceedingly difficult to like Commander Data. I I don't know it well enough to like or dislike it. But you admire him? Oh, yes. It's just an extraordinary piece of engineering and programming. Yes, you have said that commodity, you devoted your life to the study of cybernetics in general? Yes. And come out of date or a particular S. And now you proposed to dismantle him so that I can learn from it and construct more. Amendment as many as are needed. At a hundreds, thousands if necessary. There is no limit. A single data. And forgive me, Amanda is a curiosity, a wonder, even powers in two days it is in fact becoming erase. And will we be judged by how we treat that race out? Tell me, come on to what is data. I just understand what his machine as usual, disease met criteria percent chance I want to give me 25 consciousness and even the smallest degree once you had. I don't know. Do you? Do you well, that's the question you have to answer. No, no, no. Courtroom is a crucible. And if we burn away irrelevance is until we are left with a pure product. That true for all time. Now sooner or later this man or others like it will succeed and replicating Commander Data. Now the decision you reach here today will determine how we will regard this creation of our genius. It will reveal the kind of people we are, what he is destined to be at. We reach far beyond this courtroom and this one Android. It could significantly, when you define the boundaries of personal liberty and freedom, expanding them for some savagely curtailment. For others. The prepared to condemn him and all who come after him, servitude and slavery. On a stock week was found to seek out new life. Well, that it sits waiting. You want to the champs to make law. Well, here it is. I think a good one. And since they're looking at me and I don't know what it is. Is cases dealt with metaphysics, with Christians best left to saints, that philosophers. I'm not a competent, not qualified to answer those. I got to make a ruling to try and speak to the future. Is data machine? Yes. Is it a property you start fleet. I know we've all been dancing around. The basic issue is they don't have a soul. I don't know that he has. I don't know that I have and I have got to give him the freedom to explore that question himself. It is the ruling of this court that Lieutenant Commander Data has the freedom to choose. I formulate, refused to undergo your procedure. I will Katsura transform and Commander, continue your work when you are ready. I will still be here. I find some of what you propose intriguing. Okay, So I don't know how familiar many of you are with Star Trek, The Next Generation. But that was the clip from one of my favorite episodes. Commander data that you saw there who was on trial is an android, a cyborg. And the question that was being addressed was, in a way, was he human. But I think the question for us more is, why is that relevant? Why is that? Why is that the question? Okay. And post humanism, this idea is a way of looking at how we humans regard ourselves and see ourselves in relation to sort of the broader world around us. We, I would guess, pride ourselves on a kind of humanity, right? And so I've given you here a definition of humanism very specifically. And I haven't cited it. I will have to find out what the source is. It's maybe from Merriam Webster online. That's my kind of online dictionary of choice. But number three, I think, is where we want to look more. The idea of humanism, a doctrine, attitude or way of life centered on human interests or values. Especially a philosophy that rejects supernaturalism and stresses an individual's dignity and worth and capacity for self realization through reason. So does that number 3? Does that number 3 resonate for anyone? I mean, does that sound like anything we've heard before? I'm hoping it does because it actually is a major philosophy of the Enlightenment, correct? That this idea of advancement of human society has everything to do with our belief in the individual and the individual's ability to improve oneself through various means. And modernism specifically is about that improvement through technology, right? What's very interesting about this? Oh, and I do want to go back to an idea of the enlightenment that we, we talked about, which was the philosopher Rene Descartes idea. I think. Therefore, I am right. If we look at that and we hold to that as kind of a foundation of enlightenment thinking. What is implicit in that is the eye, human eye, the human think. Therefore, I the human am. Okay. And what post humanism asks us to do is to think about what this means to be human. Okay? And what we're going to look at today is specifically the relationship of what we consider being human to technology. Right? Because if we think of sort of just being human is the human body. The body itself? Has, we could say, maybe evolved, or at least, I guess the popular word would be augmented, has been augmented. Through technology. Write something as mundane as glasses, right? Hearing aids. Then we can go to pacemakers. What do you call them? Ventilators, right? I mean, there's all kinds of technological advancements to help. Kind of augment the body and its functioning. Prosthetics, right? Mechanical arms, legs, so forth. And the question that post humanism asks Is, is there kind of a boundary, right? Can I have too much technology in my body? And this examination of Commander Data is really an expression of that, of that question because not only is he a kind of simple simply augmented the human body, but he is an entire cyborg by our Android body, right? He was created as a machine, but he operates with functions that we would consider human, right? And so the question that was being explored in that clip is the question of post humanism, which is, you know, what, what does it mean to be human? And consequently, how does that