Imminent Self Week 2: TRANSHUMANISM

TRANSHUMANISM

Transwhat? 

So it's the second week of our Imminent self brief, needless to say I am somewhat confused regarding how I can fashion a project out of this. I want to create something unique and something with a bit of a wow factor but also enjoy creating it at the same time. Looking back on our first project of the year, our tutors wanted us to have a solid idea that we can bring into production by the third week and as I am writing this it's nearing the end of the second week. With the project of Imminent self, its a rather confusing topic to work with, but at the same time the creative freedom we have with this allows us to delve into all sorts categories, theories and art forms. James himself actually mentioned that "confusion with this brief is a good thing" he wants us to be confused with the wording of the brief and wants us to form a concept and fully fledged project out our interpretation of the brief. Now during our Tuesday open workshop sessions i have been brainstorming ideas on what i can do and how i can achieve it, but at the same time I've been discussing this brief with other students to get their insight and their interpretations on this project and it's apparent that there is a class wide confusion. I personally believe it's a good thing that i'm not the only one confused because then I don't think i'm the only one who doesn't understand. There are a couple of people who are concerned about how broad this brief is, I myself are somewhat torn, I enjoy that I creative freedom but at the same time I feel stuck in the spot like with nothing to show. 

One thing I have noticed when discussing this project with others is that many students are undertaking the cyberpunk theme with this project. As someone who enjoys the cyberpunk genre and subculture that gets me both excitable and worried, because I wanted to tie this project with cyberpunk myself. This means I am going to have to be careful on how I work with this last thing I want is having a project that is similar to someone else. To me with this brief I have interpreted how technology itself is evolving at an exponential rate so much so 20 years worth of technological progression will be accomplished in 10. So in conjunction to imminence our society is nearing a golden age of technology if we haven't accomplished it already. We crave convenience, our daily lives have become in concurrence with technology From brushing our teeth with electric tooth brushes, to switching the dishwasher on, we'd kill for those extra few minutes or to not do that chorus task. In regards to this I gave 10 people a scenario this following question.

If you were in a super market and had the choice between going to an empty checkout which is operated by a member of staff, or a self service checkout that had a very small queue, which one would you go to? 

Interestingly enough out of the 10 people, 8 chose that they would preferably choose to wait for the self service instead of going to the checkout. This is because not only technology is providing convenience but it's giving us an option to avoid interaction with others. This got me thinking, what would we miss if technology and automation took over? Creativity? Hobbies? Driving? The act of being sociable?    

      

During an open workshop session I overheard a discussion between a student and tutor. The student was having difficulty coming up with an idea for this project and tutor suggested that they could base their project around a word and make it relate to the brief. This gave me the idea to explore a particular topic that relates to the imminence of technology and the idea of 'Self' that topic being 

TRANSHUMANISM.

So what is transhumanism? An excerpt from Wikipedia states that 'Transhumanism is an international intellectual movement that aims to transform the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies to greatly enhance human intellect and physiology.'

In the Mediterranean sea there's a little jelly fish called turritopsis dohrnii, otherwise known as the 'immortal jellyfish.' It has the ability to do something that would seem impossible and has been the talk for thousands of years, Immortality. The turritopsis dohrnii does this by reverting to earlier stage of it's life cycle if it becomes damaged, they are able to repeat this process over and over again theoretically meaning that they have a never ending life.

Now what if we were to consider that ourselves and our families could be joining turritopsis dohrnii in a life of endlessness. The ability to live forever is a thought most have probably pondered on at some point but how likely is it to become a reality. while the notion is called Transhumanism which is the theory that through technology and advance medical intervention, humans will be able to live indefinitely or at least prolong our life expectancy. However this isn't just an outrageous belief, extending human life is already happening in small forms. If we were to look at life expectancy of humans 200 years ago it was anything from 30 to 40, now in most developed countries it's over 80. This is part due to medical advancements such as pacemakers, robotic surgery and life support machines. But when talking about Immortality, so far we're not even close to achieving that since very little research is being conducted to make this happen. That's why Transhumanists, people who support the development of this have formed their own political party, in fact one of the founding members of this movement is Zoltan Istvan from California who formed the party and even ran for president in the 2016 US presidential election. Zoltan believes that by cutting military funding we could conquer human ageing within the next decade, and that by simply accepting that we age and die, is not the way it should be.         

The idea for project I wish to create for this brief, is to fabricate a fake company that is promoting, producing and informing transhuman technology such as augmentations, genetic enhancement and various advance medical research that applies to the theory of prolonging our lives. This idea was inspired by a promotion for the 2015 film Jurassic World, before the release of the movie in uk cinemas, an interesting domain went live. This domain was in fact for the fictional company 'Masrani Global' who were the funders for the newly improved Jurassic park. The website inclduded information on the company, biography of Simon Masrani the CEO and even a tab where you could apply to work for the park. 

The website is done rather well it gives off the perception that it is an actual company that you can learn about and even potentially work for. It immerses people into the lore of this fictional world and I strongly suggest to check it out! Below is a link to this site.

http://www.masraniglobal.com/index.html 

Additionally, the password is 'Indominus' That's all I'm gonna say regarding that.

Below are some screenshots from the website.

It's rather interesting that you could apply to work for this company, I actually filled in a form really quickly to work as a security guard. My False name is Jason Kragg. Space Station 13 had its uses! Additionally what I thought was a nice touch is as you are going through the website, you'll get a pop up about 'Unforeseen circumstances' at Jurassic world if you've seen the movie already, you'll understand why this is this pop up occurs. 

So using this website as inspiration I want to create not only a website that viewers can be immersed into, I will be creating its own corporate identity consisting of letter heads, business cards, signatures, logos the whole nine yards. This is definitely a lot to chew, seeing the fact that the brief is for 5 weeks, however I do have the Christmas break on my side to further flesh out this project alongside the summative deadline. I will be further exploring this idea on my next blog post which can be found below.

Imminent Self Week 3: Concept Development