Cyborg Art
From the Cybermen in Doctor Who to Darth Vader in Star Wars, we have seen plenty of bionic characters in fiction. They are usually portrayed as superhumans with extreme strength and immunity against ordinary weapons. Cyborgs have played a significant role in the universe of science fiction for years now. Perhaps, then, it is the fault of the genre itself that we have a certain prototype in mind when we hear the word cyborg. Google the term and you’ll find hundreds and hundreds of pictures of individuals with bodies of metal and a number of devices attached to them. They are shown as being more android than human. In reality, however, we already have people who are technically cyborgs living amongst us. Some may make you take a second glance when they pass you by on the street and others won’t even catch your attention. You may be surprised to find how many cyborgs you’ve met in your life. You may even be friends with one!
When you strip away the idea of superstrong limbs, in-built weaponry and technologically heightened senses that fiction has etched in our minds, a cyborg is nothing but someone who has both organic and technological components in their body. The name ‘cyborg’ itself is derived from cybernetic and organism. Technically, you could have a cortical implant or a pacemaker, and you would be a real-life cyborg.
The past two decades have seen a rise in the number of technology-integrated humans, thanks to progress in the realm of technology. While many of them are implanted with devices that are needed to get them through everyday life, there have also been cases where people have adopted biotechnology for other reasons. One such section of individuals is that of the cyborg artists.
Cyborg Art is a form of art where the artist creates and integrates into their body some form of cybernetic device. These cybernetics are implanted with the intention of enhancing existing senses or experiencing new ones. The ‘art’ of cyborg artists is what their new senses allow them to experience; the art is their redesigned sensory world. The Cyborg Foundation explains,
In Cyborg Art; the artwork, the audience, and the museum is all in the same body.
Think of the cyborg artist’s art as being their own body- the implanted technology as well as the sensory experience.
According to the Cyborg Foundation’s website, the goal of cyborg art is to experience the reality that is outside the constraints of the normal human senses, thereby altering one’s sensory reality. The Cyborg Foundation refers to this unexplored world outside of our subjective reality as Revealed Reality, or RR.
One way to understand cyborg art is using the analogy of photography. A photographer experiences her surroundings through the lens of her camera. When she captures a photo, she is making art. The art exists, whether or not the photographer decides to develop the pictures and show them to an audience. The art exists no matter what form the photographer presents it in, and even if she modifies it in some way. The art exists because the photographer experiences it. Similar to photographers, there are several Cyborg Artists who attempt to capture their new and unique sensory experiences in some way and present them to the world.
One of the pioneers in the field of Cyborg Arts and the first individual to be officially recognised as a cyborg by the UK government is the Catalan-born contemporary artist, Neil Harbisson. Harbisson was born with achromatopsia, a rare disorder that completely deprived him of colour vision. As a result, all his childhood, Harbisson experienced the world in greyscale, unable to understand the concept of colours that others spoke of so often.
Growing up, Harbisson was inspired by Sir Isaac Newton’s theory about colour, according to which colour and sounds are both frequencies. With this theory in mind, and drawing inspiration from the animal world, Harbisson developed a wearable antenna-like structure that would allow him to experience colours. The antenna is attached with a camera that converts colour frequencies into vibrations. After learning what sounds correspond to what colour, Harbisson learnt to distinguish between different colours. In essence, Harbisson was able to hear colours. Wanting to expand his newfound ability, Harbisson gave himself the ability to also see infrared and ultraviolet. He soon realised that he wanted his sense of hearing colours to be a part of him rather than just something attached to him, and so, in 2004, the artist had the antenna surgically implanted into his skull. Harbisson dubbed the antenna his ‘eyeborg’.
Harbisson’s childhood friend and fellow Cyborg Artist, Moon Ribas, can sense the seismic movements of the earth in the sensors implanted in each of her feet. The sensors alert her when there are movements in the tectonic plates anywhere on earth. This allows her to have a deeper connection with the earth. She recently even gave herself the ability to sense seismic movements on the moon.
Neil Harbisson and Moon Ribas are cyborg artists in that they not only experience the art but also attempt to showcase their unusual sensory experiences through a range of performances. They attempt to explicitly present their internal experience to an audience so they too can- albeit indirectly- feel their unique sensations.
