Tag Archives: body

orthometals

Posted on by February 23, 2012
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Some weeks ago we went swimming at the ‘↑Müllersches Volksbad,’ Munich’s gorgeous Art Nouveau indoor pool facility. After having swum some lanes I took a respite in the shallow part of the pool. I hadn’t been swimming for months and may have overdone it a bit on the first lanes. Feeling a slight dragging pain in my right shoulder, I hovered in the water, admiring the architecture, and rubbed said shoulder cautiously.     Submerged to his knees an elderly gentleman smiled fatherly at me from the stone steps leading into the pool.     ‘Got one, too?’ he asked … Continue reading →

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commodifying bodies

Posted on by November 25, 2011
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At one level, then, the commodification of the body is a new discourse, linked to the incredible expansion of possibilities through recent advances in biomedicine, transplant surgery, experimental genetic medicine, biotechnology and the science of genomics in tandem with the spread of global capitalism and the consequent speed at which patients, technologies, capital, bodies and organs can now move across the globe. But on another level the commodification of bodies is continuous with earlier discourses on the desire, need and scarcity of human bodies and body parts for religious edification, healing, dissection, recreation and sports, and for medical experimentation and … Continue reading →

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simroid

Posted on by November 24, 2011
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More from ↵robotopia nipponica. The Simroid is a training android for dentists. It is developed at ↑The Nippon Dental University and built by ↑Kokoro [a lot more of weird robot stuff there]. After the first version, called Simuloid and presented in 2007, the new Simroid features a higher level of naturalism (↑video at DigInfo TV):     It ‘behaves’ quite like a human patient on a dentist’s torturing chair [‘Brazil’ anyone?], moves, speaks, and reacts—e.g. by simulating gag reflexes, or by expressing discomfort when the doctor accidentally strokes its breasts with the elbow.     Reminds me of ↵mor gui, … Continue reading →

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paris calling

Posted on by October 27, 2011
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The ↑12th EASA Biennial Conference will take place in Nanterre, France (near Paris) from 10th through 13th July 2012. The overall theme is “↑Uncertainty and disquiet.” The ↑list of workshops is set and the ↑call for papers open—the latter will be closed on 28th November 2011. You can only give one presentation, so you have to skim through the vast list and make up your mind to which workshop you want to submit a paper. If this one submission is rejected, you save a lot of money, ’cause it’s of no use to journey to a conference without presenting something … Continue reading →

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objects

Posted on by October 11, 2011
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My new hardware components will arrive on Thursday, but I couldn’t keep my hands off ↵DX3. So I went back to the beginning of the story, where framerates still are decent, and tried to find a suitable object for KerLeone’s ↵suitcase challenge. I searched David Sarif’s office thoroughly—while he kept on urging me to hurry and go see what the matter was in lab subsection 6—but couldn’t find a single object which was manipulable. In the corner behind David’s desk I saw his suitcase, already packed for our projected trip to D.C., and my hopes went up. But nothing, zero, … Continue reading →

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human revolution

Posted on by October 7, 2011
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When I entered the last chapter of ↑Far Cry 2 (Ubisoft Montreal 2008) my account read 178 diamonds. The sneaky bastard I am, I felt so comfortable once I had the combination of silenced P9, Dragunov, dart rifle, and the camouflage suit, there was no reason for me to spend anything on new equipment. The payments for accomplished missions came in, and the fortune amassed till ↑suicide was painless.     Somehow mixing this up with my bank account, the one my salary as an anthropologist goes to, yesterday evening I strolled into a shop and laid fifty quid down … Continue reading →

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omega legend

Posted on by July 18, 2011
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how the cyberpunk discourse infested the zombie genre  That may well be a truism, but ↑Stephen King is fond of zombie movies (1981: 134), of Romero’s classics of course in particular. Cyberpunk writers and fans are, too. But in ↑George A. Romero‘s debut ‘↑Night of the Living Dead‘ (1968) none of the canonical elements outlining cyberpunk as a genre can be found—with the exception of the postapocalyptic setting. Ten years later, during the historical threshold when the cyberpunk discourse reached critical mass and got manifest as a literary genre, the picture had changed. Richard Kadrey and Larry McCaffery sum it … Continue reading →

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neuromancer tattoo

Posted on by March 29, 2011
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In a way this is a kind of follow-up to ↵moore’s magic. Somewhen [yes, that’s a word—still] during 2007 and 2008 ↑Nigel Palmer of Brighton has tattooed portions of text from William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’ (1984) on ↑the_dan’s arms. The association with Peter Greenaway’s ‘The pillow book’ (1996) is obvious. GREENAWAY, PETER. 1996. The pillow book [motion picture]. Rotterdam: Kasander & Wigman Productions. GIBSON, WILLIAM FORD. 1984. Neuromancer. New York: Penguin. via email from CT—tnx! … Continue reading →

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laid back

Posted on by April 21, 2012
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Hardware is important for cybercultural lifestyles. Modifying, combining, arranging, and rearranging hardware even more so. The ↑coolest workspace contest at lifehacker is ample testimony of that. The above pictured prototype of an “evolutionary workstation” by ↑ErgoMotions is an attempt to cyberpunkify ergonomic solutions. But all of that is nothing against ↑Tim the Lion with his ↑DataHands—he has created the most laid back, cool, and ↑ergonomically correct computer workplace:  … Continue reading →

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