definition or awareness impact how we, how we exist within, within the world? I also, I just wanted to extend this a little bit. Because art that we're studying, right, is typically considered a humanities. And so what exactly are the humanities? The humanities can be described as the study of how people process and document the human experience. Since humans have been able, we have used philosophy, literature, religion, art, music, history and language to understand and record our world. These modes of expression and become some of the subjects that traditionally fall under the humanities umbrella. Knowledge of these records of human experience gives us the opportunity to feel a sense of connection to those who have come before us as well as to our contemporaries. I didn't cite this either. I believe this is from a university website. So this is a university sort of defining humanities for us. So we know what they mean when they say that we're setting the humanities. In any case. The idea here of a human experience. What post humanism? And I think what we as a class have been doing is trying to look at the, the breadth of human experience. And also to think about how human experience has changed. Over time and how art is a way of reflecting. We're exploring that human experience. One of the readings I gave you today was a little short interview from the New York Times between Natalie Leonard and Kari Wolf. Kari Wolf, we're going to visit again later. He's considered a leading scholar in this. I don't know if you call it a field, but in the inquiry, that's holiday inquiry of post humanism. And in fact, he has a book. I believe this interview was part of the kind of marketing or introduction of the book, which is called what is post humanism. So if you're interested, you could take a look at that. Anyway, this is just a screenshot of that interview. Cw is Kari Wolf. And I wanted to start with this because he does bring up the Enlightenment. And it's important for us to sort of think about how enlightenment thinking has really been the foundation of many of the things we've talked about, right? And post humanism is no different. It has a relationship with the Enlightenment. And it's up to us to sort of figure out what that relationship is and what it means. So anyway, this quote, this idea from Kari Wolf about the enlightenment idea of the self has been so hard to, but because everything in our culture and encourages us to invest in it for economic and legal and so forth. This, the point here is that this emphasis on the self, on the individual is an enlightenment value. And it also is the core of kind of humanism, right? Again, I am human. I, I have the ability to improve myself, improve my society, improve my world. And it kind of all stems from this singular identity. But the question is, how, how do we, how do we define this identity? One of the scholars, the early scholars that talked about post humanism. Oh, and actually this, you probably, why, I don't know if you will find this interesting or not. But one of the early scholarly uses of the term post humanism came from our friend. You have hash sign. If you will recall. The, the kind of table that I gave you comparing modernism and postmodernism came from, you have Hasan. But also he used the term. Post humanism. I think it was back in the mid to late seventies. And he talked about a post-human age coming. And anyway, so that was picked up on by Catherine hails. This was her book. You can see the image of it, how we became post-human, I think was Ashley, I'm not even going to guess. But it was definitely more recent than that. The 70's. Anyway, that is Catherine ***** there at the podium. I believe she teaches at Duke now. Anyway. So I I like this image because what we were just talking about with Kari Wolf, that post humanism relates back to the enlightenment and enlightenment values and that it is unlikely or spotlight postmodernism. Another way of critiquing enlightenment ideas. And so some of the things that hails talks about in particular, the post humanism sort of critiques explores questions, these ideas of rationality, autonomy, free will, and consciousness, right? Those are all, all aspects of enlightenment. Of the Enlightenment and why the human is important or how the human is central to these ideas. Okay? So just as a kind of visual metaphor for post humanism, I'm giving you this image of a sculpture. I'm going to see Hey, I wrote it down. Now. Never mind. Sorry. Sheet. Okay, never mind. Oh, there was wave here. This feature sculpture by Humberto Bocconi, a unique forms of continuity in space 1913 mounts human forms with mechanical ones. Museum of Modern Art. So this, this is an interesting paradox that comes up with this idea of the enlightenment and humanism at its core. Which is that as we advance as a society through technology. Hey, that's modernist. This idea of being modern, becoming modern, becoming more modern. Part of that actually also involves, in a way, becoming less human, right? And so this figure, now the sculpture by Bocconi, shows the human figure kind of in the future. In a way if you want to think about it. But definitely augmented by, augmented by technology, right? So the question is, again, is there a point at which the human stops being human? You know, if it's okay for me to wear glasses, if it's even okay for me to have what do they call it? I transplants, cornea and plant implants, transplants, all that kind of stuff. Like how many different things can I do to my body and still retain, you know, what it is to be human. Okay, so these are kind of the big questions that Hales is presenting in her book and in our exploration of post humanism. How can we understand the impact of globalization as simultaneously local and transnational, economic and psychological? How can japan be understood as at once a Western style technocracy and a