Abstract:

The augmented human, whether in the form of quantifying wearable technologies or extended into the cyborg, continues the Cartesian trajectory of liberating spirit from matter. Reductionist calculation replaces the inconvenient unruliness of organic matter, with predictable precision and orderliness. In this paper we introduce the cyborganic as a nature/human/machine hybrid as an alternative trajectory to human technogenesis. The cyborganic notion builds on and extends the Posthuman project into physical form and suggests a dynamic entity of embodied knowledge, dynamically intertwined with both the intelligence of machines and the intelligence of nature, inclusive of human nature. Technocrafting blends digital and artisanal practices and embraces both the artificially constructed and the organically grown whereby a construct emerges which cannot be contained within a binary classification model, such as artificial/natural or digital/analog. The aesthetics of the cyborganic entity, as well as the technocrafting creation process, transcends linear modernist temporal dualities of past and future, archaic and modern.

Authors: Raune Frankjaer and Patricia Flanagan(2019)

In Virtualities and Realities: New Experiences, Art and Ecologies in Immersive Environments. Ed: Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits

Full text (preprint version) can be found here:

https://tinyurl.com/y4uz7osp