1

Natasha Vita-More, DC The Planetary Collegium, CAiiAUniversity of Plymouth, UK

Natasha Vita-More, DC The Planetary Collegium, CAiiAUniversity of Plymouth, UK

BIOLOGICAL DESIGN how biotechnology, generative media, and other currents are changing creative inquiry in the arts & sciences

Third SENS ConferenceCambridge 2007

2

BIOLOGICAL DESIGN how biotechnology, generative media, and other currents are changing creative inquiry in the arts & sciences

What is it?A creative, innovative means by which to …

3

BIOLOGICAL DESIGN how biotechnology, generative media, and other currents are changing creative inquiry in the arts & sciences

influence people, who influence culture, which

influences society, which influences the

world

4

What is the Concept?What is the Concept?

Media arts and design are crucial for building social understanding and open-mindedness toward anti-aging and extreme superlongevity.

How? Through generative, immersive and interactive practices.

BIOLOGICAL DESIGN

What does this have to do with SENS? What is the connection?What does this have to do with SENS? What is the connection?

Why? Media art and design cause an emotional reaction in people followed by inquisitive inquiry and analysis of the experience.

Media art and design, by their very nature, are already anti-aging constituents.

What are the currents?What are the currents?

Next Step? Work in biotech/immersive/design media in exploring freeing the body from time constraints.

Past Decades of work in cybernetics to free mind of material constraints.

5

BIOLOGICAL DESIGN

How? By designing and implementing generative, immersive, interactive experiences.

Why are media designers crucial to anti-aging?Why are media designers crucial to anti-aging?

Why? Openness is the best policy and knowledge is power.

The experiences must be an authentic approach to drawing out emotionsand influencing attitudes re biotechnology, human nature, and the future.

What is the issue?What is the issue?

Because of their capacity to move people emotionally and often change they way people think about the world around them.

6

BIOLOGICAL DESIGN

Media Arts and Design

What are its media?

That area of human physical and mental experiences which influence environments to suit individual and shared well-being.

generative, immersive, interactive media

What is it?

7

Strength lies in ability to apply a conceptual

process to creativity.

Tro

nic

Stu

dio

LLC

, Je

sse

Sep

pi,

Viv

ian

Ros

enth

alw

ww

.tro

nic

stud

io.c

om

8

"Building Dreams " — generative experience

Tro

nic

Stu

dio

LLC

, Je

sse

Sep

pi,

Viv

ian

Ros

enth

al

ww

w.t

ron

icst

udio

.com

9

Experience to remember.

"Telomeres Project on Imminent Immortality" — interactive experience

Elle

n S

ando

r 20

01

10

Alv

aro

Cas

sine

lliIs

hik

aw

a-N

amik

i-Kom

uro

Lab

- T

he U

nive

rsity

of

Tok

yow

ww

.k2.

t.u-

toky

o.ac

.jp/m

embe

rs/a

lvar

o/K

hron

os/

"Khronos Projector" — immersive experience

11

Visual manipulation of time gives us a first-hand

experience of what it looks and feels like to reverse aging.

Alv

aro

Cas

sine

lliIs

hik

aw

a-N

amik

i-Kom

uro

Lab

- T

he U

nive

rsity

of

Tok

yow

ww

.k2.

t.u-

toky

o.ac

.jp/m

embe

rs/a

lvar

o/K

hron

os/

12

To design time as immersive experience is to envision,

entertain, and forecast events. It is to influence meaning and modify human behavior.

Exp

erie

nce

Des

ign

Gro

up a

t Kon

stfa

ck

13

BIOART

Biotechnological / medical self-experimentation

Transgenic

Synthesis of artificially produced DNABioinformatics

Mendalian cross-breeding

XenotransplantsHomo-grafs

Cell and Tissue Cultures

Neurophysiology

Bio-robotics

Genetic EngineeringGenetic Engineering

CloningCloning

HybridizationHybridization

Selective BreedingSelective Breeding

TransgenesisTransgenesis

and other fields and methods

What are its biomedia?

Revivification VivoArt

Automorph

14

BIOART

"Nature?"2000

Although these patterns are determined by direct human intervention, they are made exclusively of normal live cells. As genes from the germ line are left untouched, the new patterns are not transmitted to the offspring. Therefore, this form of art literally lives and dies. It is simultaneously art and life.

Marta de Manderez

15

BIOART

"MOVE 36"

CAAT = 01000011 = cCATT = 01001111 = oCACT = 01000111 = gCAGC = 01001001 = iCCCA = 01010100 = tCATT = 01001111 = oCACC = 01000101 = eCCAG = 01010010 = rCACT = 01000111 = gCATT = 01001111 = oCCAT = 01010011 = sCCCC = 01010101 = uCATC = 01001101 = m

cogito ergo sum

“Move 36” concerns a plant whose genome incorporates a new gene that Kac created. The gene uses ASCII (the universal computer code for representing binary numbers as Roman characters, on- and off-line) to translate Descartes's statement: "Cogito ergo sum" (I think therefore I am) into the four bases of genetics. “Move 36” was inspired the Kasparov/IBM Deep Blue computer chess match in 1997. In “Move 36” The plant grows from an earth-and-sand chessboard where chess computer Deep Blue made its subtle, conceptual yet crucial move.The plant’s leaves leaves curl due to the introduced genetic modification.

Eduardo Kac

16

BIOART

“We are the first generation of artists to face the problem not of mortality, but of immortality.

“The work, while stable, is neither ‘dead’ nor ‘finished.’ It exists in a state of suspended animation, and at any time the resin might be removed, the plate scraped, fed, and placed in an incubation room to grow to a new stage of development.”

“Paraxial Mesoderm7” 1999-2000 Microbes genetically modified to

produce enzymes.

"davidkremers"

17

CONCEPTUAL / THEORYNatasha Vita-More

“Posthuman”

18

But not all media art and design are used as reliable sources and credible information to influence people. Some are used to scare society by exaggerating information for effect, creating a heightened emotional response.

But not all media art and design are used as reliable sources and credible information to influence people. Some are used to scare society by exaggerating information for effect, creating a heightened emotional response.

BIOLOGICAL DESIGN

19

Media art and design being used to

discredit life extension technologies.

critical art ensemble

20

Changing emotionalresistance to anti-aging

Changing negative prejudiceagainst anti-aging advocates

Changing misconceptionsconcerning social attitudes

Changing myths about aging

Changing missing critical pedagogy

Identified ProblemsIdentified Problems

BIOLOGICAL DESIGN

Changing the divide between knowledge and nescience

21

InvestigatedBIOLOGICAL DESIGN

“Creative innovators, especially trans-biological artists and designers, might encourage people to think about what to do when their life spans are increased and eventually immortal.”

Hans MoravecHans Moravec

22

Media arts and design are crucial for building social understanding and open-mindedness toward anti-aging and extreme superlongevity.

BIOLOGICAL DESIGN

23

Their relationship with society is built on articulated human experiences, struggles, and aspirations. This relationship acts as a guide in establishing a language—narrative and symbolic—for how people look at and react to innovative ideas and to their ways of own life and their environment.

BIOLOGICAL DESIGN

24

BIOLOGICAL DESIGN

Thank you.

Natasha Vita-More, DC The Planetary Collegium,CAiiAUniversity of Plymouth, UK

Natasha Vita-More, DC The Planetary Collegium,CAiiAUniversity of Plymouth, UK

SENSStrategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence

Third SENS Conference

Cambridge 2007