unique product of its natural history, how can bodies be G, B, D, territorialized and still use this sites for representation. How do memories functions simultaneously as machine functionalities and generators of human effect? What strategies of mimicry imitation can serve as transient transducers between machine and human action and virtual environments. Does embodiments still matter? How our race, ethnicity, and class constructed in virtual game environment. So those are very specific things that she points out. But one way that you can think about them is in terms of dichotomies. She's questioning how we tend to look at the world through these dichotomies base in a kind of humanist perspective. In other words, really broadly speaking, if we have the term human, the idea of non-human is not as clear cut a dichotomy. Sorry, hang on. Okay. Sorry. I didn't get to feed them for class tonight, so they're a little antsy. Anyway. What I was saying was, the point here is that we have this view of the world through dichotomies, human, non-human, and lists a bunch of others. The point is, these dichotomies are not clear cut, nor are they static, right? Things are always changing. I mean, one of the things that post humanism sort of encompasses, for example, would be gender. And there are scholars have talked about that. The difficulty that we as a society have, you know, with transgender individuals comes from this dichotomy, right? Male, female, say, we are incapable of looking at these gray areas. I don't want to say grey areas of categories that seem to be outside of the dichotomy that we're more used to. Okay. And so we do have artists dealing with this kind of work. I'm, I'm going to let this video introduced this idea to you. They'll introduce themselves, the artist. Hi, recent, cyborg card-based whose land and I'm done implanted in my head that allows me to extend my perception of color beyond the visual spectrum so I can feel from infrared to ultraviolet. I'm going to leave us. I must have book artist and I have some implants in my feet, my face that are connected to online seismographs and allows me to perceive the seismic type, not the seismic. While the sidewalk artist, it's not as its create census. I think that I no longer need to use technology as a tool. We can use technology as part of our body and design our perception of the adductor. Anymore. Yeah, we think it's 50 regarded as the art of creating your own sense of Aryans and perception of reality by merging with technology. The difference between using or wearing technology is that if you merge with technology, you don't feel that you're using technology. When do you use it as a tool your conscious that you're using technology. In my case, I I'm not always conscious that I haven't identified permanently perceiving colors and then I'm not feeling that I'm using technology because it's embedded in me. So when you merge with technology, technology disappears in a way. And that's Whereas the magic, because we were not really interested in using technology, we want to connect with nature. If we merge with technology, we can connect with nature without having to use technology. We feel it's more natural to unite. So it doesn't interrupt our nachos sentences on. My next project is to add an organ that will allow me to sense time around my handshake will be a point of heap it go slowly, go around the head, and it will take 24 hours to complete circle. Why you feel that 24 hour cycle of the Earth around my head. This will give me a bargain sense of time and my aim is to get used to it. And once my brain gets used to it, I want to see if I can find my perception of time. So if I make the pico store, pastor, mr. Counter play for section two. This is my current pain to take relativity theory into practice. Some people have a very scared to think of these technologies and humans that actually we say that it's a, it's a human choice to decide how we want to unite. Yeah, there's defendant, I think there's different types of fear because some people fear the management technology, we might become less human. And people who think that becoming less human is bad because we don't think it's bad to become less human. We are surrounded by non-human lives and they're not bad. So I think slowly society will accept that it's becoming less human doesn't necessarily mean something that socially not accepted to merge with technology. But we think that in the future it will be seen as ethical and a good cuz I think the more we design ourselves, less will have to design the planet unless we have to change it so that we all have night vision, for example, we would use artificial light. Light will be off. We will spend energy creating light. If we could see at night, we could control our temperature. We would use heaters, air conditioning, so we change the temperature of the planet. We would change our own temperature. So we've been co-founders with these, changing the planet in so many ways. We're going to start seeing a change and we'll start seeing out. We start designing ourselves and changing ourselves. I will start leaving the planet in peace. So now that we're in advance, I was a sidewalks actuary. We don't feel closer to robots or machines that because I think was nice because I can feel it's moving constantly and through all the other animals. So I think the more you'll understand them feel closer to Earth. Tried to protect it for empathy. Okay, so that was very interesting. So we have artists not just using technology, but merging their bodies with technology as you heard them talk about. But also begin then to sort of push and think about either limits on, on being human. But I think more importantly, not just the sort of limits of being human, but How are we relating to what we consider non-human, non-human life, right? You heard them. They were talking a lot about our relationship