Embodied and Material Play - The Cyborg

"Control Life" by Mads Peitersen

The class on Embodied and Material Play focused on aspects of the interaction between users and technology. I found the whole topic to be really complex, difficult to understand and most of the time complete science fiction, at least the discussions we had in class. It turns out some of it isn't even fiction.

Isaac asks on his blog forest temple: "Although one may be more “body-natural” than the other, is there one that is more “mind-natural” than the other one?" So I'm going to use this third case I found.

Meet Professor Kevin Warwick, the world's first cyborg.

Warwick is a cybernetics professor at Reading University (UK). The chip he's holding in the image to the right is a small transmitter which he had operated into his arm. It identifies him to the building and his computer, it opens doors and switches on lights. It sounds pretty simple and harmless, but it would be similar to having the yellow CPR card implanted into you.

He later went a step further and had a tiny little thing operated into his central nervous system, which enables him to connect with a computer using basically his brain signals. Further he speaks about extending the human senses to also experience ultra-sonic using these small inserted devices and having him and his wife's nervous systems communicating.

The video below shows Warwick speaking about the experiments and what he envisions for the future. He sure doesn't sound like your stereotypical English professor (I dare say!) but I believe he is the voice turning science fiction into science.

So what is Warwick doing? Is he at the machine? In the machine? Is he the machine?

It sounds like he thinks of the body itself as a machine, able to be modified, upgraded and configured to become more than it biologically was made to be. The two share an electrical language and the computer is just a tool - patching is the new word for school (...that rhymed).

Dovey & Kennedy talks about the cyborgian relationship between the player and game, they are interdependent, irreducible and inseparate. SixthSense and Kinect with their "old-fashioned" insistence of flapping arms enforces a physical mirroring of an avatar, but what happens to embodiment when the controller is gone, the physical mimicry is gone and the player controls the avatar by thought alone? Is this the closest we can get to downplaying the situated body and enhancing the embodied player or are we losing out by trying to erase the body from this interaction?

Where does Warwick place himself in relation to the machine? Is he displaying complete mastery by utilizing it and bending the strength of the computer to his will? There is no longer any period of time where you have to tolerate the clumsiness of learning to handle a new controller. Is he an equal to a computer, as his body is basically a computer too? Or is he subjugated, plugging into the master, thankful for being granted access to the building where he works?

Admittedly, Warwick seems to be spending a lot of time in front of a computer when engaged in his experiments, it doesn't quite look as shiny and transparent (yet) as the SixthSense "future vision" video below.

Warwick also speaks about moving away from being human ("a subspecies") and becoming a cyborg. He frames it as a movement that can be excluding to those not initiated, something we are already seeing with our present technology.

Finally, while thinking of Bart Simon and case modding aesthetics, Warwick seems to be moving towards the indistinguishable cyborg, the machine is hidden as it's operated into the body covered by the skin. However, will case modding in Warwicks version of the future perhaps move on to the body itself, a type of body art or fashion statement?

The science fiction characters did it!

The cool people are already totally doing it pretending to do it.