“ Full Tr, Full Rf :
The body posthuman, vol.1 ”
a project proposal
for CDA Projects
by Mk Yurttas.
2011
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The project proposal for CDA 2011 is a part of my ongoing research called "The posthuman and the
body in the intersection of contemporary art & design" at Proficiency in Art, YTU Art & Design. This
research is a contextual continuation of my M. Arch. thesis called "The hybridization of body & space
in the context of postorganic paradigm in architecture" at ITU IST Arch. Design Master Programme in
2001-2003 (the summary can be seen in my portfolio).
The research concentrates on the transformation of the human interacting with digital technologies
through the notion of posthuman and body connected to multiple disciplines and producing critical
works in this context. The underlying intention of the research is to interpret this continous social
process that all we're living in our ordinary lives at different scales which has a potential of being a
ground-breaking turning point in the history of human being. In this context the posthuman is
interpretated as a fluid identity which is a heterogeneous combination of different perspectives and
the body is as a multilayered / multidimensional surface which this identity is inscribed on it
simultaneously.
The research is nourished by the flowing tension between two ideologically differentiated
interpretations of posthuman as in posthumanism and transhumanism. The posthuman of
posthumanism has an awareness of imperfectability or disunity within him or herself and has an
emergent ontology not a stable one. The posthuman of transhumanism is a hypothetical future being
whose capacities are radically exceeded of standart humans but once his or her ancestors are
humans. While the first one is connected to postmodernity, process philosophy, evaluationary
biology; the second is related to advanced nanotechnology, genetic engineering,
psychopharmacology. The first is deconstructing the established representation of human by critical
theory; the second is a continuation of renaissance humanism, enlightment and liberal capitalism.
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The research has a proccessing character of an organism because of being connected to these
constantly developing disciplines. Through these approaches, i picked the key concepts from basic
principle texts of I. Hassan, N. K.Hayles, D. Haraway, R. Kurzweil, M. Minsky, H. Moravec, M.
Foucault, G. Deleuze, F. Guattari, J. Baudrillard, C.A. Ensemble, E. Grosz, A. Vidler to let a fluid of lifeform flow through its roots, veins, gears and circuits. These key concepts are identity, authority,
culture, desire, consumption, subjectivity, authenticity, fluidity, simulation, machine, prosthesis,
cyborg, virtual, connection and extension.
The products produced by this organism emerges in the intersection of contemporary art & design
under the name of this research. This intersection is an interaction surface between contemporary
art, the bobble-like text made up of been written, now being written, will be written text pieces with
the words of experience, history, subjectivity, activation and space; and design, the bulk sum of side
by side, overlapping, inside out layer planes named architectural, interior, environmental, graphic,
industrial, communication, fashion design. The speed limits, canon or complexity, volume, material
codes and reactions of the bobble is ambivalent, not stable because of its slippery and semitransparent characteristics. The planes have similar material intensities, but differences in elasticity,
rigidity, fragility and permeability. The planes extent, pour out, decrease, shrink and flow; so the bulk
is always coming to form of different connections. Thanks to this interaction surface, the text slides
into the bulk and the planes move to the bobble, then the contextual production of the organism
becomes visible. This visibility is in just about immaterial materiality; the pieces of text floating,
flying, jamming, hooking, melting over the moving topography make shadows, traces and some of
dissappear and appear after a while.
The name of the project proposal for CDA 2011 is “Full Tr, Full Rf : The body posthuman, vol.1” within
the collaboration of this organism. As mentioned above, because of being a part of an ongoing
research it has the same intentions, concentrations and motivations with its upper (but surely able to
have surprises through the period). This vol.1 is called as above because it highlightens the key
concepts of identity, desire, consumption, fluidity, simulation, machine, prosthesis, cyborg, virtual,
connection through the materiality and immateriality of transformation, transition, transparency,
transposition, trace and reflection, refraction, reform, refresh, reference, refinery. The project is the
production period of Full Tr, Full Rf products about the posthuman body and an exhibition at the end
of the given duration. There will be 4 works of installations, 1 work of multi-channel audio
installation, 1 work of multi-channel typographic video installation, which have their conceptual
inspirations and contextual roots from the basic principle texts of theorists and philosophers
mentioned before. These reference pieces of texts will accompany the works as if their explanations
in the same space. (The attached reference pieces of texts coded by numbers can be seen at the end
of this file.)
1) L. H. S. F. S. G. T. B.
The work is connected to
01 / Prometheus as Performer: Towards a Posthumanist Culture? by Ihab Hassan
03 / The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence by Ray Kurzweil
05 / A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway
06 / Flesh Machine: Cyborgs, Designer Babies, and New Eugenic Consciousness by Critical Art
Ensemble
17 / Clone Story by Jean Baudrillard
The work consists of 1:1 scale injection moulded high gloss transparent acrylic model of a 3d human
character (like Vitruvian man of Leonardo, but a bald one) and a high gloss transparent 3 mt x 4.5 mt
x 0.04 mt plexiglass panel; integrated each other. The man stands still and the panel is located like
slitting the man with an angle from his head to his penis vertically. The body seems to be cut into
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two, the half is inside the glass the other half is outside if transparent surfaces can make insideoutside defined.