to the planet, climate change, the environment, how humans have really impacted that, right? I mean, you're probably aware of some of the arguments regarding factory farming and the by-products of industrial farming and its impact on the environment, right? And how eating meat actually impacts the environment in a negative way. So anyway, there's lots, lots of different kind of related issues around this. And it all has to do with how we, how we view and define ourselves as humans. Another early scholar who wrote about these ideas, and specifically this piece called the Cyborg Manifesto, is done heroin. We'll probably be talking about her a lot over these next two, next two weeks. But herpes Cyborg Manifesto was or has really become a seminal piece in discussing these types of issues. Now cyborg sort of very literally is emerged between the human and the machine. So whereas we might call Commander Data and Android in that he is all machine, a cyborg would be both machine and human body. So like the two artists we just saw, they're merging thereby it's with technology. So they're calling them themselves cyborg artists, right? Okay, so I have a number of actually text slides here. And I'm not going to go through all of them specifically. If you want to read them, will actually, if you've read the Cyborg Manifesto, you read all of them. But these are the ones that I'm pointing out. I've, I've pulled out a sort of more important points that I'd like to. I'd like you to know. Cyborg. Here. She's just defining it for us. It is a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social realities. Well as teacher fiction. I should point out that the Cyborg Manifesto was, in a way. And heroin has talked about this a slightly tongue-in-cheek. It was meant to be a little bit over the top, but it was. Sort of oppression in the kinds of issues it was raising. I should also point out that Donna Haraway, her background is in science. So she actually has a PhD and I believe biology from Yale. But then her interests and her background in science led her to think about a lot of different sort of nine science, non-science based ideas. And one of the things that she's talking, but in this particular is, is this idea of how we're perceiving the world. The last sentence, this is a struggle over life and death, but the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion. In other words, what we're calling again, this dichotomy of human, non-human. It, it really is an illusion because it's about how we think about it, not what it physically is. Okay. And so the, the interesting or the tongue and cheek part of her writing. I just to summarize for you, the Cyborg Manifesto is considered an important, important writing in feminist literature. And the reason being is that she sort of comes up to the, comes to the conclusion that I would rather be a cyborg than a woman. Because a woman is, is more constructed in our society as opposed to a cyborg. If you follow that, this idea that again, the science fiction versus social reality, the social reality of being a woman is much more sort of prescribed and governed than a cyborg is. If that makes sense. Hopefully, if it doesn't make sense, it will, it will become clear the more we talk about this. So the cyborg myths about transgressed boundaries. One of my premises is that most American socialists and feminist seek deepened dualisms of mind and body, animal and machine idealism and materialism in the social practices, symbolic formulations and physical artifacts associated with high technology and scientific culture. Again, so that's just that she's using the term dualisms where I've been talking about these dichotomies. And the opening phrase is the important one here my say, my cyborg method about transgressed boundaries. And by transgressed boundaries. She's saying the boundaries of the limitations of what it means to be human and what it means to be cyborg, right? You can't, the myth, the myth is that you can transgress those boundaries are actually, that's the, the myth is that those boundaries exist, right? You can't transgress them because they're ever evolving and they aren't fixed in the way that we want them to be fixed or that we think of them as fixed. And this is what I was saying about the feminist aspect of it. There's not even such a state as being female. It's a fairly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices. Social realities of patriarchy, colonialism and capitalism. In other words, what she's saying is when we rely on science to tell us what things are, right? Or when we sort of rely on science. To define so-called truths for us. We need to understand that these truths are what we know at the moment. Okay? I just was reading everything I can think of the exact quote. But yeah, so science is not about a universal truth. Scientists about what we know at the moment. Okay? And what she is saying is that being female is not a singular, a singular state defined by science or biology, but it's, it's socially constructed. Does that, does that make sense? Or you are following me? Well, basically what this quote is saying is that we're making things too simple when they're very complex. Okay? And again, it just sort of going back to this idea of approaching the world with these definitions and then trying to make everything fit within them. I'm actually thinking a lot about the Caitlyn Jenner situation right now. If you guys are following that and what's going on. So Caitlin, Caitlyn Jenner, as I'm sure you know, is a transgender woman. Her previous identity. Bruce Jenner was a gold medal decathlete. And in the Olympics. And now Caitlyn Jenner does not want transgender individuals competing in sports of their define gender. So she does not want transgender transgender females competing in women's sports. And again, a lot of this has to do with where we are in terms of biology, how we think about these things. Just stereotypes of masculinity, femininity, and so forth. And this is exactly what post humanism is talking about. It is saying that the idea of human does not have to be fixed, right? And all of the kind of trappings of that. And here our sidebar imagery can suggest a way out of the maze, a dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves. Here's that. Here. Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess. That's the one where she's saying cyborgs are less constructed then the identity of what is a woman. Okay, so here's another artist or non dealing with ideas of body augmentation. This is exactly what you absolutely will sit esoteric to shake you, devote to Leah, mediums and more movie or me. Did a CIT unit are absolutely more. Cbe only adds more EFN. Sit to send you to the legal she wanted to be the head is somebody that IQ. I'll fit it to the settlement until booklet E, I will say to you what you don't say book. She said, Did I see this at pool? Meet those set to high peak of Shmuel. Nothing more. Dorsey can choose your fifth day to extend, more fuzzy, extend move. You know, I gotta pull up to you to localize your mentor and more. To E. I'm willing to do that. Now, if you look at history and multi guaranteeing women that they see who the bus, she fit a new model. Usually do it all because she feels fake little yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's yeah. All employed the early. Don't know. We'll see, Absolutely. And if you do it, we exit the loop of Western thought. Nas and mostly see me. She's suddenly, you get to suit. That prevented the soul because it was seamless. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You bet. Hook a rebel. Amen. Yeah. A extensors is something that makes that a C C snap as CEO of that. To do. So. Well, I'll go to this web page. This is an artist named Stele arc. Stl ARC. Actually. You can you can see the webpage. Can you Someone say yes or no? Okay. Thank you, Adam. Like or line. Still arc manipulates his body in different ways with technology. But what I wanted to point out was like the, the difference between I don't need to go back, but the difference between like, sorry, Miranda, I'm not going to go back. The difference between someone like or line and the Cyborg artist Bergelson and ribose that we, that we saw. The one is looking at the relationship between The human and technology, and the other is looking at the relationship between the body and identity. Okay, So there's sort of a difference there. Heroine is actually bringing both, both ideas into the discussion. And then again, this still Arc does very interesting things with technology. I'm not going to show you. Let me see what was I can't remember what I had decided to show you. There's some stuff in here that's really kind of difficult to look at because of what he's doing to the body of his body. So I'm just going to give you I think, isn't it? Yeah. Because ****. Yeah. I see the video of this. Can be a little brutal. All right. I want I want, I want to show this video, but you can see, you can get the sense in these images out. What he is doing in this particular piece is he is suspending his body with wires over this arm. And it's based around just an extension of an earlier piece. Is Iran. So this is the Iran arm suspension. And then he has time. He had an image here. He actually grafted an ear onto his arm. And that's the basis for the imagery here. And you can see in some of these other images how he's using his body with technology. Actually. So I should point out, we're talking about post humanism. And there's also this idea of transhumanism. Still arc would be more trans humanness. And actually I think our Cyborg artist might consider themselves transhumanist as well. What transhumanism is about is actually augmenting the human form, the human body with technology to do kind of more, to do other things. So the idea of a third year on your arm, right? That sort of manipulation of the body is transhumanist. This idea that I can do things to my body with technology that makes me more capable or makes me capable of doing more things than kind of a natural, normal human body. I think natural and normal would not be words that will be used by chance. Humanists are really cause humanists for that and that respect. But anyway, some, you will, you will have the link to this. There's, Here's the year on the arm. Okay? So the thing to realize is that these artists, artists like still-life, mean they are physically altering their bodies for their, for their work. So it's pretty it's pretty extreme. So whenever other readings is from Rosie brick body post, I'm going to just call her a push humanist scholar because it's an easier Label. Anyway, she, in her, in her essay that I gave you talks about hair always essay. So it's another, another approach to the same ideas. But she, she's offering us, she's offering us a summary, but also other ways to think about hair away. So the, the point to note here is historical era of advanced post-modernity. The very notion of the human. It's not only destabilized by technologically mediated social relations in a globally connected world. But is also thrown open to contradictory redefinitions of what exactly counts as human hair away. Not, not unlike Deleuze and Guattari, whom they're more French guys. Lots of deep writing. I'm not going to ask you to look at any of that. Takes into consideration also the non-human actors in a geopolitical, but also an ego philosophical manner. Meaning. We need to expand how we're looking at these definitions and identities and so forth. So that we're not just placing the human at the center of this, but that we're also looking at, at the non-human. Okay, So this is, I think, interesting as a hybrid or body machine, the cyborg or the companion species. What we'll talk about that more