CS547 Human-Computer Interaction Seminar (Seminar on People, Computers, and Design)
Fridays 12:30-1:50 · Oshman Room in McMurtry · Open to the public Previous | Next
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Curtin University Perth Zombies, Humanoids, & Hybrids: The Creepy, The Uncanny & The Contestable November 13, 2015 This is a time of Circulating Flesh, Fractal Flesh and Phantom Flesh. A time of
extreme absence and alien experience. Of bodies performing in remote
spaces with split physiologies and multiple agencies, where bodies are
simultaneously possessed and performing. Being neither one nor the other,
being neither here nor there, but partly present and mostly absent.
Subjectively, the body now experiences itself as a more extruded system,
rather than an enclosed structure. Bodies are inadequate, empty, involuntary,
and absent to their agency. We are living in an age of excess and
indifference. Of prosthetic augmentation and extended operational systems.
An age of Organs Without Bodies, of organs awaiting bodies. Cadavers can
be preserved forever with plastination and comatose bodies can be sustained
indefinitely on life-support systems, whilst cryogenically suspended bodies
await reanimation at some imagined future. The dead, the near-dead, the un-
dead and the yet to be born now exist simultaneously. This is the time of the
Cadaver, the Comatose and the Chimera. Of Zombies, Cyborgs, Hybrids and
Humanoids. The uncanny and the creepy proliferate. The self becomes
situated beyond the skin. It is partly through this extrusion that the body
becomes empty. But this radical emptiness is not through a lack but rather
through excess. In this age of body hacking, gene mapping, prosthetic
augmentation, organ swapping, face transplants, gender reassignments, AI
and AL, what it means to be other and what generates aliveness and affect is
examined and interrogated.
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