Material agility. Collaborations of living and non-living actants. Building materials exhibiting life-like behaviors. Architecture, protocells and Petri dishes. Stratophysical approximations. Soil taxonomies developed to account for anthropocenic change. The dream of a non-anthropocentric, nomadic domesticity. Homes built out of bones and muscles. Cities that are co-evolved with Nature.

These are only some of the things you will read about in this fantastic new issue of Organs Everywhere, “Material Shifts.” Along for the ride will take you the terrific and generous contributions of some amazing thinkers, researchers and innovators: Mitchell Joachim, Etienne Turpin, Seth Denizen, and finally Rachel Amstrong, whose vision truly made this issue possible. I thank them all for their outstanding contributions, and wish you an excellent read! Enjoy!

Jonathan LaRocca and Ned Dodington of Animal Architecture have just launched Urban Animal, the new installment of the Animal Architecture Awards, which this year closes in on new potential collaborations—what they call cospecies coshaping—between human and non-human animals in the density of our shared urban environments.

I like this setting very much because it removes animal life from the kind of ideal, self-regulating pre-anthropocenic “nature” we are still tempted to ascribe to it, and places it right in our backyard, in the midst of complex and entangled urban ecologies and material processes.
Of course, we know that the most catastrophic effects of our actions can travel the mesh of planetary interconnections in ways often hard to predict or understand (and reach far from the point of origin) but what kinds of links and alliances can be found in the most concentrated nodes of the mesh, in the places where the environmental impact of human agency is more tangible and apparent—our cities? What productive and mutually beneficial relationships are in place or could be designed between nonhuman animal life and urban subjects, buildings, infrastructures, social systems?

As the Animal Architecture editors suggest squirrels, pigeons, mice, crows and others (not to mention our own biomic entourage) are “highly urbanized non-human animals and our potential design partners”. They continue: “Expanded hetero-cultures, urban agriculture, and a flexible, more resilient urbanism are all potential benefits of cross species collaboration. What other benefits exist?”

The possibilities seem endless, with proposals/interventions ranging from the built to the unbuilt, from the site-specific to the typical, from the practical to the speculative, from large to small, from theoretical to critical, from utopian to dystopian, from domesticated to feral…

I will be a jury member along with such names as Fritz Haeg, Kate Orff of SCAPE, Christopher Hight, Susan S. Szenasy (editor in chief of Metropolis Magazine) and the Animal Architecture editors.

Register by 13 May 2012 to submit your work. Further information, including the complete call for submissions, can be found on the Animal Architecture website.

Some questions linger, are mutagenic and multiplicative; their purpose is not clear, their possibilities not fully explored. The “Digital Surgeon” project from Œ No. 3 “Cyborgs and Monsters” addresses a cluster of such questions: how will men and women appear to each other in the future? Will virtual augmentations contribute to their freedom, or will they be used to entertain/soothe them into a kind of semi-conscious perceptual subjugation? Could the inner, autonomic processes of the body be interpreted to provide clinical information, or externalized as colorful communication tools—signifiers of moods, emotions, disease? And how will our real-time, real-world virtual doppelgängers (we might call them the “Internet of the body”) interact with the increasing ubiquitousness of the Internet of things? How will space and the body mutually and responsively change and adapt to each other?

To begin expounding on these questions—preliminarily laid out in the “Digital Surgeon’s User Manual”—I wrote a micro-essay/project description which, for now, focuses on body modifications as a means of expression and control (exercise of ownership?) over the body. Of course, the AR nature of the project excludes the incredibly interesting and ethically tortuous field of functional body modifications—increases in our functional range, from magnetic implants and exoskeletons to meat-and-blood wings. By merely looking at the body as perceived through the distorting lens of optoelectronic devices, however, we might realistically assume a leveled playing field, one where socially relevant technology keeps being within the reach of most. Anyway, here it is (and you can find more images in the issue or here):

If the ability to modify something is a mark of ownership (you re-model your own house, not your neighbor’s), when it comes to the human body things get complicated. Clearly, we can shave, tattoo or pierce it, but if more invasive or unorthodox modifications are desired—the surgical equivalent of tearing down walls or punching windows—our volition proves insufficient; we must seek the approval of experts—medical, legal and psychiatric—to ‘clear’ our desires into agency.

It turns out that, like buildings, our bodies too are ‘zoned,’ and the ‘master plan’ they adhere to is continually tested against public opinion and mainstream ideas of beauty, dignity and belonging. And it is precisely the arbitrary ethics of these shared efforts that stipulate that, for instance, breast augmentation is a more acceptable procedure than, say, growing a bump in the middle of the forehead.

In the physical world, the catalog of available elective surgeries is edited not by subjective wishes, or even medical constraints, but current fashions. But in the augmented city of the near future, where physical and virtual objects merge and are experienced as one, this need not be the case.

Digital Surgeon is a speculative Augmented Reality software set in this not-so-distant future, and aimed precisely at re-gaining control over the body as perceived in immersive environments. Firstly, the user’s body is scanned in great detail, generating a 3D baseline model for the mapping of surgeries. Secondly, the user selects a surgery or group of surgeries and tests it in front of the mirror. Lastly, the surgery is broadcasted to optoelectronic lenses activated by proximity, and computed in the viewer’s field of vision in real-time (beauty truly in the eyes of the beholder).

