Posthuman Fun Palace
Official Companion Guide 2066-2067 Timothy Evans Unit 15 Thesis 2017
“WE ARE FREE TO SPLASH AROUND IN THE FUNHOUSE OF FORMS” A. CODRESCU
Fig. 1 Visualisation of the Fun Palace 21st June 2067
It is the aim of this guide to be a technical companion in the person of the author, who knows intimately the places and people he writes, and is able to communicate this knowledge and affection to his readers. It is hoped that the text and graphics will aid them in their preparations and travels through the Fun Palace
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Fig. 2 Map of the Fun Palace
3 Access to the Fun Palace f The Tumultuous path orientation
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THE BODY Heart Stopping Maternity Ward Shower Bath of the Patriarchs Dismemberment Creation Clinic Haptic Visual Auditorium Flight Grounding Centre Re-Charge The deaf Soundscape Aero Dynamics Testing Frenzied Spa
THE MIND
5 NanoBot Synchronisation M The Blind Cinema . Identity Re-Creator z Decentralised neural mapping x Conciousness Backup
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THE SPACES Mesmeric Weather Station Art Studios Communication Point Destruction Zone Relative Time control Emergency Dispatch
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A Blissful Paradise
Sparkling with celebration This multi-part guide is a transformative companion to becoming a posthuman as you journey through the Posthuman Peninsula Fun Palace. It considers both physiological and psychological factors towards the amalgamation of your anatomy and cognition into the future city. With the goal of post humanism to become an entirely unique experience based around our individual needs and desires, this paper will be a unique perspective of my own method and progression through the process. No single volume would be able to detail every matter of the posthuman integration into the Fun Palace. This guide is to be used with the Posthuman Timeline, Historic Grounding and Interactive Online Guide to best set the scene and develop an immersive understanding of the project. The Fun Palace can be manipulated in many ways, and while the use of this guide is not required, it will allow you to integrate fully with all the features and functions within the feedback based environment. Each basis for integration is covered within a separate lesson plan, although I have indicated an order to the process, there is no definitive order in which to integrate yourself. Each lesson will include a summary between the architectural links previously taken and then the subject of the guide will follow. As this guide is my personal exploration through the fun palace, it is meant to inform you of possible choices that can be made within the park, it is not an exhaustive list of procedures. Each section within the companion will provide a brief description of the lesson, followed by different decisions that can be made. Each section will be finished my adaptation and the reason behind my choices. The guide has been written in an order that I have chosen to carry out my augmentation, although it is possible to choose any order to create more unique and interesting creations.
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Fig. 3 Visualisation of Neural Data Flows in the Fun Palace
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CONTENTS 1.
THE BODY PART A: DEFINING YOUR POSTHUMAN SUBJECT PART B: POSTHUMAN TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS PART C: POSTHUMAN FORMS IN SCIENCE FICTION PART D: POSTHUMAN FORMS IN THE FUN PALACE PART E: POSTHUMAN NEED FOR DADA
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THE MIND PART A: DEFINING YOUR POSTHUMAN MIND??? PART B: UNDERSTANDING YOUR COGNITIVE ATTACHMENT PART C: POSTHUMAN MINDS IN SCIENCE FICTION PART D: POSTHUMAN FORMS IN THE FUN PALACE PART E: DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN HUMAN/A.I. MINDS
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THE SPACES PART A: CYBERNETIC ARCHITECTURE PART B: DEVELOPING THE ENVIRONMENT PART C: POSTHUMAN ENVIRONMENTS IN SCIENCE FICTION PART D: ENVIRONMENTS IN THE FUN PALACE
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COLLABORATION IN THE FUN PALACE
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DESTRUCTION IN THE FUN PALACE
6. CONCLUSION
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Fig. 4 Posthuman Base Shell
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1.0 The Body
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A DEFINING YOUR POSTHUMAN SUBJECT
Vitruvian Man
Modulor Man
How to choose your posthuman form: Bored of the mundane? You are about to experience a full mind and body re-vitalisation through the transfigurative journey of a lifetime. There are many ways to enter the Fun Palace and you can be at any point of your transformation. If you are entering from the base human form, you should be aware that you are entering into a paradise of metamorphosis and evolution, where you will become unified with the environment and those around you. You can choose the extent to which you integrate yourself, although to get maximum cognitive integration a full cognitive transference to a synthetic wet computing brain is required. To get started with designing your body, you need an idea of what you enjoy, why not follow the Dada’s method of fun and reject logic, reason and desire. The goal is to create an object, performance or space that’s sole purpose is to amuse, they can be created either individually or as a community. Even though the Fun Palace has room for individual expression, a strong community bond can be built by collaborative working. It also allows for the creation of unusual and interesting spaces that are formed at the intersections between the individual’s creations. To experience the true Dada ideal, your creation should add a layer of irony or twist and may use an already constructed item.
