New Media Culture

As man and machine become ever more heavily entwined, it could be the case that we see a revival of a branch of science which was outlawed a few years ago. That is the debate around cloning. Although a fairly new innovation in the scientific world, the ideas surrounding it have been discussed for over a hundered years. It was Sigmund Frued who wrote in 1928;

“Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic god. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent”.

This idea of clonong was explored int the movie 'Sixth Day', which explored the idea of a farming facility which cloned human organs for transplants, but developed the technology, illegally, to clone an entire human being, as well as means to store a persons memories from the cerebral cortex which can be re-implanted into a persons brain once thay have been cloned.
The movie was released around the time of the passing of the Sixth Day Laws which prohibited the cloning of a human brain. It served to show, in th most part, that although the idea of never losing a loved one looks appealing, it completely devalues human life, and effectively transforms the human race into a kind of immortal machine, in complete contradiction to nature.

The new idea of a technological way of thought which allows us to expand technology not only outwards into the universe, but inwards into the body raising many interesting questions. It brings about a situation within society which allows us to edit and alter our natural human form, in the same way that we have altered and updated software for years.

A famous exponent of this idea in the artistic world is Orlan whose the first to use plastic surgery as her medium. The aim of her work is to highlight the fact that "objective (beauty) is unattainable and the process horrifying". She sums up her work very eloquently when she says it is "a self-portrait in the classical sense, yet realized through the technology of our time."

Another artist who employs a similar style is the Australian artist Stelarc who has developed a set of prosthetics which attach directly to his nervous system and can perform many different tasks at his command. He does this to suggest that we must rely on machines to fill in the gaps which are created by our individual physical limitations.
  He uses a rather chilling example to highlight the fact that man and machine have inevitably grown closer and closer together in the modern world;

“The first phase of technology contained the body, whereas now miniaturised tech can be implanted in the body.  If the tech is small, the body acts as if it were not there, it becomes a component...”His theories and ideas give a sense that we needn't be slowed down by the notion of darwinian evolution and that we can utilise technology to enhance our species in the long term.