Parsons Cyborg Futures

These are prototypes of the way the thin layers of latex in this case could lay on the body. We want to keep the shapes very clean and minimal.We are trying to let them naturally mold to the body of the person wearing it, for them to feel comfortable and as if it were a natural extension to their body.

The different materials we tested with were vinyl, latex and sylicone. These three materials would give us the transparancy we are looking for. We want to embed the material with led lights to output the celestial sygnals we will be transmiting and also for it to show all of the system that is hapening within it.

The areas we focused on the most were something close or around the chest and heart, the shoulders as a symbol of power and keeping it wraped around the body form to maintain balance.

The progress of this week:

Putting up a project writing document: I am an artist whose body is failing. As a result of a major spinal surgery, I have bad proprioception in the lower left leg. This means my bodydoes not always know where my leg is in space and my foot sometimes feels like little more than deadweight I drag around. Communication from my brain to my leg is slow and sometimes non-existent.Balance is no longer a given...

Trying to build the communication between IMUs and adafruit feather: for the development side, we succeeded in sending data from computer to IMUs, as well as from feather to computer (computer to feather also). We were hacking on connect these two dynamics together so that we can get XYZ movement data from IMU to computer (or phone) for futher calculation. Max and I will be experimenting separately on this during the rest of the week.

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Team Glass soldering the LED to the wire before casting

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Example of our rubber molds and how they stick to the body

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Today some of us met at NYU’s ITP center to work on a further iteration for our body piece. We first soldered the LED to wire so that we could encase them into the rubber material Anna bought. We did multiple iterations that varied in size, depth, and ratio of mixture. Our experiment was successful because it allowed us to learn more about how the material lays and sticks to the body.

Human evolution is by nature a asset of humannity thus over the past 100000 years we had advanced into a sepcies that grows smarter and smarter everyday.Introducing Neil to the world is about sharing the example of how the organic and technolgies may play harmony together, which is really an enhancement of its body which is the maneifestation of how his interpret the world throguh the new senese to hear not just color but all kinds of light.

Looking at his from another persepctive, we are no different than all the otehr snimal species on earth, we went through Darwin's evolution process based on the environment we are situated and adapt our body to it, so ultimately till this day the purpose of survival is still the driving force of the evolution process. For example Andeans have a genetically determined trait that allows their hemoglobin to bind more oxygen. The Inuit in Greenland have digestion system that digest fatty tuna's omega-3 acid. People in the Middle Eastern has less chance of being lactose intolerence than people in Europe. But we have to remeber that this is natural selection that spreaded over the entire history of humanity to reach this point. Most of the selection process only exist within culture, language and computer, clothing. New manufacturing process might spread across the world over a week.

What can we do with the technologies we have today? We will need to figure out a way to do that faster than all of our previous attempt since earth population is skyrocketing due the improved medical technologies. In the article it mentioned human's colonization in Mars within the next 50 years is very likely to happen. But just how are we going to survive the 40 percent less gravity and no interferance with dust, long slender body with no body hair and eyelashes might be how we will look on Mars without technology involve in changing our physical appearnces.

A new technology called CRISPR-Cas9 has emerged, given us direct access to our DNA with ability to take out a section of DNA and put in a new one. We can then choose what color of our baby's eye / hair can look like even before having any sexual reproduction activities. Of course, the potential of this goes way beyond just changing physical aspect of our body. This is where Cyborg / body hacking come into place, having night vision is no longer too far away from us. Instead of shaping the environment that caters to our needs, we can design ourselves instead of the planet. CRISPR might be here to help us achieve that. However, before we do anything to our body, discuss the consequences of modifying genome, the technique that will be use to practice this, and what does enhancement mean? Are we going to be smarter and happier?

Perhaps it is the greater ambition of humanity that is right in plain sight waiting for it to be utilized. Here's a line from the author of this article D.T Max - "Our cars are our feet, our calculators are our minds, and Google is our memory. Our lives now are only partly biological, with no clear split between the organic and the technological, the carbon and the silicon. We may not know yet where we’re going, but we’ve already left where we’ve been."