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Fig. 5 Posthuman Proportions
One option is to develop your own body first and then design your environment around yourself. This method should come naturally to all humans and animals, as it has been the standard for design until now. The ability to change your body has, until now, been limited by additions of clothing, tattoos or artificial limbs/prosthetics. Constrained by the ratio’s of an outdated human flesh and skeleton. Figure 1. Demonstrates the evolutionary step made possible by the Fun Palace into a hybrid bio-mechanical form which will gradually replace your skeleton with a specially engineered, strong and flexible super-polymer, able to morph into any shape on command.
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For those who are currently between the transitions of human and posthuman, the Fun Palace Exoskeleton is a three-dimensionally fabricated shell which can re-purpose your body’s structure into a fully integrated form, fully adaptable to all natures, environments and architectures. With a direct neural link to your meta-brain its triangulated nano-structure will adapt itself at will within the Fun Palace to create amusement in relation to your surroundings. Which is essential for collaborative research and design in the Fun Palace. See Section 5 for more information. Until now networking has needed to be done via a peer to peer or human to human contact, entering the Fun Palace opens up a mesh connection between all objects and entities, allowing for full control and feedback over thoughts and negotiations. Mesh connections fall in line with the third wave of cybernetic theory, and remove the idea of a single relay between yourself and the environment, every part of system becomes its own node within the network both influencing and being influenced by all other parts of the network. Alternatively the adoption of advanced manufacturing and terraforming processes allows us for the first time to create interesting spaces and then design a body around the ergonomics of the space. This will lead to a large number of users with bodies that do not follow any of the conventional proportions of humans, however these new forms can be designed to overcome our current limitations. For example integrating with a continually changing fluid architecture would require a body that has the ability to adapt itself in sync, with rapid frequency.
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Fig. 4 Posthuman Base Shell
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“A CYBORG IS ... A HYBRID OF MACHINE AND ORGANISM, A CREATURE OF SOCIAL REALITY” HARAWAY (1985)
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B POSTHUMAN TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS Once you have chosen the path of transition you wish to follow you can use this section to progress through the technological adaptations. As suggested before the speed and order of transition can be carried out in any preferred way. With either the minimal transhuman adaptions to connect your cognitive thought to the constructive process of nanobots within the feedback environment. Or it is possible for complete cognitive transference into a form able to fully integrate as part of the environment.
