Natasha Vita-More: Here is artists working with robotics
on stage. They're communicating through their robotics in their dance forms.
Now, what they're thinking is being translated onto the screen on stage
and their movements are being put into words. This is one example
of an immersive environment where human identity is no longer
strictly in the neocortex of the brain - if that's where you find it - but it's
transferred through symbolic imagery onto the screen and its motor activity
reflects the motor activity of the artist or dancer here.
Electronic arts and robotics have been augmenting the body for decades, that's the point
of this. I wanted to show you that augmenting body
in the arts, especially in robotic arts and bio arts, has been going
on since the 60s since electronics first interspersed with computers
and Roy Ascott, Dr Roy Ascott, is the leading
theoretician in that field.
Here is Stelarc, another artist who I work with from time to time
He uses his body with robotics to emphasise
the unnecessary element
of the body but that the emotion is what means...
where his identity lies in emotion.
He's worked on robotic faces that interpret his thoughts and speak to an audience through artificial
intelligence, but not artificial general intelligence, that would be...that hasn't
been developed yet. Here's a description of a DNA-sized nanotube that
was put into the living fruit flies. Now this DNA
nanotube actually could be looked at through a
carbon microscope to identify what it would be like
in a particular living organism. So this is the first example
of a nanotechnology and nanomedicine put inside a living
entity. Here's an example of a cancer patient's
breast where the...
this is biological enviromeno-nano technology. This is future use of enhancement
into the body to look at the cells where nanosites would go into the body
and clean up the cancer cells but leave the good cells.
Here's an example of a walking mechanism for someone
who has the inability to walk and this is done as an industrial design.
This is going into product design.  This will
enable the individual to get up and move out of the wheelchair and walk.
Now this is leaning a little bit towards the whole body prosthetics which the goal
of transformative human enhancement.
These are examples of individuals who are using smart robotics
as part of their augmentation. The next step here would be whole body
augmentation. If your body were to cease to exist
but your brain, your neocortex, is still existing,
then the new definition of death comes in there and that part of the brain
which is functioning would be put into a whole body prosthetic. So these are the first steps of that.
Here is an example of a work.
I put this in just because I found it quite interesting. This is a clock that is put on the wrist
of an individual and the wrist actually
tells the time by the person's energy in the body, the heart, the pumping
of the heart is the battery for the clock. And
this just fits flatly on the wrist. I found it quite interesting. But this is a stage where
the body is being augmented in interesting ways that communicate
about the environment around us, not just internally. This is an
interesting prototype which hasn't been built yet but it's a computer inside
a tooth, and it communicates with the individual
through the teeth. And this is, again, this is not a tremendously novel idea but this is
the prototype which determine that particular concept.
Again, it hasn't been built. And this is brain on a chip
which I really love, mapping brain cells, and this is
going into the next stages of
keeping the brain functioning past its apoptosis of cells
that degenerate within the brain.
And I think I'm up. Thank you so much. I enjoyed it and I hope you did too.
Edward Stein: Quick question from the panel and then we'll
open for discussion. Natasha Vita-More: Ah stay, okay. As long as
it's not the philosopher. Oh okay. I'm gonna get in trouble. Nicholas Agar: Remember those at most one philosopher
so it could be no philosophers. Natasha Vita-More: On the panel. (laughing) Nicholas Agar: Yeah, okay. 
Can you hear me or? Cool. I was actually just one of the things
that you said, obviously lots of ideas in that talk, but you said that you'd basically
designed a prototype for an enhanced being. I'm just curious about what
that is. I mean, we saw the picture. Natashia Vita-More: Oh yes, I designed in
1997 a prototype called
prima post-human. And I used that term because it was the most apt term
and I didn't it want to be cyborg. I wanted a disassociation from metal human cyborg
I used my own body in the prototype
because, again, I didn't want to be associated with the cyborg. I wanted to make it more human.
mor familiar, more possible in our
graphic narrative. I worked with Marvin Minsky
with artifical intelligence, with Rob Rob Freitas with nanotechnology
Michael Rose with
bioengineering. Roy Walford with
gerontology, Eric Drexler with nanotechnology
Max More with philosophy
some others I can't...oh um...Hans Moravec with robotics and what I did is I
came up with a schema idea if we were to enhance the body
and extend it past the 122.3 years maximum
what would we need to do with that body? So it is a
conceptual design. It's drawn as a design, it's an interactive
design and the hypothesis or the supposition there
is that if these technologies were incorporated in the body
then the lifespan could be continued. Now it's also not only
a conceptual design, it's the makings for a whole body prosthetic.
Nicholas Agar: So this sort of a prototype in a different sense from
like... Natasha Vita-More: Industrial design. Nicholas Agar: Or basically some people would
use the term, basically, if the prototype works then we're ready to go into mass production
Natasha Vita-More: Yes, it's a prototype that's waiting for its time. Nicholas Agar: Right
okay. Natasha Vita-More: The concept is there, it's been published, it's recorded. Now I'm waiting
I've been waiting for nanotechnology and
artificial general intelligence and genetic engineering to
come about. And I'm watching it slowly come about. So my hope is
that that can be realised.
Because it would be quite wonderful for me.
