“Since the 1980s, I have focused on human-technology integration and the relationship between arts/design and science. My theoretical activity is concerned with human enhancement and the methods for elevating human capabilities through the media of AGI, nanomedicine and biotechnology, and within the artistic practices of visual, narrative, and biological arts and toward the emergence of new media/methods.” Natasha’s CV is located here: http://www.natasha.cc/cv.htm

Natasha is a new media design theorist and university lecturer. She is a PhD researcher University of Plymouth, Faculty of Arts, School of Art and Media; holds a MPhil, University of Plymouth, Faculty of Technology, School of Communications, Computers and Electronics; an MSc, University of Houston, Future Studies, Social Sciences and Humanities; a BFA, University of Memphis, Painting, Sculpture and Printmaking; was filmmaker-in-residence, University of Colorado; and holds Certificates in Nutrition and Sports Training, American Muscle & Fitness Association.
Natasha’s research concerns the aesthetics of human enhancement and radical life extension, with a focus on sciences and technologies of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive and neuro sciences (NBIC). Her conceptual future human design ―Primo Posthuman‖ has been featured in Wired, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire, The New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, Net Business, Teleopolis, and Village Voice. She has appeared in over twenty-four televised documentaries on the future and culture, and has exhibited media artworks at National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Brooks Memorial Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art, Women In Video, Telluride Film Festival, and United States Film Festival and recently “Evolution Haute Couture: Art and Science in the Post-Biological Age”. Natasha has been the recipient of several awards: First Place Award at Brooks Memorial Museum, Special Recognition at Women in Video, and Best Graduate Student Project of 2005 for her “Futures Podcast Series: at the University of Houston, Future Studies program.
Natasha is a proponent human rights and ethical means for human enhancement, and is published in Artifact, Technoetic Arts, Nanotechnology Perceptions, Annual Workshop on Geoethical Nanotechnology, Death And Anti-Death. She has a bi-monthly column in Nanotechnology Now, is a Guest Editor of The Global Spiral academic journal and on the Editorial Board of International Journal of Green Nanotechnology. Natasha authored Create / Recreate: the 3rd Millennial Culture on the emerging cybernetic culture and the future of humanism and the arts and sciences. She co-authored One on One Fitness, a guide to nutrition and aerobic and anaerobic exercise for women.

TRANSHUMANISM MEETS DESIGN

Humanity+ and Parsons Present Conference Exploring the Role of Design in Transcending and Transforming Human Potential

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May 14–15, 2011, at Parsons The New School for Design

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 4, 2011 (New York, NY) – Humanity+, the world’s leading nonprofit organization advocating the ethical use of technology to expand human capabilities, announces its first conference in partnership with Parsons The New School for Design, a leading art and design school in New York City dedicated to the advancement of design thinking and education. Transhumanism Meets Design explores the role of design in transcending and transforming human potential, and will take place at The New School May 14–15, 2011. This groundbreaking conference features lectures and panels that bring together and explore the nexus of emerging technology, transdisciplinary design, culture, media theory, and biotechnology.

Transhumanism aims to elevate the human condition. Design is a process for problem solving. At Transhumanism Meets Design, these two domains will join forces as artists, designers, scientists, technologies, ethicists and philosophers explore our human future, ask questions, construct ideas, and peer over the edge into the unknown.

“Transhumanist aesthetics opens up the discussion on how we might expand persons and design new kinds of existence,” said Natasha Vita-More, vice chair of Humanity+, who co-chairs the conference with Ed Keller, associate dean of Distributed Learning and Technology at Parsons. “Recognizing that the body could be the next frontier, we are challenging designers to use the research tools developed to enhance products to engage and extend the human body,” said Keller.

• Saturday opens with “Designing Innovations” and “Radical Expressions” focusing on architecture, designing minds, life extension, designing death, and the ethics of human enhancement. The special panel “Out There – Self Organization” will look at “Non-Human Minds”. The afternoon presents “In Here – Systems of Movement”, and finishes the day off with a series of Lightning Talks.

