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FERNANDA DUARTE - NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY

Biohacking at the thresholds of the sensorial and the political

Thursday, February 6, 2014Today I'm discussing the affects between the sensorial and the political in biotechnologies used to monitor the physiological performance of individuals. It is observed by scholarship in media,

culture and critical studies that the mesh of location aware technologies with pervasive information networks has enhanced the mobility of some people, places and things while stressing the immobile

condition and unequal accessibility of others. Issues about forms of surveillance, their pervasiveness, and the institutions to whom they are available arise as the possibilities to identify individual’s

current location, monitor traveling routes and create databases about individuals and places. Once the depth of pervasiveness reaches the biological body, it is required that specific discussions about

surveillance, safety and privacy are developed to deal with ethical issues of biological disclosure. Bio-nanotechnologies are being developed in ways that we, as individuals not only populate a location

in space, but that our physiological data, as it is fed out to the network, becomes another variable to shape how individuals perform in it. We know the dangers of sharing our credit card information on

the internet and we all worry about the odds of having this and other personal information disclosed. Which concerns arise when the data that is shared regards health information and discloses how our

physiology performs?

The inclusion of the body as a site of networked computation brings the scale of pervasive computing to a micro scale of molecular biology, and extends whatever power networks and politics of

mobility to reach into the body.

ubiquitous computing, pervasive computing, physical computing,

tangible media,everyware,wetware.

(Weiser, 1991, dourish&bell, 2011, greenfield, 2006)

Thursday, February 6, 2014Recent developments in pervasive computing, such as embedded microchips and nanobiotechnologies, endows practices of mapping that do not only collect information about the physical

space, but also about the physical body that inhabits that space. Biotechnology applications, currently under development, are able to monitor physiological functions, such as heart rate and stress levels,

promote more seamless augmented reality interfaces through contact lenses and even assist visually impaired to exercise their mobility through the implant of sonar sensors. Other biometric applications

are also devoted to find more precise ways to identify individuals. Such practices tell us about forms of knowledge and mapping practices that challenge the notions of space, as a mere geographic

coordinate, and the body, as a node in a network. The body becomes a space to e mapped and governed. In order to discuss possible implications, I present a few examples of prototypes currently under

development to look at the power dynamics that animate the relationships of the biotechnological arrangement and the sensorial experience also at a molecular level. These groups are of medical

applications that allow the individual to care for herself; and of institutional, governmental applications that allow the care of a population.

Alexandra Institute in collaboration with the Aarhus School of Engineering School in Denmark

Thursday, February 6, 2014MIKAT, for example is a bio-sensor based application designed for the Iphone that enables patients to monitor levels of anxiety before they evolve into panic attacks. Based on body sensors, the app

reports regularly on the patient’s body stress levels and heart rate and feeds the user with exercises and therapeutic techniques based on cognitive behavioral therapy. On the verge of a panic attack the

data is shared with the physician who is able to take the necessary measures to care for the patient.

implantable silicon-silk

electronics and tattoos with blood

sugar readings

University of Pennsylvania

Thursday, February 6, 2014A more pervasive interface for emotional regulation is under development at the University of Pensylvania where silk-silicon electronics function as arrays of conformable electrodes that interface with

the nervous system and administer "corrections" to attend situations of distress. The same silk silicon technology can be also added with LEDs that might act as photonic tattoos that show blood-sugar

readings.

The motivations to intermesh the biological body with computing capacities are many. First, it leverages the body as a more efficient platform for mobile services. In fact, the development of wearable

computers is strongly invested by the need of allowing us to multitask face to face and remotely, guided by the western social push for a more productive and dynamic work force. Also, more pervasive

computing features enable the body of the individual to be precisely pinpointed in space and time. The use of biometrics in border control checkpoints demonstrate how discourses of safety and risk are

articulated through more precise forms to trace how targeted populations move and occupy space. Even though the technology has been developing to give us more control over what surrounds us, what

happens inside our bodies is still opaque to us. The miniaturization of pervasive technologies is allowing that we not only hack space but that we also hack the biological body.

InVivoNanoPlatformDARPA, USA

Thursday, February 6, 2014In Vivo NanoPlatform is a nanotechnology platform for medical health under development by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, USA). DARPA is an agency of the United States

Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technologies for use by the military. DARPA has been responsible for funding the development of many technologies which have had a

major effect on the world, including the hypertext system, the internet, and graphical user interface.

The platform is under development since March 2012 and aims to be an efficient diagnosis and treatment alternative to soldiers in the battlefield. It consists of implantable therapeutic nanotechnologies

made of biocompatible, nontoxic materials. Besides re-establishing injured or sick soldiers, the In Vivo Nanoplatform aims to be a constant monitoring system that is aware of the physiology of the body

and is also environment sensitive to avoid the spread of infectious diseases among soldiers.

