NEW BEGINNING
Irony or reality? Do we leave or do we stay? Survival or apocalypse?
Ákos Schneider
THE TECHNOLOGIES OF ASCENT AND THE WEIGHT OF SPECULATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY
At some point of technical and scientific progress ‘transhuman’ man will burst out of his thus far known frameworks. At this point mankind will link up with such assumed technological developments as whole brain emulation; reproducing individual consciousness in a synthetic body; technological singularity, which must be reckoned with along with the radical breakthroughs in artificial intelligence; and cryonics, which preserves the body for extended periods in the hope that it can be resurrected in the future. Humanity as a space colonising species leaving the Earth behind could constitute a similar posthuman turning point. […]
In transhumanist discourse art and design address the idea that ’man can be transformed’. According to the Transhumanism Art Manifesto of 1983, the objectives of transhumanist artists are aimed at endless self-transformation, limitless individual freedom, intellectual and creative augmentation, biotech interfaces as well as the conquering of death and the exploration of the universe.
Márton Szentpéteri
SEIN UN DESIGN
…in the neoliberal sensorium our lifeworlds are alarmingly easily accessible, while our embeddedness is rather uncertain and vulnerable: we are victims of digital surveillance, and our freedom is a mere illusion. The essence of design capitalism is the unbearable designedness of being, overbearingly unaware alienation and brilliantly sublimated slavery: infinite vulnerability has taken on an attractive guise and submission has become desirable – Sein und Design. What is banal, superficial and blatantly mundane poses as art. This form of capitalism is uncontrollably (an)aesthetic; it is artistic, but it is not of art with a capital A. So much so that it is stupefyingly realist: its dimension is seemingly without an alternative, its laws have donned the primitive disguise of necessity as if they were akin to natural sciences, and they luxuriate in an incessantly excessive data fetish…