Human – Posthuman Modular process: A journey through the Fun Palace will augment your body in a modular form as you interact with the environment, should you enjoy the water, the route you take will gradually submerge you further and further into the water starting with the extension of your feet into large slip resistant fins, followed by hydrophobic skin tattoo’s to synthetic limb replacement to allow easy transitions through water with a reduced drag coefficient. To gain full control of your pre-posthuman mortality you should start with the simple surgical implementation of a neural lace, a simple interface to become apart of the Fun Palace. Creating a high speed link between your brain, mind and the park, you remove the limitations of manual intervention and the reliance on a moral conscience to guide your path. Design first, process later. The simple device creates real neurological links to the pathways in your brain, acting as a universal translator between all things biological, mechanical and synthetic. Following the minor procedure you can literally make the Fun Palace your oyster, with unprecedented access to the inner workings of
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the palace. Learning to control this device takes time but will allow you to manipulate the nanobots within the park to construct objects and architectures. Following this, your modular adaptation can come to life. The upgrades are diverse and are all uniquely designed in the image of your cognition. Starting from basic biomechanical tattoos which can evolve your skin into a highly reactive membrane that withstands extreme temperatures and creates illuminating performances. To synthetic limb replacement with nano restructuring, to adapt parts of your body continually within responsive architecture. Bodly attachments need not be constrained within the human figure, you can extend and manipulate your body beyond the look of anything ‘normal’, as the park will simply adapt to your new proportions. One of the big leaps into post-humanism is the interchangeability of sexuality. The posthuman adaptation is gender neutral, however you have the choice to express yourself through any physical manifestation. It is essential to use the process of Dada to experience everything within the Fun Palace, Use it as a soundtrack to experimenting with modular expansion, in the way you open up the potentials of virtual reality and cyborg-being, by creating your own science fiction narrative. a Dada will not dwell on excessive wastage, but embellish the art of performance.
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Posthuman Complete Synthetic Upload: Within the Fun Palace, why settle for the slow and reverible process of human adaptation? Become a true posthuman and dive into a new you. The art of modification is old, the Fun Palace allows for true self expression and evolution by true synthetic upload. Simply request the deluxe upgrade patch and delve into the path of instantaneous adaptability and remove the burden of time. This simple patch is applied to the skin, and once a neural pathway is created between your cognition and the Paradise of Fun, you will feel growing pains dissolve as you join the collective. Emanating from the patch, a new nano polymer will replace the brittle structure of bones, trianulating your structure into an immensely strong delicacy, that can change shape, colour and material properties at the request of your brain. It is at this point you should feel the flood of data flows throughout your hybrotic limbs as millions of neural connections are made. Once complete, you form the basic posthuman advertised here, it is from now that you simply imagine your shape and look then the nano polymer will instantly set about changing your shell. Can’t reach the top cupboard? Or need to move house? Simply grow or add further limbs, why not add your own wardrobe to keep your past with you? Complete cognitive transference into a fully synthetic form is a one way trip and will not allow for the habitation of your mind within a human form again, although once part of the network stepping backwards in technological form will not be worth considering.
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C POSTHUMAN FORMS IN SCIENCE FICTION
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Using Science Fiction for Inspiration: Designing your posthuman form using science fiction references will allow you critically implement designs and ideas created using abstracted technologies that can now be replicated within the Fun Palace, you can then physically inhabit yours and others creations. Science and science fiction would imagine the body only as a container for the mind and consciousness, a simple data relay, this is the same idea represented in the stories Westworld, Neuromancer and the Matrix. However it is important to distinguish that the Fun palace is immersion in the real rather than simply the virtual. The use of a physical dimension is paramount to enforce the erasure of embodiment. �Minds require bodies, and human thought,� Jean-Francois Lyotard (2000), the experience through a virtual fabrication is still only possible through embodiment. Why not design your body in the way of one of the first posthumans, the Lawnmower Man, connecting between physical and hyper space.