as a connection making entity, a figure of inter relationality, receptivity, and global communication that deliberately blurs categorical distinctions. Human machine, nature, culture, male, female, Oedipal, non-edible. I mean, that's pretty much what we've been talking about already. And this idea of the cyborg, both as a metaphor but also as like a physical thing. That sort of denies these, these dualisms, these dichotomies. But I think what breed body is saying, that's a little different. And that's helpful for us to think about is this idea of interrelation analogy. So the cyborg is not just saying, we shouldn't be looking at the world in terms of these dualisms or dichotomies. We should be looking for how they relate to one another, right? How they're actually kind of together. Oops, sorry. I like this. I like this term here. Border crossing figure. So it's not just a kind of physical crossing borders, but it's also the crossing of conceptual borders. Right? Here's another artist. I'm going to show you again physically manipulating his buddy heads up. We know that police are experimenting with wearing head cams. And we know researchers have resorted to critter, okay, and then suddenly everything from armadillos to pigs. But would you be happier than a pagan mod having a camera attached to your head? Can I cut that? Yes. This is what the camera gets fats into New York University photography Professor Wolff up below had a titanium plate employee and put a week or so ago, put the procedure to music. It was done by someone who normally does body piercings and yes, the duodenum or the law, they used a local anesthetic. A small surveillance camera connects to the base magnetically because his head was still sore below and we wanted to wear the camera for a moment to demonstrate. Now, yeah, I can take you though. Okay. It's my hurt you below is one of 20 per yard is whose work will be featured at the brand new Arab Museum of Modern Art in color. What image? Every minute quantity higher? The images will be transmitted via a laptop and streamed live music. So you'll have this wire coming down. But why in the back of the head can go ahead and clearly, I'm going to back of your head. If you're going to act Wilhelm, read more and by adhere to impair their wars. That below isn't a rocky who fled Saddam Hussein. So artistically, without an interesting, an interesting thing, he realizes he'll get lots of mundane shots. You're going to get a lot enough. A lot of nothing. Hey, are you calling nothing? His head Campbell be taking shots in the door while sleeping, having that kind of thing, you would kill him and on until taken a shower. I think it's waterproof to protect them. I just do the students well on NYU property, you're just going to put a hat on your head back. Wait till the Airport screeners get a load of ham. We could literally plug it be said that a live shot though absolutely. His project is called the third die. But as we learn, when the president of planets baseball got beamed in with his hat on backwards. It's not always great to have eyes in the back of your hand. Why did somebody getting a C in it? Like a bald spot? Only not unusual. And it's not. So this is the artist name waffle below. Obviously. We're not manipulating his body, augmenting it. But not just for the sake of looking at technology in the body, but also ideas of identity. I mean, the fact that he's Iraqi is central to his work. So here you have his website. One of his more famous or more well-known pieces. In addition to the camera, actually, I should say that this third eye project with the camera on his head. You could see that that video I just showed you a CNN. I mean, that was popular sort of pop culture wise. But in terms of our, he has this piece called domestic tensions. And let me see, these are videos. So if you go to the website, you can see I hadn't picked which one of these? I'm just let's hope that everybody is Day 26. It's about one o'clock in the afternoon. There are over a 120 people right now online. So I'm think is really amazing. Right now. I have about theory six or so. Who do we left? Xn, which means there are pressing the button down on preventing people from pan and into my direction. I do have a name for this x and now it is on the tag any, it's called Virtual a human shield. What an amazing event. Way. Sorry. Adam, Are you saying you cannot see the video? You're only hearing it? Okay. Sorry. Let me okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna try to just share. Now you could do a frustrate a lot people, and some of the people have e-mail me, contact me through fear in this matter. I am not going to interfere in it. It's just going to be if I enter the theory would be just this. Okay. Sorry, I stopped it because I realize that you probably don't have the context for what he's talking about. This piece. Also known as shooting an Iraqi. And what he has done is he set it up. It's an interactive piece and you can viewers base it, can shoot him with a paintball, with the paintball gun remotely. But he's also set it up that viewers can prevent other viewers from shooting him. Let me just see. Okay, I'm just going to try this other video. It doesn't seem to be audio. Okay, I'm gonna go back, sorry. Okay. Starts to give you a little better idea. So he has this this setup where there's a paintball gun. It can be controlled remotely. He is there in the space. The gun sort of moves around. Actually. Well, if you're more interested, you can you can look at it down here. Or I mean, you can read what what he's presented from the text. Anywhere he's entity set it up so that you as a viewer can shoot him with a paintball gun. Really interesting piece. And so the videos I set up, as she hears day one of you, I know you've been waiting for this day. So this is the first day of the project. It's in Flatfile Gallery in Chicago. What I'm