Tissue Degradation
Computer Art (Non Gen AI) / 3D procedural-parametric modeling + Photomounting
2024
APPROACH I
The concept of technological singularity refers to the moment when technology will merge with the human being, from the biomechanical to the neurological and genetic, generating a new hybrid consciousness.
In this context, from the perspective of the Anthropocene, we find ourselves in an era characterized by accelerated technological development, disproportionate production and global environmental degradation. This has a systemic impact on a global ecological level, including us as a species. This therefore triggers multiple transcendental questions regarding our ecological relationship with the environment from the biological, the cognitive and even the metaphysical. In this sense, assuming a speculative position in which the environmental degradation resulting from the footprint of human activity continues at least in a linear fashion, some fundamental questions could be asked:
How might the human species adapt and survive increasingly hostile environments and habitats that are a consequence of its own impact on the planet, over time?
What changes, improvements, or technological transformations at the biological, biomechanical, and even cognitive levels, would (or should) arise in humanity to be able to precisely, adapt and survive such environments?
What would be the physical, biological and cognitive characteristics and traits that would define the new human species in the transhumanist era towards the frontier of the technological singularity?
APPROACH II
From this perspective, this speculative transmedia visual research examines a transhumanist future as a consequence of the technological singularity. The latter (the singularity) is posited as an emerging human survival tool in the face of ecological degradation and resource scarcity caused by the Anthropocene. The following three observations summarize the current problem:
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Climate change and ecological disasters will increase unless urgent action is taken.
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Technological advancement in robotics, nanotechnology, computing and AI will not stop, but will accelerate.
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The COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences illustrate that new biological crises with global impact are likely to emerge.
In this context, it is hypothesized here that:
technological singularity will be necessary for human survival.
Under the premise that the advance of the Anthropocene will converge in a future in which there will be an unprecedented increase in global warming, pollution of water bodies and atmospheric degradation, aggravated by the waste generated by human activity, it is very likely that most habitats will become hostile environments, with low probability of survival for humans, flora and fauna and in that sense, technological uniqueness will allow us to expand our biological capabilities and develop hybrid configurations to face a world characterized by resource scarcity and irreversible environmental degradation.
But more importantly, perhaps and only perhaps, the technological singularity may represent an opportunity for transformation and reconfiguration of the human species not only at the biological level, but even of transcendental consciousness in the sense that through it (the singularity) the human species may evolve towards a higher cognitive state in which the individual impulses of accumulation, predation and exacerbated survival are overcome towards a new stage of cooperation, balance and empathy in relations with individuals of the same species, of other species and of the planet itself.
STATEMENT OF WORK
Based on the idea of the four primary types of biological tissues, this transmedia visual research explores in a metaphorical way, the biomechanical and cellular transformation of the human body in its transition towards a transhumanist era were technological singularity has been achieved as a necessity, in order to adapt, survive and transcend the Anthropocene era:
Epithelial tissue
Connective tissue
Muscular tissue
Nervous tissue
Thus, for each type of tissue a pair of visual works is presented that can be understood as a symbolic representation of the morphological alteration that these tissues would undergo in the proposed transhumanist context and that would also ultimately imply, as a poiesis, a possible route towards the transcendental development of a higher speculative human consciousness.
This work is a speculative visual investigation developed through an extensive exploration of 3D procedural modeling techniques WITHOUT the use of generative artificial intelligence. The process includes the iterative and complex transformation of diverse geometries and topologies, the design of procedural textures and various lighting and photomontage techniques, with the aim of generating organic-abstract forms that evoke sensations of elasticity, static fluidity and volumetric dynamism.