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1. Ex Machina - Film Scene 2. Neuromancer - Cover Art 3. Lucy - Film Scene 4. Elysium - Cover Art 5. Ghost in The Shell 2017 - Pre Production 6. Ghost in The Shell 2017 - Character Art 7. Stelarc - Multi-Arm 8. The Lawnmower Man 1992 - Film Scene 9. Ghost in The Shell 2017 - Film Scene 10. Ghost in The Shell 1995 11. Transcendance - Cover Art 12. Star Trek - Film Scene 13. host in The Shell - albert Urmanov Art
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D POSTHUMAN FORMS IN THE FUN PALACE
Understanding the Forms of Other Users: The Fun Palace is a place like no other every body, mind, entity and space is unique, self-indulgent and interconnected. Referencing from each other, everything is augmented slightly in succession in an attempt to improve or adapt itself to the different ecosystems that span the paradise. Users are free to create their own bodies and personalities and the accompanying architectures without need for reason, they are created solely for the purpose of fulfilling a desire. The pace of time through the landscape is fragmented, to create different speeds according to the momentum of architectures. For example it is possible to create an energetic atmosphere through the construction of a quickly alternating agility park, where the body is required to reconstitute itself in rapid succession to squeeze through the eye of a needle and then leap across a lake. The body is not required to be singular, it is possible to wake into numerous bodies from either your closet or someone else’s and one of your creation or one of another. Changing your forms jettisons familiarity, opening the exhilaration of learning to walk again, by removing an aching shoe. Sleeping would allow you to awaken in a body designed from your dreams in a place unfamiliar to you, creating a rush of sensations in re-discovering yourself.
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Grid of Possible Forms
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2.0 The Mind
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A DEFINING YOUR POSTHUMAN MIND Stepping out of the constrained human form plays a vital part on redefining your capabilities, through the physical use of brain adaptations or bio-mechanical computing cells your cognition or mind will become infinitely expandable. Why is this necessary though? Within the park your brain is no longer required to simply connect to your own limbs to influence your surroundings, your mind becomes the central controller of a swarm intelligence that creates millions of connections with the existing environment and the nanobots which will be in charge of changing or constructing elements. This isn’t capable by the antiquated human brain which although it can make tens of thousands of two way connections with neurons and receptors, it cannot transfer high bitrate data. By retaining your original brain and merging with the network through the use of a neural lace, you can open up a connection to an external process which would translate your desires into actions with the park. Therefore you can integrate yourself and also gain a haptic response from the architecture as you explore the grounds. Although for maximum exhilaration, a bio-mechanical mind would allow you to fully immerse yourself and create emotional connections between all of the entities. This allows for a performance within your mind as well as the Fun Palace. The audience is everything and everyone from architectures to posthumans to that atomic bonds between each of the elements.
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Human Neural Map
Posthuman Neural Map
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B UNDERSTANDING YOUR COGNITIVE ATTACHMENT
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How to Use Your Neural Lace: It is important to know that within the Fun Palace, human thoughts are no longer as simple and fragmented as before. Your brain will recall small amounts of information and patch them together making a new truth. With the addition of a cognitive enhancement device like the neural lace or other bio-mechanical integrations, memories are combined with a mass of data from the network. This creates hyper realistic thoughts and allows you to enter a daydream state and use your imagination to test out ideas within the space. It is worth considering however, that this can remove the inaccuracies that the human brain may encounter which occasionally led to miraculous discoveries or fractured environments that proved to me more useful than logic. As a dada it may be necessary to reject the advanced accuracies of this technology and train your new mind to piece together the fractured memories transferred from your human brain with the newly created memories. To merge the partial patterns from the brain into the vivid landscape.
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C POSTHUMAN MINDS IN SCIENCE FICTION
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A blockbuster film that highlights how far it may be possible to expand your mind is Transcendence, featuring Johnny Depp, once your mind becomes part of the digital network and has the ability to share its processing capabilities, there is no limit to the amount of processing power you can create. Alternatively we can consider the culture series by Ian Banks which features ‘Mind’s’ that are hyper-intelligent machines originally created by biological lifeforms which have evolved and re-designed themselves to maximise on their own capabilities. Other films to consider for developing advanced cognitive collections include, Star Trek with the Borg Collective, Edge of Tomorrow with mimics who work as a single organism to ‘out think’ human kind, or Avatar with the Na’vi people who join together their cognition with nature. 1. Posthuman The Movie 2013- Film Scene 2. Star Trek: Borg Collective - Film Scene 3. Avatar - Film Scene 4. Edge of Tomorrow - Film Scene 5. Edge of Tomorrow - Film Scene
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D POSTHUMAN MINDS IN THE FUN PALACE
There is no limit to your cognitive abilities. Within our post-scarcity landscape, the ability to expand on your brains processing power is almost infinite. Extensive mind alterations among the collection of users allows for unique and developing communications between each other. With this posthuman enhancement you are now able to create increasingly complex and unusual architectures, utilising processing power to both design the superstructure and manage the recurring calculations from user interactions and dynamic evolutions.