Neil Harbisson’s performances make use of his unique ability to experience colours through sounds. He performs colour concerts where he uses different colours to create music. One variation of this is what Harbisson calls face concerts. During these performances, he takes the help of audience members and creates musical compositions based on the colours on them, such as their eyes, hair, lips and skin. Since every audience is different, every one of his face concerts is unique. He’s also made sounds portraits of famous personalities such as Prince Charles, Bono, Pamela Anderson, etc.
Aside from presenting colours as sounds, Harbisson also does the reverse. He has made paintings in which he uses colours that correspond to the songs he hears. Harbisson has made paintings of songs such as Beethoven’s Für Elise and Justin Bieber’s Baby. He also made paintings of speeches including those of Martin Luther King Jr. and Adolf Hitler. Some of his more avant-garde performances are Skull Transmitted Painting where someone is tasked with sending colours to him in his head which Harbisson then paints on a blank canvas, and Space Concert, where Harbisson connects to NASA’s live satellite stream and turns the colours of space that he sees into sounds.
Moon Ribas performs to showcase her sense of the earth’s tectonic movements that she feels through her seismic sensors. One of her performances is a dance piece called Waiting For Earthquakes in which she reflects the sensations she feels during an earthquake through the movements of her body and varying intensity of the performance. The performance takes place only when Ribas senses earthquakes and never otherwise. She once said about this piece, “It’s a bit like a duet between the earth and myself. Basically, the earth is the choreographer of the piece and I am just interpreting the data that she gives me.” Another one of her performances is called Seismic Percussion. It is a drum solo performance where she transforms the sensation of earthquakes into sounds. The seismic activity of the earth determines the rhythm of the composition.
Despite its name, Cyborg Art is not just about aesthetics and self-expression. Cyborg Art is a movement and it goes beyond simply enjoying new and unique sensations. Take away the glamour factor from cyborgism and what you have is simply a trend towards a more technologically-equipped existence, where there are no borders between flesh and machine. To Harbisson, merging ourselves with technology is the natural next stage for mankind. Integrating technology into our bodies paves way for a fascinating new future for humanity. We will be able to tune in to the world around us beyond what our natural senses allow, and change how we interact with the world. New senses will open us up to new knowledge and experiences that could be used to advance our species. Harbisson believes that it is, in fact, our duty to ‘transcend our senses’. These technologies can allow us to see our world in a whole new way and inadvertently bring us closer to nature.
Harbisson’s eyeborg allows him to do more than hear colours today. He can use it to receive phone calls to his head. The updated version of his antenna is even Bluetooth enabled. Beyond his eyeborg, Harbisson has also experimented with new cybernetic devices to attain other senses. One project Ribas and he undertook was called the Transdental Communication. Both their mouths were fit with tooth-like devices. They could click their teeth following the morse code and communicate with each other. Another dental device that Harbisson experimented with was a tooth that acted as a light source when clicked. Neil Harbisson plans to get a device installed encircling his head with a spot of heat that moves around his head during the duration of a day. He hopes to use it to attain a temporal sense, that is, the device may help him sense what time of the day it is. Least to say, Harbisson is optimistic about the future of cyborgs. He says,
“By merging ourselves with the technology we can become the designers of our own body and perception, and we can increase our survival possibilities in the earth and in outer space. Are we witnessing the renaissance of our species?”
References:
Cyborg Foundation. (n.d.). Retrieved May 11, 2021, from https://www.cyborgfoundation.com/
Cyborg foundation. (2021, May 10). Retrieved May 11, 2021, from https://thoughtworksarts.io/bio/cyborg-foundation/
Hutson, M. (2017, June 20). Beyond the five senses. Retrieved May 11, 2021, from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/beyond-the-five-senses/528699/
Javelosa, J. (2016, December 25). Could we hack our brains to gain new senses? Retrieved May 11, 2021, from https://futurism.com/could-we-hack-our-brains-to-gain-new-senses
Jeffries, S. (2014, May 06). Neil Harbisson: The world’s first cyborg artist. Retrieved May 11, 2021, from https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/06/neil-harbisson-worlds-first-cyborg-artist
Martin, T. (2019, February 20). The curious case of the cyborg artists. Retrieved May 11, 2021, from https://www.designindaba.com/articles/creative-work/curious-case-cyborg-artists
Meet the cyborg artists who have merged themselves with technology. (n.d.). Retrieved May 11, 2021, from https://www.designindaba.com/articles/conference-talks/meet-cyborg-artists-who-have-merged-themselves-technology