Surgeries can run under five distinct modalities: the cosmetic mode allows users to enhance their own appearance by modifying the 3D mesh associated with their bodies, uploading new digital parts, and overlaying filters. The plasticity mode curates a compilation of time-sensitive operations, challenging the permanence and irreversibility of traditional cosmetic surgery and providing users with a plastic, durational flesh. Metamorphic cycles run algorithms based on pre-defined time schedules, tagged to GPS coordinates—or cities, buildings, rooms—or activated by specific viewers. The controversial demiurge mode reverses the software’s aim by assigning digital surgeries to others. The invisibility cloak mode allows users to mask selected parts of their body with live video from other parts (grafting) or with images of the surroundings, thus seemingly disappearing. The translucent body mode translates electrophysiological information collected by sensors into colors and patterns, allowing users to visualize the complex, ecological dimension of the body and its autonomic biological processes.

Digital Surgeon promotes a flexible idea of beauty, proposes new electronic frontiers for the (perceived) body and generates a novel kind of real-time portraiture—one where painter and thing painted coalesce into one. It imagines men and women capable of (re)presenting their bodies with ever-growing plasticity—unbound by the prescriptive tastes of society.

I am excited to announce the launch of the third issue of Organs Everywhere (Œ), available for online browsing or download here. This issue, entitled “Cyborgs and Monsters” combines contributions by an outstanding pool of thinkers, writers and designers: Ben Woodard investigates the space between haunted and green houses, and calls for the opening up of ‘homeness’ to broader outside ecologies. Liam Young and Tobias Klein with Denis Vlieghe explore the effects of external flows on the internal geographies of the body. Simone Ferracina performs digital plastic surgeries on the body as perceived in virtual/physical blended space. Sara Hendren proposes an ethics of augmentation rooted in the cyborgian experience of disability. Sukjong Hong transforms and overwrites the monstrous ‘others’ generated by Cold War narratives. Tim Maly narrates the science fictional story of a woman who gets pressured into consuming the drug-filled remains of an enemy academic.

Thanks to the contributors for their amazing and generous work. And to everyone else, enjoy!

If you live in Texas or happen to stop by over the holidays, you might want to check out the Animal Architecture Exhibition, which will be on display at Caroline Collective through November 28th, and will then travel to the Architecture Center Houston (ArCH) in mid January. And if you are interested in finding out more about the Theriomorphous Cyborg project, you can read my interview with the Animal Architecture team here. Enjoy!

When I think “body modifications”, my mind instantly turns to tattoos, breast implants, nose jobs, prosthetics and sub-cutaneous chip implants. Food never even crosses it. That is partly due to the fact that, for at least ten years, food hasn’t had much of an effect on my appearance, weight and overall shape. As someone recently pointed out to me, however, that is not the case for most people. Many have a remarkably good grasp on exactly what changes different kinds of foods will trigger in their bodies: how much beer or bread will result in a belly, how many cupcakes stand in the way of their ideal figure. Food consumption is regulated by this tight balance between instant gratification and the desire to obtain (or hold on to) the most society-pleasing body we can afford. But what if we could use food to creatively modify the body? Of course, there are pathological examples at both extremes of the food consumption spectrum—namely starving and over-eating. Non-pathological, reversible changes are championed by method actors, with Christian Bale as an exemplary case. For the lead role in “The Machinist,” starring a man with chronic insomnia and increasing paranoia, Bale allegedly spent over four months consuming only an apple and a cup of unsweetened coffee daily, and losing a total of 28 kilograms. Soon after, he re-gained about 50 kilograms in preparation for his role in the blockbuster “Batman Begins.” Now, without pushing our bodies to such extreme and dangerous oscillations, could we curate more slight, minute changes in our appearance? Could we devise specific sets of “food algorithms” and chart ingredients and dosages according to a conscious, expressive intent?  Cosmetic foods may  be designed to exaggerate bodily responses, to  simulate allergic reactions or cause temporary, circumscribed swelling. They could momentarily alter the size and weight of body parts, or their shape. New gastrono-cosmetic maps may describe a fluctuating body—a plastic envelope periodically re-negotiated between interior and exterior.

I am excited to announce that I will be giving a short presentation on recent speculative projects at Thrilling Wonder Stories 3, an incredible event organized by Geoff Manaugh, Liam Young and Popular Science magazine. Two events will take place simultaneously at the Architectural Association in London and at Studio-X NYC. The line-up for both locations (which you can find here, along with all the details) is absolutely amazing. Do stop by if you have a chance, and see you there!

Click here to view the embedded video.

I have been meaning to post about Bart Hess‘s video “Grow on You” for a while now. The video conjures up an ambiguous dimension between chicken pox and high fashion, disease and design. It elicits thoughts about something we may call pharmaceutical or endogenous fashion: fashion that is swallowed as pills and surfaces to the skin from the inside, exuded, sweat out; fashion that emerges when you get goosebumps, or when you blush; fashion that itches and burns, tickles and  swells. It is not uninteresting trying to imagine a world without clothing, one without the words “skirt”, “trousers”, “hat” or “glove”; one where warmth, protection and comfort are not dependent on exterior, foreign agents, but grown within and through the body itself.

I’m happy to announce that you can now follow my design/research work outside of Organs Everywhere at simoneferracina.com . Take a look around, let me know what you think and enjoy! On a different note, keep your eyes peeled for the next issue of Œ: it will feature some exceptional contributors!

I am very pleased to announce that my project “Theriomorphous Cyborg” has been selected as the winning entry to the 2011 Animal Architecture Awards! The project, inspired by zoologist Jacob von Uexküll’s animal Umwelt, speculates about an Augmented Reality game capable of opening up new perceptual realities and fields of experience and reach previously invisible animal/human worlds. Find out more about the “Theriomorphous Cyborg”  here and take a look at the other selected projects here.