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E DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN HUMAN/A.I. MINDS
How to make a distinction: Returning to the storey behind the culture by Ian Banks, we have reached the point where human brilliance is no longer the forefront of advanced intelligence. Now that we are the pets of reality we can no longer distinguish ourselves as superior intellects. This has however reduced the pressure on posthumans within the post-scarcity world, we are free to explore, discover and create within the Fun Palace. We can develop our own imaginations and expand on the desires that we have evolved to love.
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“WHO WANTS A WORLD WHERE THE GUARANTEE OF FREEDOM FROM STARVATION MEANS THE RISK OF DEATH FROM BOREDOM” R. VANEIGEM
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3.0 The Spaces
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A CYBERNETIC ARCHITECTURE
How to develop your own posthuman architecture: If you have already followed the section on choosing your posthuman form, then you are now ready to design your personalised architecture within the Fun Palace. Architecture within the park is no longer required to fulfil the same uses as human buildings, because of the different needs of posthumans. As discussed in section 1, you can either design your architecture around your posthuman form, or you can start with the architecture and then choose your form later. You will need to be part of the network to activate the nanobots and instruct them to transfigure your architecture live.
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Close Up of Fun Palace
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B DEVELOPING THE ENVIRONMENT
As with the architecture, evolving the environment is linked in with experience of the Fun Palace. It is possible to inhabit any type of environment by adapting your posthuman form. Although the weather is not fully controllable, everything within reaching distance can be transfigured to allow your form to thrive. As discussed before, it is possible to create a fully submerged environment, accessible by only specifically adapted bodies. The clouds become the vaulted ceiling in the children’s sand pit. The Fun Palace is “constituted through dense networks of interwoven sociological processes that are simultaneously human, physical, discursive, cultural, material, and organic” Erik Swyngedouw (2013: 163) As with every revolution, the past use of buildings is no longer maintained, the rapid expanse of densely populated residential forests are now bare and half furnished. Communities are no longer positioned based on the wage you earn. It is time to bring in the artists and recycle these empty shells.
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C POSTHUMAN ENVIRONMENTS IN SCIENCE FICTION
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Taking inspiration to develop your personal Fun Palace can be appropriated from science fiction stories and films, utilizing the new technologies to imitate the scenes set out. The park creates an opportunity to live as if you were within the culture by Iian M Banks, hosted on an entirety artificial landscape that has been fabricated to imitate all parts of the earth and allow all users to live out every day without any of the negative aspects of human life. Described in the book as Space Socialism, it’s biological life forms can have access to anything they desire within a utopic landscape, and therefore there is little need for laws. The Culture along with other post-scarcity stories have been idealised for a very long time, the Fun Palace is one of the first test-beds to attempt to blend this into society. The environment requires very little human labour to maintain, as the use of machines and strong artificial intelligence creates a self-sustaining ecosystem. Time in the Fun Palace, therefore becomes irrelevant as the play doesn’t have to be stopped in order to work. The work becomes the product of your creativity and what you add to the spaces. 1. Balde Runner 1982 - Film Scene 2. Metropolis 1927 - Film Scene 3. AKIRA 1988 - Film Scene 4. Metropolis 1927 - Film Scene 5 Tomorrowland 2015 - Film Scene
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D ENVIRONMENTS IN THE FUN PALACE
Within this paradise, it should be important to define the difference between the cybernetic architecture and environments. It can be hard to see the borders between both as there is no specific distinction between them, as the can both be manipulated so far beyond their original programme. The environment and architecture are both interchangeable, although we can consider the environment as the framework of the palace. It is both built and natural, growing and augmenting just as much as the user. It is the container for the architecture, sharing the pallet of materials and activity. The environment has become technological, ecological, cultural and urban. It has become a non-human agent, acting with the same intellect of its inhabitants. It displays, narrates and visualises the sights, tastes and smells from all of the intersections of architectures, creating an exuberant atmosphere suitable to the mood.
