Flesh Eating Technologies An analysis by Prof.

Ruben Guzman in collaboration with The Banff Centre for the Arts, for the Canadian publication Semiotexte

Flesh Eats Technology From now on, man will be able to eat technology. Stelarc Or not. Since the time Robotics was developed after the Industrial Revolution to increase production (eating entire populations, not just their flesh), many thinkers and artists have come to varied conclusions on the assimilation of technology.

Going beyond with technology Your (painted)waterfalls make too much noise. I can no longer sleep! Emperor Suang Sung to the painter Li Chin Chi Undoubtedly, one of our major aims, so it seems, is to reach beyond. To get there where our limited bodies cannot reach. Hot-air balloons, planes, the V2, Voyagers, or telematic media... Perhaps, it has to do with our itchy anxiety. Anxiety has caused us many problems: just take a look at our recent history. Boredom and its related partner, contemplation, seems to hold negative connotations in the western world. Around the 4th century, A.D., Cassanius stated one simple rule to combat boredom, still in use by entertainment experts today: we must distract distraction by means of distraction. Can we afford the time to experience Benjamins photographic unconscious, Barthes Punctums , a Chinese Penjing1 , or Suan Sung waterfalls? Blaise Pascal in his Penses states that all the evil in men comes from one thing and one thing alone: their inability to remain at rest in a room. No time, no contemplate, no think. Maybe it is just that we do feel contempt for what is within our reach in our daily lives. Perhaps we simply do not have a clue on what THIS is all about. Is getting further a way of exploring new thing and/or a way of eroding our physical and natural boundaries? It seems irrelevant to understand the place from where we decide to project ourselves. At any rate, we must go beyond. Now,
1

The close equivalent to a Japanese Bonsai

one question necessarily arises: WHO gets to go beyond and WHO does not, and therefore lags behind? Here is our first Darwin. Going beyond has been closely related to ways of colonialism, and still is (an interesting related exercise could be that of comparing colonizing with eating or devouring). Economical concerns and their related schemes of power have always set the rules of the game. Under the current status of Guattaris IWC (Integrated World Capitalism), people in the North will advance further than those in the South, generally speaking. When the Northerners get there, however, they wont send us a single postcard.

Telematic media All media are extensions of some human facultypsychic or physical. Marshall McLuhan Weve been a long way, though. We have annihilated time and space. Rudolph Arnheim arrived to this conclusion when analyzing the effects of television... back in 1935. Now, how should we live in this time and spaceless world, still geared with the old tools and with the same power structures? The fact is that media act as switches between the outside world and our conscience. How much of what we decide to consume is already designed for us by someone else in this scheme of power? From this scheme derives, for instance, the content of the information. This information should be able to support the status quo from which it originates, therefore reiterative, unquestioning and uneducating. This starts sounding Darwinian again. But indeed, there is a lot of Darwinism in media analysis, from perceptual to production selection.

Flesh Adding Technologies Electric circuitry is an extension of the central nervous system. Marshall McLuhan In fact, McLuhan envisioned all media as extensions of man. For over a century, stimuli to our senses have been telematically reconstructed and simulated. In a way, we have projected our senses to the distance, to the beyond. According to Norbert Bolz, all new media do not belong to the external world. In fact, they constitute a schematic representation of our own internal orientation. Perhaps it is more relevant to think of Flesh Adding Technologies, since it could be seen as an added limb or annexation to our bodies. An addition

usually justified by our sensorial appetite. However, our sensorial organs do not coincide with the so called social organs, although social organs can induce our own sensorial needs. So far, history has been written by the forming social organs and their own needs, far beyond sensorial and concerns. Thus arises a valid question: whose limbs are we appending to our bodies?
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