1. NRS: Annotated Bibliography


    1.     Reshaping spectatorship: Immersive and distributed aesthetics. in Fibreculture Publications [database online]. 

    • Distributed aesthetics implies creative modes of operating in, and experiencing, the spatial and temporal flows of information networks. While there are differences between these aesthetic forms and experiences, immersive and distributed aesthetics also share similar interests in transforming and extending notions of the body and perception through technological mediation.
    • … the sensation of being present in an electronically mediated environment that is illusionistic and sometimes remote from the body of the participant. In other words, immersive artworks have the capacity to collapse the perceived distance between the viewer and the artwork or between remote participants.
    • They variously trace the origins of immersive aesthetics back to panoramas, cabinets of curiosities, Baroque ceiling paintings, ancient frescos and even cave paintings. So rather than being completely new, immersion seems to keep reappearing as an ideal, and often transcendental, form of human-representation and human-technology relationship. This fascination with immersion seems to indicate a human desire to fuse with the immersive image- space or technology—a desire to become posthuman or transhuman.
    • Immersive artworks often generate self-conscious and self-reflexive forms of perception and interaction as participant-viewers engage with the work. Considering this, immersive art presents a challenge to traditional aesthetic philosophies—specifically Modernist philosophies descended from Immanuel Kant— that seek to assert the need for perceptual distance during the experience and assessment of art beyond the corporeal body through information networks and into a mechanical form. Thus, telepresence produces a type of cyborg embodiment and perception for the operator who fuses their naturalised modes of sensing and perceiving with technological modes of seeing, hearing and feeling.

    2.     Ascott, Roy. 2008. Cybernetic, technoetic, syncretic: The prospect for art. Leonardo 41 (3).

    • Art’s preoccupation with the body is giving way to technoetic investigation and invention.
    • If there is a technological revolution in art it lies not simply in the global connectivity of person to person, mind to mind (significant as that is), but in its power to provide for the release of the self, release from the self, the fictive “unified self” of Western philosophy.  It lies in our ability to be many selves, telematically in many places at the same time, our self-creation leading to many personas and serial identities.

    3.     Beloff, Laura. 2010. Wearable artefacts as research vehicles. Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research 8 (1).

    • According to these researchers, the wearable computer is understood as a kind of extension of the body, which enables it to perform tasks that would not otherwise be possible, such as being in several places at the same time.
    • This original concept of the cyborg coming from the science was concentrated primarily in extending the functionality of an organism, or a human, to be able to achieve certain goals. These purposefully designed functionalities could be either physiological or psychological, although the emphasis seems to have been on physiological adaptation.
    • In comparison with the typically sleek and unobtrusive design of the commercially aimed wearable technologies, these projects often appear overtly visual and theatrical. In addition, they are not necessarily designed to be convenient to wear, but their unconventional characteristics often entail physical and even mental adaptiveness in the users.
    • The design principle of the Hybronaut’s equipment is, firstly, creating the device and secondly, discovering the outcome, instead of developing the device and its outcome with predefined, intended goals. In this way these  projects of the third aforementioned category of this article – that of self-defined aims, which are partially contradictory to the general goals prevailing in the field, enable the development of a better understanding of a relationship between body, technology and environment as well as they leave open space for interpretations of the future potential.

    4.     Castellanos, Carlos, and Diane Gromala. 2010. The symbiogenic experience: Towards a framework for understanding human-machine coupling in the interactive arts. Technoetic Arts Technoetic Arts 8 (1): 11-8.

    5.     Di Pino, G., E. Guglielmelli, and P. M. Rossini. 2009. Neuroplasticity in amputees: Main implications on bidirectional interfacing of cybernetic hand prostheses. Progress in Neurobiology 88 (2): 114-26.