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4.0 Collaboration
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A COLLABORATION IN THE FUN PALACE The fun palace takes on the role of developing a collaborative art studio that recycles the old spaces and allows multiple users to assist in creating both functional and aesthetic creations that intend to create amusement amongst the visitors. This posthuman revolution follows in the footsteps of many post war art movements, by occupying the abandoned buildings that are between uses following the transition between economic climates. Like In the downfall of the last industrial revolution that allowed artists and architects to move into the abandoned warehouses, which fuelled new post-industrial aesthetics. The role of open-sourced design plays a key part in the foundation of the fun palace, although not essential, collaboration can generate a mesh of hybrid spaces, creating unique areas between artist’s zones. The Fun Palace takes on this responsibility for the posthuman revolution, with posthumans favouring very different ideals and with alternative forms, new buildings and environments are required to fulfil this change. As with the postwar buildings being left empty, large generic tower blocks are left empty as parts of the city are now inhabited based on peoples interests and culture as opposed to financial gain.
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5.0 Destruction
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A DESTRUCTION IN THE FUN PALACE With the ability to create and interact with anything within the Fun Palace, it is also essential to live the Dada lifestyle and allow the destruction of forms to become part of the art. The ability to instantly create, save and recall your customised environment means that you aren’t required to retain the physical model, simply save the exact phase and design of your project into the virtual library and simply recall the save file, should you wish to use it again. The designs can be fully accessed within a virtual void until the nanobots are instructed to fabricate the model like for like again. This tool allows you to fabricate art in the same way that the Dada did back in the 1920’s, for them it was just as much about creating new art as it was about destroying it, many of the original creators ordered there art to be destroyed as part of their ideals, however the writers and publishers wanted the movement to grow and spread and so kept the majority of the art. Within the park, the ability to create anything leaves a question of what becomes desirable with art. Time sensitive pieces may be the answer to this and the act of physically destroying parts of your creations will help to create new spaces that other users can then use to inhabit the spaces, creating hybrid dimensions of space.
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6.0 Conclusion
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A CONCLUSION
If you have followed this companion through and completed every section then you should now be fully integrated with the Fun Palace, your thoughts, feelings and creativity should be influencing the surfaces, volumes and spaces. You should know that this is not the end of your adventure through the kinetic paths but simply the beginning of a post-lifetime of joys and desire within a utopic setting. Keeping with the hints provided by the Dadaist community, you can visit the Fun Palace at any time for any duration as a retreat from the pressures built up by the efficiencies offered by life as a posthuman. The park becomes a corrective centre to let loose and reject the logic and rationality brought by day to day life, providing a simple framework without limits on the body, mind or spaces. Using these tools either singularly or collaboratively, you are able to continue to develop and work on your own cognitive freedom within a simultaneously fractured and wholesome paradise. The Fun Palace contains everything you need to become, enjoy and maintain a posthuman mentality, through a series of clinics, parks and factories. Everyone is welcome. The park provides a sense of exclusivity through open sourced collaboration that is and will be infinitely expandable, through a distributed mesh network of all life forms, entities and environments. Mother Nature herself becomes a part of the collaboration, working towards the ultimate performance of a collective creation.
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“THE BODY CAN BE ANY NUMBER OF BODIES THAT A DADAIST KEEPS IN HERM OWN CLOSET OR BORROWS FROM OTHERS” A. CODRESCU (2009)
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