• Sunday starts off with Lightning Talks, followed by presentations on “Design Essential – Evolving Techne” covering immersive design, human enhancement and architectural inventions. The afternoon session winds up the conference with “Design Unlimited – Animated Thinking”, with talks covering minds and societies, the art of forgetting, and distributed creativity.

For a full list of confirmed speakers and additional information about the conference, please visit the conference website: http://humanityplus.org/conferences/parsons.

To register. please visit the EventBrite page: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1089760503

Transhumanism Meets Design is one of the highlights of Parsons Festival 2011, which takes place May 7–23 and features exhibitions, interactive installations, and programs that showcase the full range of art and design thinking at Parsons. For more information, please visit www.newschool.edu/parsonsfestival.

Humanity+ is an international nonprofit membership organization which advocates the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities. Humanity+ supports the development of and access to new technologies that enable everyone to enjoy better minds, better bodies and better lives. In other words, Humanity+ wants people to be better than well. For more information please visit humanityplus.org.

Parsons The New School for Design is a global leader in art and design education. Based in New York City but active around the world, the school offers undergraduate and graduate programs in the full spectrum of design disciplines. An integral part of The New School, Parsons builds on the university’s legacy of progressive ideals, scholarship, and pedagogy. Parsons graduates are leaders in their respective fields, with a shared commitment to creatively and critically addressing the complexities of life in the 21st century. For more information, please visit www.newschool.edu/parsons.

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Media Contacts:

Hal Hefner, Humanity+

Phone: 213-713-1219

Email: hal@humanityplus.org

Kate McCormick, The New School

Phone: 212-229-5667 x3794

Email: mccork00@newschool.edu

What does second-order cybernetics have to do with human enhancement?

I anticipate human physiology going through a transformative resolution much as astronomy did with the Copernicus Revolution, as physics did with Quantum mechanics, as heredity did with the Principles of Inheritance, and as medicine with the Genome Revolution. The one element which is essential to the transformation of physiology is its self-directed nature.

Years ago, in the 1950-70s, a group of individuals with varied backgrounds were deeply drawn to two distinct areas of scientific study—biology and cognition. One such enthusiast was Norbert Weiner, an engineer and a philosopher, who applied the term “cybernetics” to the growing interest in communications and patterns of behavior. Taking this concept to a more inclusive set of principles, Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson emphasized the element of ecology of variables through second-order cybernetics. Our entire environment and its universe is an independent but interrelated, unified wholesystem, and we as life forms within this system are agents of our own physiological system. Thinking mechanisms, specifically computer generated, are interconnected systems of communications, feedback and observation.

Enhancing physiology relates to new types of human bodies, brains and behaviors, which need better processes for observation and feedback. We need to be aware what is occurring with our cells, organs and internal systems. We need to recognize how to formulate knowledge based on more intelligent and rigorous assimilation of information. We also need to be more conscious of our behaviors in how we communicate with others and how we protect our well-being. Put to the test of problem-solving, the elements form a design ecology of human enhancement.

In short, the odds are that technology will immeasurably extend human life. Until then, we need to stay alive. What ideas, means, and methods are available?

My talk covers the Human Enhancement Project as one place to start. The project began in the late 1990s with designs for transhuman and posthuman prototypes. From 2004 to 2008, it initiated a theory of human enhancement as an adaptive system and linking already available information on scientific, technological and philosophical approaches to human futures. Technology’s array of high-tech systems of robotics, AI, computer-based simulations, biotech and nanotech evidence the potential for augmenting our physiology. Sciences’ cybernetic study of systems and models imparts the awareness that ideas, means, and methods are integrated. From 2008 to the present, it has been looking for answers in dealing with a central issue that while a large percentage of society in the Western world considers certain technological augmentations as normal; an even larger percentage of socio-biopolitics considers technological enhancement as abnormal and even repugnant. This is a predicament.

The Human Enhancement Project delivers a developing sensibility which every citizen scientist might want to know for participating in an enhancement design ecology.

I look forward to seeing you all at the Summit!