Редактирование: Transhumanist FAQ Live (раздел)

===What kind of transhumanist art is there?===

Many kinds, but what examples one would give depends on how one defines “transhumanist art”. If one defines it simply as art that is concerned with the human aspiration to overcome current limits, then a large portion of all art through the ages would count as transhumanist – from ancient myths of Promethean hubris, to religious transcendental iconography, architecture, and rituals, J. S. Bach’s fugues, Goethe’s Faust, through to the postmodern artists, many of whom conceived of their work as an attempt to explode conceptual barriers in order to widen the reach of human creativity.

Thee concept of transhumanist art would be to say that it is multi-media arts creative works produced by transhumanists. On this definition, examples have to be sought in recent times since the term “transhumanism” in its contemporary sense is quite new. Natasha Vita-More is one of the earliest and most prominent transhumanist artists in this sense. For instance, her recent visual and conceptual work, Primo Posthuman (3M+), presents a kind of sleek future shopping catalog entry for an entire body design with features such as memory enhancements, sonar sensors, solar protected skin with hue-texture changeability, gender reconfigurability, environmentally-friendly waste disposal, and which comes complete with warranty and upgradability. Vita-More is also the author of several transhumanist arts manifestos, in which transhumanist art becomes self-conscious for the first time. Other contemporary transhumanist artists include Leonal Moura, Stelarc, Lilia Morales y Mori, Anders Sandberg, Juan Meridalva; Elaine Walker, E. Shaun Russell, Emlyn O’Regan, Gustavo Muccillo Alves, and the band Cosmodelia (electronic music); Susan Rogers (puppet theatre); Jane Holt (performance art); and many others.

If we narrow the definition by adding the requirement that a transhumanist telos be coupled to a notion of the centrality of technological means, we get a different set of paradigmatic examples. The Frankenstein myth (based originally on the novel by Mary Shelly published in 1831, and elaborated in countless forms since then) is one classic, and in general science fiction has been the genre most intensely preoccupied with transhumanist themes, reaching back to Jules Verne and Karel Čapek, through Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Stanislav Lem, Arthur C. Clark, on to Vernor Vinge, Bruce Sterling, James Halperin, Greg Egan, and many others in the field of science ficiton. Many of these author’s stories have been adapted for the screen. (The Star Trek series features cool new technology but the same old humans, so it is not a very paradigmatic exemplar of transhumanist art.) Yet this in and of itself is a narrowing of the board and explorative scope of transhumanist arts. For example, Buckminster Fuller’s architectural understanding of the world and society, the “maker”, “quantified self”, and “DIY” cultures all reflect initiatives of transhumanist art because the key is to solve problems through creative endeavors. In this regard, the field of design is consequential, and equal to, if not more than, science fiction.

References:

Vita-More, N. Primo 3M+ (2002). http://www.natasha.cc/primo.htm

Vita-More, N. “Transhumanist Arts Statement” (version of 2002). http://www.extropic-art.com/transart.htm