Human Enhancement Aesthetics

Of all the new media impacting the arts, the media of human enhancement may be receiving the most socio-political attention but the least artistic enthusiasm. Recently there has been an increase in the number of formal discussions of human enhancement technologies amongst artists, designers and curators. In 2008, “Human Enhancement Technologies: The Role of Art and Design” spearheaded social and ethical implication of enhancement technologies. In 2009, “Human Enhancement & Nanotechnology Conference” and FACT’s “Human Futures” programme breached a gap in science and art with discussions of aesthetics norms and ethics. Nonetheless, the elements of aesthetics in engaging human enhancement were of less consequence.

The importance of emerging technologies of enhancement for artmaking awaits a field to challenge the traditional role of aesthetic judgment. Bringing aesthetics into discussions where nano-bio-info-cogno converging technologies are evident gives an artistic voice to the science of human enhancement and urges an aesthetic role in human futures.

Framing human enhancement morphology into categories of emerging and exploratory helps to provide a glimpse of what artists’ media might be. Emerging media range from immersive virtual personas (avatar) to machine cyborg in adjusting physiological attributes. The exploratory media radically change the body’s form, alter its lifespan, and enhance cognitive processes (transhuman/posthuman). This emerging/exploratory scope of design engineering includes synthetic and natural environments and suggests bio-nano bodily design with enhanced info-cogno/neuro processing power.