    • The overall user acceptability of the prosthetic device depends on multiple factors, such as dexterity, anthropomorphism, control features, autonomy of operation, dependability, but most remarkably by the type of limb–prosthesis interface and the quality and amount of sensory information fed back by the prosthesis to the user (Micera et al., 2006); within the frame of these last points, information transfer rate and the latency, i.e., the time delay between command and action, enabled by the interface, play a major role (Tonet et al., 2007).
    • Quite surprisingly, a systematic study of neuroplasticity in amputees as a fundamental pre-requisite and potential guide for brain–machine interface developments is largely missing to date. The purpose of this paper is to critically review the present knowledge on plastic reorganization in the central and peripheral nervous systems that follow limb amputation, with a particular focus on the potential implications for the development of bidirectional neural interfaces for cybernetic hand prostheses.
    • Commercially available and prototypes of human hand prostheses may be equipped with many different types of human–prosthesis interfaces in order to derive information on the intention of the user (motor commands) and, in some cases, to feedback someartificial sensory data from the prosthesis to the user. For the aim of our analysis, such interfaces can be grouped in five main classes: (1) Mechanical (body-powered) interfaces; (2) Myolectric (EMG-based) interfaces using non-homologous muscles; (3) Myolectric (EMG-based) interfaces using homologous muscles; (4) Non-invasive neural interfaces and (5) Invasive neural interfaces. Devices of the last two classes are often referred in the literature as brain–computer interfaces (BCI), but are more properly called brain–machine interfaces (BMI) (Lebedev and Nicolelis, 2006; Micera et al., 2006; Schwartz, 2004). Body-powered interfaces mechanically copy the user’s intentions from the movements of a segment of the body, i.e. one shoulder or foot that is physically linked to the prosthesis so to translate real volitive movements into hand movements. Myoelectric interfaces allow the user to communicate her/his will through voluntary muscles contractions translated into electric signals by EMG surface electrodes. 

    6.     Enright, Robert. 2007. The incredible lightness of machines. Border Crossings Border Crossings 26 (1): 56-65.

    7.     Goldberg, Ken. 2000. The robot in the garden : Telerobotics and telepistemology in the age of the internet. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

    8.     Micera, Silvestro, and Jose M. Carmena. 2009. Editorial: Developing the next generation of hybrid neuroprosthetic systems. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering 56 (1).

    • In the 1950s, E. Von Gierke stated that the goal of bionics is “to extend human physical and intellectual capabilities by prosthetic devices in the most general sense.”
    • Level of Hybridness (H): ranging from separate artificial and natural systems (H0), to exoskeletons copying the mechanical properties of natural limbs (H1), up to artificial body parts anatomically and functionally “connected” to the human body (H2).
    •  Level of Augmentation (A): empowering sensing, perception, and motor capabilities. The level of augmentation increases along with the number and type (perceptual or/and motor) of empowered capabilities
    •  Level of Connection to the Nervous System (C): modality by which the artificial and natural systems are connected. To this aim different solutions varying from multimodal indirect interfaces to direct interfaces to the peripheral nervous system (PNS), or to the central nervous system (CNS) can be used. 

    9.     Mojica, Martha Patricia Nino. 2006. Technologies of delusion and subjectivity. Technoetic Arts Technoetic Arts 4 (3): 203-9.

    10.   Nechvatal, Joseph. 2001. Towards an immersive intelligence: Nervous views from within. Leonardo 34 (5): 417-22.

    11.   Osthoff, Simone. 1997. Lygia clark and helio oiticica: A legacy of interactivity and participation for a telematic future. Leonardo Leonardo 30 (4): 279-89.

    12.   Rotman, Brian. 2002. Corporeal or gesturo-haptic writing. CNFG Configurations 10 (3): 423-38.

    13.   Sanchez, Justin C., Babak Mahmoudi, Jack DiGiovanna, and Jose C. Principe. 2009. Exploiting co-adaptation for the design of symbiotic neuroprosthetic assistants. Neural Networks 22 (3): 305-15.

    14.   Sharma, Vishnu, Douglas B. McCreery, and Martin Han. 2010. Bidirectional telemetry controller for neuroprosthetic devices. IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering18 (1): 67-74.

    15.   Taylor, Dawn M., Stephen I. Helms Tillery, and Andrew B. Schwartz. 2002. Direct cortical control of 3D neuroprosthetic devices. Science 296 (5574).

    16.   Tellez, Valerie Ann Bugmann. 2007. The drama of digital communication with a human touch. Technoetic Arts Technoetic Arts 5 (1): 45-54.

    17.   Vita-More, Natasha. 2010. Aesthetics of the radically enhanced human. Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research 8 (2).

    18.   Zucchino, David. 2010. Drone pilots’ war not remote. CTRB Chicago Tribune.

    • The psychological challenges are unique: Pilots say that despite the distance, the video feed gives them a more intimate feel for the ground than they would have from a speeding warplane. Some say they would rather be in Afghanistan or Iraq to avoid the daily adjustment from the soccer field to the battlefield.