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Tag: bodies (page 2 of 2)

This website was archived on July 20, 2019. It is frozen in time on that date.
Exolymph creator Sonya Mann's active website is Sonya, Supposedly.

Identity Velocity

Today’s dispatch was contributed by Way Spurr-Chen, a developer who curates the Glitchet newsletter (“weekly futuristic news and glitch aesthetic webzine”), hangs out on Twitter, and has myriad other projects.


We’ve always changed ourselves with some form of magic or another. Incantations, self-hypnosis, drugs. A finely pressed suit and $400 handbag. The dire imaginations of children, actors, pretenders. We wear masks and we play games — we are changers. The cessation of an atom’s vibration is a deep freeze: to stay still is to die. That’s probably why you’re reading this. You can smell which way the wind blows, and “forward” is a funny smell worth paying attention to.

Still, that wind blows fast. I’ve been reading about people controlling robotic limbs with their minds, a surgeon who implanted himself to see if he could digitize his thoughts, companies injecting their employees with RFID chips, and people putting LEDs under their skin. And those are just the biohackers! The internet allows us to get lost in increasingly specific subcultures and ideas. Our connectivity splinters us like lightning as our lives course through endless information. Years don’t feel like years anymore; I feel like I’m being blended into months and I’m counting my days in weeks. I wonder when I’ll know that I’ve been left behind, but that’s the trick: I’m already behind. We all are. You can’t be “on it” anymore — you can only tune into the infinite noise and pick out a signal. Wherever you find people, you’ll find a community thriving and moving faster than you can keep up.

What does that do to our play? We’re learning the power of permanence online while realizing the importance of having anonymous options. As the amount of information we put online increases, encased in silicon boxes, so does our ability to modulate, flex, and bend that signal through the future. (May our audiences be as forgiving of our pasts as we are.) It becomes simultaneously easier to transform yourself and to be pinned to an old version of yourself. Yet we will always shove forward bravely to new identities; we can’t stop.

Magical glitch artwork by Mário João.

Artwork by Mário João.

That’s just the internet. Old news already. Our ability to change ourselves, though, our bodies — that’s fast. When I saw those armless kids with modular LEGO prosthetics they could build on, I wanted one. I bet there will be a point where it’s a reasonable exchange to swap a flesh arm for a robot arm, even if your robot arm’s USB 3.0 extensions will probably be obsolete by 2020. (I hope you got the universal RFC shoulder socket adapter. Sometimes you gotta lose a little more flesh, but that’s just the tradeoff for longevity. Make sure you do your research: you wouldn’t want to buy from a startup that’s hoping to get acquired by Microsoft. Google might be OK.)

Of course, those are just functional, almost decorative. The thing I wonder most is how I would feel, knowing that I’m part machine, or part internet, or different, enhanced. Even if I can control the rate of my own transformation, would I feel pressured by the options available? What about aesthetics? When we can change ourselves so quickly, and we see the degree at which others might change, would we be compelled to enter an arms race (no pun intended) to become the most stylish, the most hip, the most specific? How fast can self-perception change? Does it lead or does it follow the things that we find ourselves becoming?

Certainly, perspective and identity are constantly in flux and the self rarely sees its reflection. But I hope the things I can hold onto are my habits. These give me stability. These define me. Even if I did get a robot arm, or an RFID chip, or a vibrating penis (I wouldn’t — I mean, maybe — no — let me think about it), I would still like whiskey and ginger beers, lasagna, dark clothes, the smell of a bonfire on the beach. I have these things to hold onto, regardless of what else about myself I change. I can take solace in the idea that I still haven’t changed. Not really. I can hold onto the rest of my humanity that is slow and almost static.

But the future always brings us new questions: what happens when you augment that? Your mind? Would you erase your memories? Would you program yourself to like something that the love of your life likes? Does it matter? Identity may not need to seem discrete, concrete. After all, can you step into the same river twice? Maybe you just have to tune into the signal in the noise wherever you find it. Mask-wearers, pretenders, changers that we are — maybe that’s already what we do. We’ll just get faster.


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Biomorphic Extremism: Gynoids & Terminators

Male cyborgs are for warfare and female cyborgs are for sex. I’m not kidding — think about all the movies and books that feature human-seeming machines, especially commercial ones. What are they produced and used for? The male ones are fighters and the females are — I must use the uncouth term — fuckers. (There are exceptions, of course, like Gigolo Joe in AI and Ghost in the Shell‘s Motoko Kusanagi.) Female cyborgs often serve the manic-pixie-dream-girl role for a male protagonist, for example in Ex Machina and to a certain extent also Her.