doing here is just, again, I move to my living room, to the gallery space. Go robot. Sorry, I'm going to switch. In 2004. Devastating news. That's my brother had you Khufu or hometown in Iraq. And two months later, he lost or father of grief over our, our system. I was thinking of Google Earth project that engage people. Don't necessarily need a calorie. But using new media that's available to us, which was intimate. And they can thinking about the product until 2007 when you should do big idea goes on project. It was Soto, Colorado dropping and dropping bracket when she was asked whether she has any regret over the life of Iraqis, you to know these people are terrorists. I trusted my government and Hebrew, I weigh much. We become so disconnected from the conflict zone. We do in our own comfort zone. Give me an idea. Idea was called, shouldn't rocky lock myself in a gallery for doing this? With me is control. But most prized. Days later was just 60 thousand times. Countries wanted to speak to his website. That wants to eat a thousand pages. Somebody in the chat. No matter who. You are, committing to this project. This project changed my life forever. You give me give me, whoa, that's when he goes a platform for people to have a conversation. So I hope you followed that. Right? So people had the opportunity to shoot him other and also I had the opportunity to stop him from being shot. Okay. Now I'm going back. Okay. So you have you have the the link there to the website. To his website you can browse through and look at more of his work. I wanted to show you that for two well, I want to show you his work for two reasons. One, the camera in the back of the head is I think, interesting. It certainly has a kind of shock value to it. But the, the other piece, the paintball. The paintball piece, also lets us know about the content of his work in general as an artist. And so when we have artists exploring these ways of manipulating the, the human body with technology. There are conceptual foundations, right? For a lot of it. There are objectives behind the work. It, there's this other aspect also to post humanism, I was going to talk about like Cyberpunk stuff. But if you'd like movies, you should be familiar with a number of these kind of post-human references. Some overtly so some not so much. Neil in the matrix and the matrix series. And To be honest, I don't remember the movies that well anymore. It's been so long. But this idea of the red pill and the blue pill, right? Part of this idea of the post-human and the relationship of the human to technology has to do with reality, right? Which is something that heroin touches on this idea that, you know, there's a kind of social reality contrasted with a kind of physical reality in what Neil is faced with, what the matrix is offering up is this twice. And I think even more so now than when the matrix came out and when highway was writing, the extent to which social media is in our lives addresses this issue even more. Rel, relevantly are integrally. I'm not sure what the best word for that. But okay, so the point here is that the sense of what is real and what is not real is constructed more than kind of actual. Okay? And so the idea of the post-human, it is also the idea that we kind of don't have to be who we are. And that we can choose we can choose to be other things than what we're told. I know that sounds kind of really amorphous, but I think one of the things to think about with post humanism is that it really is questioning the rules. Okay. Sorry. There. So I just like this quote. A ice ages are bound by our official rules of the system they've created. Human consciousness is not free your mind, right? So this is kind of the idea behind post humanism. Is that, I mean, if you want to think of this way the Enlightenment were living by these Enlightenment rules, right? That are telling us how to be so many different things and you know, and what to, what to do. That the human consciousness is much more flexible and extensive than maybe some of these ideal. Okay? And so I also wanted to introduce you to this word, which you might see a lot in these theoretical writings, which I've actually sort of avoided, give me too many of. But it's the word ontology. And we're actually talking about what we're actually really been talking about all semester. In a way is ontology. And it is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality. So which is different than like existentialism. Okay, So any of you philosophy students out there, any philosophy scholars? Existentialism is sort of about the meaning of being. Ontology is about the nature of B. And in particular, it might be helpful to think of ontology has categories of B. So if you think of, I don't even remember the O in biology terms of genus phylum, species, all of that mean you can think of that as ontology, right? And that part of that toward the end of this definition here is the idea of hierarchy. And that things are related and prioritize in particular ways. But the thing is, is that ontology, as a kind of broader idea, is about the ability. I should say it has inherent in it. At least for me. The idea that it's always malleable, right? At. An ontological question is a question about where does something fit in the order of things that we, that we experience, that we live with. And that leads us to the other aspect of, oops, why does it keep doing? The other aspect of post humanism, which is something we touched on earlier, which is the relationship to sort of the planet, the environment, and nine non-human animals. And so this was just this was a graphic that was posted online. I just I felt like it encompass the idea. Nicely and visual form. So this idea of, well, I don't, I don't like these terms that this person use, but ego logical versus ecological. I mean one. We could say that ego logical is more humanist and