The work is thinking about past, present and future; the human is in a transition period as
conceptualized in the notion of posthuman. He / she is at a threshold but not aware of it because of
the speededization of ordinary life and passing through a invisible door, looking behind of a invisible
window he /she slowed down and frosted in a blackout of consciousness or in a catatonia.
(The attached sketch of the work can be seen at the end of this file.)
2) Right to choose
The work is connected to
02 / How We Became Posthuman Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics by N.
Katherine Hayles
09 / Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence by Hans Moravec
10 / The Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky
The work consists of high gloss transparent plexiglass 1 mt x 1mt x 1mt cube standing on a 1 mt x
1mt x 1mt white mdf cube , 125 pieces of 1:1 scale injection moulded high gloss transparent acrylic
model of a typical human hand overlapped in 5 x 5 x 5 3d matrix inside of the cube, a stainless steel
robotic hand taken from a game machine of select & win toys.
The work is thinking about the transhumanist view or “the common good” advises and “murmurs” us
to refresh, update our bodies like our hi-tech devices that we consume repeteadly in the name of
living long, anti-aging, aesthetic surgeries and asking “Are these advices murmured us for us to live in
a heaven like utopia or is it all about money, money, money?”
(The attached sketch of the work can be seen at the end of this file.)
3) Un contratto (a small step for man, a giant leap for mankind)
The work is connected to
06 / Flesh Machine: Cyborgs, Designer Babies, and New Eugenic Consciousness by Critical Art
Ensemble
09 / Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence by Hans Moravec
10 / The Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky
The work consists of 1 piece of high gloss transparent plexiglass 0.5 mt x 0.5 mt x 1 m prism with a
linear hole on it, 1 piece of high gloss white laquered mdf 0.5 mt x 0.5 mt x 1 m prism with a pen
hole on it, the bulk of a4 papers with a text on, a video-camera hanged on a wall.
The work is thinking about the transhumanist view’s advice of immortality and asking about how the
body can be immortal or reborned in an unknown future, in an unknown form; the frosting of body
for future is fantastic or realistic in the context of law & medicine.
A fiction-contract consisting a main idea of “i, with my free will, open conscious, without any
oppression, am signing this contract with my signature for a reborn process in the future and
whatever the circumstances will be, i will never be complaning of anything or anybody.” This contract
are ready-written on the a4 papers on the white prism, if desired the visitor of the exhibition will
press the recording button of the camera before signing the contract and then drop the paper in
plexiglass prism.
(The attached sketch of the work can be seen at the end of this file.)
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4) You may put on the mask and look at yourself in the mirror
The work is connected to
12 / Xerox and Infinity by Jean Baudrillard
13 / Bodies - Cities, Places Through the Body by Elizabeth Grosz
14 / Warped Space by Anthony Vidler
The work consists of 1 piece of unframed 0.7 mt x 1.2 mt vertical mirror, 1 piece of 1:1 scale injection
moulded high gloss transparent acrylic model of a typical human face emptied as a mask, 4 pieces of
1 mt, 1.5 mt, 2 mt, 2.5 mt transparent plastic ropes.
The mirror and the mask are hanged on a high gloss white laquered wall, linked each other with the
ropes. As mentioned in the title of the work, the visitor may put on the mask and look at him/herself
in the mirror. The reflecting mirror is already connected to the mask, just seeing self on the mirror or
with a mask in the mirror within a defined distance of invisible connection ropes, the visitor may get
an idea of the text pieces connected to this work.
(The attached sketch of the work can be seen at the end of this file.)
5) Audio and typographic video installations
These installations are audio-visual presentations of the texts pieces that works connected to.
According to the exhibition space’s volume, at various points and number of audio installations of
reading of these texts from different voices of different mother language countries’ people and
printed, handwritten, modified versions of these texts will be installed and reflected on the surfaces
of the space.
The reference pieces of texts coded by numbers:
01 / Prometheus as Performer: Towards a Posthumanist Culture? by Ihab Hassan
“ We need first to understand the human form – including human desire and all its external
representations – may be changing radically, and thus must be re-visioned. We need to understand
five hundred years of humanism may be coming to an end as humanism transforms itself into
something we must helplessly call post-humanism.”
02 / How We Became Posthuman Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics by N.
Katherine Hayles
“Posthuman point of view (suggestive rather than prescriptive):
1. "the posthuman view privileges informational pattern over material instantiation, so that
embodiment in a biological substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an
inevitability of life" ;
2. "the posthuman view considers consciousness, regarded as the seat of human identity in the
Western tradition long before Descartes thought he was a mind thinking, as an
epiphenomenon, as an evolutionary upstart trying to claim that it is the whole show when in
actuality it is only a minor sideshow" ;
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3. "the posthuman view thinks of the body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate,
so that extending or replacing the body with other prostheses becomes a continuation of a
process that began before we were born" ;
4. "the posthuman view configures human being so that it can be seamlessly articulated with
intelligent machines".”