Some of DeviantArt's "Popular All Time" search results for the term "cyborg".

Some of DeviantArt’s “Popular All Time” search results for the term “cyborg”.

I don’t think the gender binary is good or immutable. It’s interesting, and disappointing, to note how it plays out in future-oriented media. Our ideas about new bodies and new souls are strictly bounded by the currently acceptable kinds of identities. I wrote about this topic before back in early January:

“What will our avatars look like in a hundred years? Post-gender and post-form, or exactly like the musclebound hunks and bit-titted blondes that titillate today’s Second Life denizens? We mustn’t forget the furries and weaboos, already a significant contingent of any visually oriented social network (which is all of them) (especially 4chan) (maybe they don’t haunt Instagram? idk).”

The response to that piece on Facebook was basically, “Nah, I’d look like myself but with more muscles.”

For contrast, a recent sci-fi story on Vice’s Motherboard is a strange and provocative exploration of alien bodies, described by the author as “vespo-sapphic pesticidepunk”. It’s an interactive game-like experience built with Twine, and well worth your time. I usually hate interactive features because they rarely add anything to the narrative, but this was beautiful and horrifying and oozy. Reading it made me feel like I was crazy.

All of this is on my mind because tonight I watched Natural City, an excellent Korean B-movie described thus in Wikipedia:

Two cops, R and Noma, hunt down renegade cyborgs. The cyborgs serve a number of duties, ranging from military commandos to “dolls”, engineered for companionship. [In this case, “companionship” is a euphemism for sex — amusingly, the wiki link led to the page for “sex worker”.] They have a limited 3-year lifespan, although black market technology has been developed to transfer a cyborg’s artificial intelligence into the brain of a human host.

This breakthrough compels R into finding Cyon, an orphaned prostitute, who may serve as the host for the mind of his doll Ria. He has fallen deeply in love with his doll and she has only a few days left to live.

Eventually, R must make a decision between leaving the colony with Ria to spend her last days with him on a paradise-like planet or save his friends when a renegade combat cyborg takes over the police headquarters.

Highly recommended.

The Container of My Person

“There were times, I told him, at the age of five, six, seven, when it was a shock to me that I was trapped in my own body. Suddenly I would feel locked into an identity, trapped inside myself, as if the container of my person were some kind of terrible mistake. My own voice and arms, my name, seemed wrong. As if I were a dispersed set of nodes that has been falsely organized into a form, and I was living in a nightmare, forced to see from out of this limited and unreal ‘me.’” — The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner

I wonder if you’ve ever felt trapped in this way. I have, of course, and I suspect that you have too. Carrie Fisher said on Twitter (captioning a photo of her dog): “My body is my brain bag, it hauls me around to those places & in front of faces where theres something to say or see” [sic]. It’s unclear whether Carrie meant to apply this sentiment to herself or the dog, but it certainly applies to me. Her comment is a poem about how it feels to be an awful meat-sack — it feels, predictably, awful. Piloting this body is a slog.

Second Life screenshot by ▓▒░ TORLEY ░▒▓.

Second Life screenshot by ▓▒░ TORLEY ░▒▓.

The promise of virtual reality is to free us from such “real”-world restraints. What will our avatars look like in a hundred years? Post-gender and post-form, or exactly like the musclebound hunks and bit-titted blondes that titillate today’s Second Life denizens? We mustn’t forget the furries and weaboos, already a significant contingent of any visually oriented social network (which is all of them) (especially 4chan) (maybe they don’t haunt Instagram? idk).

Part of what draws me to cyberpunk, as an aesthetic / lifestyle / political ideal, is that I hate the tyranny of my physical form. I’m restricted to this flesh, to this brain full of misfiring synapses, and here’s the worst part: every experience that makes up who I am is filtered through faulty nerves. Wouldn’t my identity be completely different in a body with unfamiliar memories? Imagination says that I would be myself but better — yet I’m imposing my illusion of control on a hypothetical future. I’m not in charge of developing these simulation products. I don’t know what options and settings will be available.

Neither do you — don’t forget. Keep hacking, because the rest of us haven’t learned how.

If We Ever Did

“In societies like ours many types of groups form around technologies […] We no longer live in a world of unmediated human relations, if we ever did.” — Andrew Feenberg

I’m obsessed with our continual attempts to expand our physical selves. The experience of being human has always been distributed — individuals are nodes in overlapping networks — and humanness flows between loci through channels outside of ourselves.

Computers serve as vessels for identity expression. Their infrastructure connects the nodes. Of course, conspicuous consumption and performative personal broadcasting are not new — we’ve used objects to communicate our cultural values forever, and our possessions can be said to embody our priorities.

