feels no pleasure, indeed not emotion at all ..." (Shusterman, R. (2001)
"Aesthetic Experience and Cyborg Interpretation" in Exploding Aesthetics.
Vol. 16, p. 27, Balkema, A.W. & Slager, H. (eds.) L&B: Amsterdam). The
transhuman, a machine-human hybrid as evolving human, would have all the
emotions of human, including refined emotions and augmented cognitive
properties.
The burka would be worn by the cyborg, but it would be programmed quite
differently than a transhuman in its relationship to the garb and its ethnic
meaning. The cyborg would not care, but be programmed by its author to
react, as the avatar currently is, while the transhuman would have its own
AGI/neurological/sensory interactions.
Natasha
-----Original Message-----
From: yasmin_discussions-bounces@estia.media.uoa.gr
[mailto:yasmin_discussions-bounces@estia.media.uoa.gr] On Behalf Of roger
malina
Sent: Sunday, July 12, 2009 8:37 AM
To: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS
Subject: [Yasmin_discussions] ETHNIC CYBORGS
ETHNIC CYBORG= CYBORGs IN BURKAs=AVATARS AS BURKAS
I want to venture with a little trepidation in territory that has difficult
Cultural and political connotations today, to argue that Cyborgs should be
able to wear Burkas in Public.
I was talking to Annick Bureaud and she made the comment that its strange
that With the Burka, we mask everything except the eyes , but that on
television you often See shots with peoples eyes blocked out to avoid being
able to recognize the person.
This gets into the general area of how we use non verbal communication in
general To assess the credibility and intent of people when they are in
dialogue with you. And the importance of eyes. ( Semir Zeki at his Plaisir
neuroaesthetics conference in Berkeley a couple of years ago, dealt with how
neurobiology now informs how facial recognition works and interpretation
mechanisms and the plasticily of those circuits in the brain)
Yasmin moderator Soussi Houssine is doing a PhD on the use of
photojournalism in The arab press in north africa, and necessarily one gets
into the whole discussion of how the body , naked or not, is situated in
different cultural and religious contexts. And the large issue of How
clothing is also part of the non verbal communication interpretation.
My father grew up in an age where wearing a hat in public was obligatory for
certain Social classes.
In western culture the age of a body is very difficult territory.
Artist Orlan who has
Used her body as her territory for art making, forces us to address such
issues. (no Comment re Michael Jackson)
One of the liberating effects of on line culture has been to create spaces
that Break many of the cultural norms of interpersonal dialogue. In second
life Everyone is wearing a burka. But the second life user has total liberty
to use/not Use anonymity and to design their appearance. This is not the
case in patriarchal Societies that enforce secondary roles for women ( with
our without
burkas) and don't
Let you design your own or decide when to wear it.
Maybe there are several basic rights that a Cyborg should have:
a) A right to privacy. Knowing however that the right to privacy has
evolved radically
over the last few thousand years. In village life there is little personal
Privacy but at least you know who is watching you and you can watch them
back.
b) A right to dignity and equality with non cyborgs, something even we
humans
have failed to minimum dignity a social reality. ( and by creating a class
of 'we Humans versus "you cyborgs: I have fallen into the trap that the body
determines Your identity ( need to unpack Varela's nice statement that "all
knowledge is Conditioned by the structure of the knower; cyborgs can know
things we cant know and vice versa )
Two rights are perhaps becoming particularly important:
c) A right to anonymity. The surveillance society is rapidly
eliminating our ability to mask
our identity ( except during Carnaval). There will eventually be more web
cams than people soon.
There are hacker communities now becoming expert at how you can remain
anonymous ( many countries try to block aliases in computer Accounts=
facebook too. Last night Lambert and Carlos Santiago took me to the Plaza
Garibaldi in Mexico City where the mariachi players entertain revelers
behaving with implicit public anonymity.
d) A right to all the data available about themselves. We live in the
terabyte era with
massive data being accumulated about each one of us ( yes google) and this
is probably irreversible.
You should have a right to all the data being taken about yourself.
Artists projects that explore issues of privacy, human dignity, anonymity
and data ownership I think are relevant to this Ethnic Cyborg discussion. We
have been having Trouble this month opening up this discussion, maybe some
of the artists on the list Doing work in these areas would like to tell us
about their work. Any artists working on "eyes" ?
Roger
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