Body transmutation in Art-science — Wearable computers — Games

Since the beginning of the twentieth century human body has been intensely questioned. There are many reasons for that: developments in biology, genetic engineering and medicine, exploratory machines for medical diagnosis, intimate symbiosis between body and technologies. Acting together, all these factors constitute a disturbing tension which questions the meanings of the body, transforming it into a not of multiple investments and concerns. That is why the body is everywhere: discussed, investigated, dissected, and transfigured. Cyborg, man-machine hybridization, genetic manipulation, body digitalization, telepresence have been some of the challenges which appear in the extremities of technological complexities.

Art-science, for instance, has been investigating technology in artificial life, simulation and modeling of complex biological behaviors, exploration of genetic algorithm and emergent system, as well as friendly human-computer interface developments, reorganizing perception and corporeal cognitive complex.

Recent researches are also focused on the development of prosthetic skins. Evolving from the function of protection to prosthesis and now to the function of interface, clothing constitutes a hybrid scenario between mankind and machine, biological body and digital technologies. Therefore, clothes redefines the body, desterritorializing it and bluring its frontiers.

In this scene, games catalyze transmutations experienced by the body in contemporary societies. After the sharing of mediated body and avatars in cyberspace massive games thee notion of identity falls apart since this event multiplies and expands body experience beyond the biological frontier.

Recognizing the importance of this theme, the I International Congress of Technological Aesthetics intends to discuss the transmutations of body in art-science, wearable computers and games, from an interdisciplinary point of view. The Congress is organized in conferences, round-tables, communication sessions and posters to discuss these questions.

The deadline for sending the abstracts for communication sessions in one of the three themes proposed by the Congress (Art-science, wearable computers and game) is March 30th of 2006, to the address
inscricaoestec@pucsp.br

June 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th of 2006
PUC-SP – Campus Consolação
Rua Marquês de Paranaguá, 111
Consolação - São Paulo - SP