Unique Identification Authority,India

Thursday, February 6, 2014Finally, I would like to mention the use of a sophisticated biometrics database by the Unique Identification Authority (UIAI) in India. Even though the implementation of fingerprint databases dates back

to 1858 in London, the Indian Government is implementing a state of the art biometrics system (fingerprints, iris, facial recognition) and demographic information to assign a 12-digit lifetime

identification number to each individual. The Indian initiative is the biggest national registry in the world in terms of scale and accuracy and is planned taking in consideration technologies that are

appropriate to the contrasts of India's social and economic reality. The database is shared between public and private agencies to promote access to public and private services, generate statistics

regarding the population, monitor the transit across Indian territory and also the mobility of one of the world's greatest population.

Once the body is networked and the biotechnological arrangement that makes that connection possible is pervasive to the point that the appearance of the biological body does not hint on her connected

condition, which are the consequences of this fractalized flesh to the individual body? If the performance of the individual body is able to be monitored in the level of physiological data, does it imply in

the installation of an internal surveillance system? Which are the dangers - a renewed eugenics - and potentials - health accountability - of such level of monitoring?

Stelarc

A cyborguian construct will be one that doesnt function in the local space it occupies, or even within n the boundaries of its own skin but through distributed agency remotely accessed and prompted from multiple locations.

body hacking,

gene mapping

and soon neuro-jacking.

Thursday, February 6, 2014Haraway (1985) sees the cyborg as representa7ve to our condi7on as social subjects, as 'a creature of both fic7on and lived social reality’ (65). She uses the figure of the cyborg to advocate against

essen7alist posi7ons, let them be biological or technological determined, depar7ng from the premise that we are all con7ngently materialis7c poli7cal cons7tuted chimeras. To prove her argument

on our co-‐cons7tu7ve technogenesis, she reminds us of the latest advances in nano technology and quan7c theory models that demonstrate the imprecisions between physical and non physical

boundaries. Haraway's cyborg can be thought as a model of subjec7fica7on that is ‘a poli7cal exercise of the interrela7onship between science, technology and power as a ‘matrix of complex

domina7ons’ (Haraway, 1985,p100) built upon otherness and difference.

Such matrix, Munster (2006) argues, as much as it breaks free from a Cartesian-‐ra7onalist model of the subject, it must not dispose of the sensorial capaci7es of bodies. She calls for an

understanding of a techno-‐digital body that ques7ons the binary separa7on between the virtual and the 'real', and more radically, the physical/biological and the machinical/computa7onal. She asks

“What if we were to produce instead a different genealogy for digital engagements with the machine, one that gave us the room to take body, sensa7on, movement and condi7ons such as place and

dura7on into account?” (Munster, 2006, p3). With that, Munster (2006) proposes an understanding of biotechnological bodies as ongoing embodiments, understood as a process more than a stable

state. But also includes movement, dura7on and place into the prac7ce of embodiment. Manning (2009) echoes Munster's (2006) argument when she says that a body is an event, a dura7on, a

taking form in space, plas7c rhythms. By its ac7on in space, bodies create rela7onscapes that are built upon “dynamic cross-‐genesis of the body and its constructed environment, where the

environment is taken to include not only the architectural surround but also technological and cultural extensions of it” (p2). The ways in which we interact with space construct not only the ways we

"house" in the body or the milieus we are embedded in, but also our modes of thought. The occupa7on of physical space of flesh and the physical occupa7on of architectural space render some sort

of a micropoli7cs that shape our capaci7es of self reflec7on about our embodied condi7on. For this reason it is cri7cal that scholarship regarding contemporary no7ons of space making take into

considera7on our technogene7c condi7on.

Ping Body, Stelarc

Thursday, February 6, 2014In the merging of molecular biology and computer science where “life is understood as data, flesh rendered programmable” technological protocols and the politics of life are co-constitutive as technical

and social regulators of social practices.

To conclude, I approach these examples of pervasive biotechnologies understanding that bodies are not fixed entities. Biotechnological embodiments are not biological bodies added with technological

gadgets. They are metastable saturations where bodies don’t move across space - as autonomous, discrete unities; but create space - as they are part of its becoming. It is with this purpose that I call for

a discussion of biotechnogenesis that is aware of the non- representational biological and sensorial capacities of the body. The networked biotechnological body can be thought as a performative body

that does not traverse space but enacts it, unfolds in/with it. Its corporeal experience is not limited to the physical location of the body nor the limits of its skin. Its actions are distributed across the

network in different locations and locally enacted according to the desires of the network. In this way, biotechnological arrangements can be thought can also be thought through its corporeal, the

discursive and the normative affects.

Thursday, February 6, 2014



Metalosis Maligna a “mock“ documentary by Floris Kaayk about a future where a disease which affects patients with medical implants



Fernanda DuarteCAPES and Fulbright Scholar

North Carolina State [email protected]

TWT @freducs

obrigada!Thanks!


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