03 / The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence by Ray Kurzweil


2049
The distinction between virtual reality and "real" reality becomes confounded as foglets
come into common use, allowing immediate assembly or disassembly of all sorts of physical
objects.
2099
Humans and machines merge together in the physical and mental realms. Cybernetic brain
implants enable humans to fuse their minds with A.I.s. “
05 / A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway
“ Simultaneously material and ideological, the dichotomies may be expressed in the following chart
of transitions from the comfortable old hierarchical dominations to the scary new networks I have
called the informatics of domination:
Representation
Bourgeois novel, realism
Organism
Depth, integrity
Heat
Biology as clinical practice
Physiology
Small group
Perfection
Eugenics
Decadence, Magic Mountain
Hygiene
Microbiology, tuberculosis
Organic division of labour
Functional specialization
Reproduction
Organic sex role specialization
Bioogical determinism
Community ecology
Racial chain of being
Scientific management in
home/factory
Family/Market/Factory
Family wage
Public/Private
Simulation
Science fiction, postmodernism
Biotic Component
Surface, boundary
Noise
Biology as inscription
Communications engineering
Subsystem
Optimization
Population Control
Obsolescence, Future Shock
Stress Management
Immunology, AIDS
Ergonomics/cybernetics of labour
Modular construction
Replication
Optimal genetic strategies
Evolutionary inertia, constraints
Ecosystem
Neo-imperialism, United Nations
humanism
Global factory/Electronid cottage
Women in the Integrated Circuit
Comparable worth
Cyborg citizenship
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Nature/Culture
Co-operation
Freud
Sex
labour
Mind
Second World War
White Capitalist Patriarchy
fields of difference
Communicatins enhancemenet
Lacan
Genetic engineering
Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Star Wars
Informatics of Domination ”
06 / Flesh Machine: Cyborgs, Designer Babies, and New Eugenic Consciousness by Critical Art
Ensemble
“ The virtual body is a body of great potential. On this body we can reinscribe ourselves using
whatever coding system we desire. We can try on new body configurations. We can experiment with
immortality by going places and doing things that would be impossible in the physical world. For the
virtual body, nothing is fixed and everything is possible.
With the virtual body came its fascist sibling, the data body—a much more highly developed virtual
form, and one that exists in complete service to the corporate and police state. The data body is the
total collection of files connected to an individual. The data body has always existed in an immature
form since the dawn of civilization. ”
09 / Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence by Hans Moravec
“ To illustrate, he invents a fantasy scenario in which a robot surgeon purees the human brain in a
kind of cranial liposuction, reading the information in each molecular layer as it is stripped away and
transferring the information into a computer. At the end of the operation, the cranial cavity is empty,
and the patient, now inhabiting the metallic body of the computer, wakens to find his consciousness
exactly the same as it was before. “
10 / The Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky
“ The most important thing for each person is the data, and the programs in the data that are in the
brain. And some day you will be able take all that data, and put it on a little diski and store it for a
thousand years, and then turn it on again and you will be alive in the fourth millenium or the fifth
millenium. ”
12 / Xerox and Infinity by Jean Baudrillard
“ Am I a man or a machine? There is no ambiguity in the traditional relationship between man and
machine: the worker is always, in a way, a stranger to the machine he operates, and alienated by it.
But at least he retains the precious status of alienated man. The new technologies, with their new
machines, new images and interactive screens, do not alienate me. Rather, they form an integrated
circuit with me. Video screens, televisions, computers and Minitels resemble nothing so much as
contact lenses in that they are so many transparent prostheses, integrated into the body to the point
of being almost part of its genetic make-up: they are like pacemakers -- or like Philip K. Dick's
"papula", a tiny implant, grafted onto the body at birth as a "free gift", which serves the organism as
an alarm signal. All our relationships with networks and screens, whether willed or not, are of this
order. Their structure is one of subordination, not of alienation -- the structure of the integrated
circuit. Man or machine? Impossible to tell. “
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13 / Bodies - Cities, Places Through the Body by Elizabeth Grosz
“ By body i understand a concrete, material, animate organization of flesh, nerves, muscles, and
skeleton structure which are given a unity, cohesiveness, and organization only through their physical
and social inscription as the surface and raw materials of an integrated and cohesive totality. THA
body is , so to speak, organically / biologically / naturally “incomplete”; it is indeterminate,
amorphous, a series of uncoordinated potentialities … a body which thereby defines the limits of
experience and subjectivitiy … making the body a meaningful, ”readable”, depth-entity, and its
production and development … including the coordination and integration of its bodily functions “
14 / Warped Space by Anthony Vidler
“ … the peculiar kind of subject, the I, as Lacan would have it, that has been unconsciously
constructed by its confrontation with a “mirror” entirely different… this new mirror, which is more of
a screen than a reflective surface, is, I believe, in the process of creating an imago…
It reflects and produces a stage at once of refusal – a refusal of reflection, of transparency, of
extension – and of resignation… ”
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