concept

What brought us here ?

In spring 2009, the web magazine Re-public has published a series of twenty articles on the issue of Transhumanism. Various actors (James Hughes, Dale Carrico, Riccardo Campa, Rémi Sussan, Stelarc …) was presenting their views, both positive and negative or skeptical.

But to address the questions raised by the Transhumanists movement, to begin to get an idea of what conceals the complexity of Technological Convergence (the combination of science such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, information science, cognitive science , robotics …), opportunities that it opens to mankind, the great philosophical and scientific discourse do not seem sufficient. Beyond logic, we thought it might be good to propose another approach, that of aesthetics.

Hence the idea of continuing this discussion through an international exhibition of reproductions of works of art online.

The role of the Selection Committee

To this end, we convened a small group – just under a dozen people, backgrounds and diverse experiences, but all involved a high degree by the problem of Transhumanism, which has formed a selection committee .

This committee has successively established its rules of operation, mode of acquisition and selection of works, he finally participated in the design of the exhibition site itself.

After launching an international call for participation, we’ve received some sixty works of diverse media and subjects. To this, we chose to add a dozen pieces that we felt were particularly significant in asking the authors for permission to present on our site.

For each work, the committee members were invited to make a critical assessment and a prescriptive one in order to compare opinions and to bring out an average appreciation. There has emerged a hierarchy of designs submitted to the committee. The importance given to each work in the rest of the exhibition is based on these discussions. All of these are available on the exchange site, a wiki: H+AC on PBWorks:

On the other hand, after discussion it was finally decided that everything would be presented using the logic of a thematic presentation, based on groupings imposed by the committee.

The logic of the works presentation

In view of the collected works, this exhibition has been organized around three main themes: creations highlighting the technical aspects of Technological Convergence ; the discourse around the issue of ” human enhancement” and more specific examples experiences, goals, hopes or ideals envisaged by Transhumanism.

Within these three broad categories, it seemed possible to discern several subtopics that are reported on pages with each work.

Nevertheless, we must say clearly what this presentation has of arbitrary power. We did not ask the authors their opinion on these groupings. Some works may also be presented in several groups. Each spectator, free to watch the creations in his own way, will find other ideas, other themes and other logic.

The site’s future: an international gallery, interactive and evolving for transhumanist art exhibition. An area of debate.

Since the beginning, the project of this site has wanted participatory and evolving. Also, another idea was that it should be possible to operate according to different logics.

Indeed, when we began to consider creating such a gallery, and after searching for some time to inform us on what already existed in the transhumanist galaxy, it appeared that several projects were already launched here and there, but none had been successful in developing a gallery of great importance. Most have resulted from individual initiatives, or small groups of amateurs and artists who are often breathless, more or less rapidly (not all :-).

What we would like to propose today to all of the transhumanist community, as well as anyone interested in the artistic expression of the questions raised by Transhumanism is to unite all efforts and all good wishes to develop a vast gallery whose wealth would enable reference and everyone is discovering the Transhumanism through art, is to find the illustrations that are suitable, to share his thoughts and criticisms or even to expose its own works to the appreciation of all.

The selection committee would have to be renewed and greatly expanded. All participants and visitors of the “debate” part of the site (PBWorks) could offer new works, discuss them, until the decision is eventually taken to install them in the gallery.

The gallery could evolve by combining, as in any museum, a permanent exhibition and another for temporary exhibitions organized around a theme or an artist or technique, etc..

This project is offered.

It belongs to those interested in the artistic expression of transhumanist issue to flourish.

The selection committee