At times we treat technology like a religious fetish. Maybe we’re just drawn to our own nature(s). Every human creation is a self-portrait.

Illustration by Maria De La Guardia.

Illustration by Maria De La Guardia.

Breathing Smoke; Expelling Waste

On visiting smoggy China: “Leave your lungs at home and rent some when you get there” — reddit user tankfox.

Painting by Danielle Morgan.

The above painting was made by Danielle Morgan. She is followable on Facebook and Instagram.

During my brief college foray, I had a conversation with a fellow student named Jimmy, who told me there was no need to think of the body as ending where human skin stopped. For instance, you can consider the municipal plumbing system to be a vast expansion of your digestive tract. The poop is not gone — rather, it has entered a phase of the alimentary canal that you share with everyone else in the city (or whatever region is appropriate).

Jimmy also trounced me at chess a few times.

The connection with Danielle’s painting is that the subject’s lungs extend beyond where you’d expect them to end. (I suspect her consciousness does the same.) Similarly, a tourist using a respirator in Beijing has augmented their original physical capabilities. The self cannot be separated from its physical context. We are defined by the space we inhabit.

Don’t Give My Yellow Boxes To The Robot

Neon robot via Torley Olmstead.

Neon robot via Torley Olmstead.

Good morning. Or is it morning? The global network is gummed up by time zones — maybe we should sync our cycles. I’ll won’t sleep until 3am; you rise with the grey dawn. As long as there still is a dawn. Pundits keep harping on about how climate change will impact the shorelines, but will it stretch or shrink the length of a day? I don’t know science, but this seems entirely possible. Besides, time is a construct. (Allow me to re-emphasize that I don’t know science.)

The human body is inadequate. Our biology is wedded to light levels that don’t matter anymore. Light levels should be the concern of solar panels, not self-actualized persons. Or, y’know, regular old self-loathing persons:

Robotic hair transplants via Jesse Montgomery on Twitter: “the least reassuring sign in Nashville”.

Robotic hair transplants via Jesse Montgomery on Twitter: “the least reassuring sign in Nashville”.

I visited WeGrowHair.com and learned, “Not just another hair loss gimmick, PAI Medical Group of Nashville is all about the full-service approach, offering proven hair loss treatments with guaranteed results. Our committed and specialized hair restoration surgeons attract valued patients from all over the world, making PAI one of the most reputable and in-demand hair transplant practices in the country.”

If you hate yourself, you can pay a lot of money to augment an aspect of your physical self that hardly matters. Or just wait for the inevitable mutation…

Kafka joke by Dan Abromowitz, also on Twitter.

Kafka joke by Dan Abromowitz, also on Twitter.

Remember, don’t give my yellow boxes to the robot. The robot doesn’t deserve my yellow boxes.

The Bleeding Edge

This is the first missive. The first dispatch from my cold tile cave (okay, it’s just a gaming room). The cat scrambles past my feet — she is a wholly primal being, but I am halfway immersed in a networked future of distributed synapses, part of a large brain with many autonomous nodes. Yes, that’s a euphemism for Twitter.

Exolymph is an exploration of the dystopia we live in today and the one we’re building for next week. Consider it grimdark optimism.

“I have a strong personal faith in the promises of money and technology to improve my mortal existence as a meat-sack” — Nicole Cliffe endorsing Thinx period panties in The Toast

I feel it, Nicole. Meat-sack solidarity. Also, this comment by JoanLR from a thread on queer biohacking:

[…] many identities that people relate to being queer have to do with feeling out of place in your body, or with having unusual feelings about how your body interacts with other bodies.
At least in the frame of reference of trans folk, there’s also a lot of us who sort of start body-modification stemming from changing ourselves for gendered reasons? […] Additionally, there’s the whole angle of how biohacking — especially the grinder style of DIY unofficial biohacking — gives people physical diversity and changes what different individuals can do, which I feel heavily relates to the concepts of personal autonomy and the idea of being abnormal in a “fuck you” sort of way, which loops back to being queer.

New possibilities for self-definition, opened up with a scalpel. Consider the poem “Cosmopolite” by Georgia Douglas Johnson, via the Poem-a-Day newsletter:

Not wholly this or that,
But wrought
Of alien bloods am I,
A product of the interplay
Of traveled hearts.
Estranged, yet not estranged, I stand
All comprehending;
From my estate
I view earth’s frail dilemma;
Scion of fused strength am I,
All understanding,
Nor this nor that
Contains me.

I’ll be seeing you soon.

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