eco logical is more post-human. But essentially, the left side is about the human as kind of the center of the universe. Or the important, the important being around which every other being a sort of operates. As opposed to ecological, which is kind of post-human, which is that all, all beings are equal. Which is kind of radical, right? Although it's funny because, right, what does the Declaration of Independence says? All men are created equal. And we've been very quick historically to say all people, men and women. But we can extend that even and say all beings are created equal. Which is this other aspect of post humanism. And I'm going to show you, this is, this is Kari Wolf. He teaches at at Rice. The work that I started doing in animal studies and later in post humanism really was the result not of an intellectual training and strategy. So much as it was originally a kind of an sponsored hold your nose and jump then kind of commitment. Humanism, in my view, is not a rejection of humanism. And it's not a transcendence of human history. And it's not the much cooler, smarter thing that comes after. What it's actually about is it's, it's, it's length is linked to, very integrated to two humanism because the way that I describe it in the book is, is what I'm trying to do is to take the, the desires and imperatives of humanism, many of which are admirable. So let's take with, with the question of animals, let's say an example of saying, well, you know, tree and animals cruelly is probably a bad thing to do. And that's something that a broad spectrum of people at this point, at least in the cultures where we spend our time will probably agree, agree about. So what I'm trying to do with post humanism is to say, look, I agree with and I admired imperatives like that, that are integral to humanism. But the problem is the theoretical and philosophical frameworks that humanism uses to try to make good on those commitments is actually self-defeating and actually ends up cutting the legs out from under the very thing that one wants to try and promote. The problem with rights discourse. Animal rice as his, as his traditionally find, is that when you start saying, Well, why should we treat animals well? And why should animals be rice holding subjects? Is because, lo and behold, the end of the day, they actually end up being just sort of retarded or diminished versions of us. Because all the morally relevant capacities that would give an animal standings, standing or ones that we tend to fit this in ways that are pretty identifiable human and then those just get transposed on with animals, right? And so, and so you end up reinstating a very kind of normative, traditionally normative view of the human. Even as what you're trying to do is move away from that and expand the sphere of moral consideration. So the reason you need a post humanists rather than humanist framework they find in rights discourse is to say Look, the reason we should care about animals and treat animals and expand. Community is not because all of these different creatures in the world like us. What's beautiful and worthy of respect is that they're not like. There are different ways of being in the world that, that just like our world, deserve to be protected for exploitation, protected 00, 00 00 00 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 00, 0, 0, 0. 0. Okay. So I'm just going to summarize what Kari Wolf was talking about there. I think one of the most important aspects of post humanism for us to think about is that there are other ways to view the world other than through the lens of being human. Okay? So what will carry Wolf was saying is that we have a tendency in using this example of animal rights. We, we want to protect things that are more like us, humans, right? And that's what was happening in that trial with data. Was that the guy that wanted to take him apart and study him was being forced to apply criteria of what are normally considered human traits to what he was considering a non-human object. And it just extending this to a discussion of non-human animals. This idea that we would never eat dogs because we think of dogs is, are as members of our family there. There are pets. They're, they're like guys. But cows and pigs and other farm animals that are used for meat. More distanced from humans, right? So not only do we not think about them in terms of human characteristics, but we don't think of them as part of kind of our human domestic life. And what Kari Wolf is saying. And one a lot of animal studies scholars are talking about is that post humanism is asking for different criteria. It's asking us to think in ways beyond being a human or beyond relating to as humans. Which is a very complex thing, is kinda like, you know, how can you, how can you think of things from a point of view that you've never experienced. And so I think the real question is not so much. How do you do it? But how do you, except not doing it, right? If that makes sense. Anyway, the, the second part of our discussion on post humanism, we'll be on the non-human animals, which is actually my area of research. So well, we'll talk about that next week, which is going to be our last our last meeting together. So any questions for tonight? I know it's really hard with this format. But I think we're going to be back to face-to-face in the fall. We'll see. I guess I just found out that you are going to be required to be vaccinated before coming back to campus in the fall. So we'll see how we'll see how that works out. Okay. I will update media and stuff online on Canvas as soon as everything is available. I think everything is current as of now. So if you have any questions or anything, just give me a call. Give me an email. Don't call me. And we'll see what we can do. Okay? All right. So yeah, that'll be it for tonight. Okay. Thanks, everybody. I'll see you next time.