Transhuman Production

Abstract: Is the production of human not a natural one? If human is not natural then, what are we? If there is nothing natural about human, then is there human nature? Kant asked, what does it mean to be human? What is virtual, and what is a virtual human? We may think of temporality or simulation, however, an objects essence is virtual too. If human production were artificial, then would the virtual human be the event of that production? Under these circumstances, the virtual human would be the reality of its virtual, the unknown future. Historically, we have encountered artificial humans in the fantasies of art, cinema, literature, and popular culture including some of the more commonly known: Golem—Jewish mythology; Pygmalion’s living sculpture; E.T.A. Hoffman’s uncanny doll—Olympia, in Der Sandmann; Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein; Fritz’s Lang’s Maria—the female robot in Metropolis; and Ridley Scott’s Replicants in Blade Runner. Transhuman production is completely immaterial with endless communications flows of transmissions and receptions between human-machine or machine–human; mental processes and translations of informational flows create an aesthetic experience through its distributed cognitive network of social relations and digital machines. Are our realities not also fantasies performed inside the spaces of images? A technological organism endowed with life by mobilizing technological capabilities through the identity of the human mind. Are we not primarily performing art(-ificial) living out of life at the intersections where apparatuses, technologies, and image converge, or cross-over?

Key Words: aesthetics, living images, transhuman