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I M M E R S I O N : the coming fusion of life and entertainment

Natasha Vita-MoreBFA, MSc, MPhilPhD Candidate, Univ. Plymouth

Fellow, IEET

www.natasha.ccnatasha@natasha.cc

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IMMERSION

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the coming fusion

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of life and entertainment

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The idea of radically extending personal existence of biological and artificial systems suggests the design of new bio-synthetic life forms.

One question is whether or not this theme can be linked to historical story-telling and moving images.

A second question is whether new life forms will be a symbiosis of multiple personal existences.

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My research explores what possible questions are addressing perceptions of human enhancement which permeate artistic/design-based works.

The locus of experience is found within the areas of cybernetics as a central starting point and toward the bio-synthetic system characteristic of transhuman, posthuman, upload, and other alternative life forms.

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larger than Human behaviors

bio-artificial life forms can be linked to historical moving images.

One could say that the nature of film is already an artificial reality.

Or that the character’s persona is a copy of human behavior or that the performer, when taking on a character, has created an artificial entity.

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One question is whether or not

Window Water Baby MovingStan Brackage, Director

A.I., Steven Spielberg, Director 2001

Celluloid film frames

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digitized behaviors

Over the past five or more decades, a variety of descriptive entities—the cyborg, robot, A-life, AI, transhuman, prosthetic being, posthuman, avatar, and upload—resulted through works which aim to extend cognition, mobility and the senses. Alternative environments have developed to exist within, such as the virtual atmosphere of gaming and the Metaverse.

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Fig 2. Autopoiesis, Ken Rinaldo 2000

Fig 3: Ping Body, Stelarc 1996 Fig 4: Anim, alpha.tribe Elif Ayiter 2009

Fig1: The Moistmedia Manifesto, Roy Ascott 2000

Fig. 5: Primo Posthuman, Natasha Vita-More 1997

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SPACE TIME

The convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive and neuro sciences (NBIC) forms a field of human enhancement, which concentrates on regenerating biology and fostering the expansion of human physiology over space and time.

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Assumedly, media designers will continue to find new roles in expanding human senses, perceptions, interconnectivity, and in helping “develop kinds of intuitions, new metaphors, … concepts”12 and with potential toward the extreme of extending life onto unfixed, semi and non-biological platforms.

12 Malina, Roger F. “Limits of Cognition: Artists in the Dark Universe”. MutaMorphosis: Challenging Arts and Sciences Conference (2003).

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Historians attempt to preserve celluloid, digitality, and new media methods and to keep larger than human storytelling alive.

Researchers of the future attempt to develop new media for immersion.

Could new media employ AGI, Nano, robotics, and cognitive/neuro science to further the preservation of persona existence (human life)?

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