This Hyphen Hub event was focused on art in the age of cyborgism, exploring how the addition of new senses and modified bodies create radically new art forms.
We presented Neil Harbisson and Moon Ribas, pioneering artists and founders of The Cyborg Foundation, an international organization that helps humans become cyborgs (cybernetic organisms).
Harbisson is the world’s first-legally recognized cyborg by a government. Completely color-blind since birth, he “hears” colors through an antenna embedded in his skull that transmits them as sound directly into his brain through bone conduction.
For the event, Neil Harbisson created the world’s first “Skull Transmission Painting”. Passers-by in Times Square painted different colored stripes on a canvas that were transmitted live to Harbisson’s skull who then created the same painting simultaneously at The Red Door. The audience was able to see in real-time both paintings as they were being created, while the artist only heard the colors being transmitted to his brain.
Moon Ribas is a cyborg activist, dancer, and choreographer who has a seismic sensor permanently attached to her elbow, allowing her to feel earthquakes in real-time. For this event, she performed her piece Waiting for Earthquakes in which she danced in response to the vibrations of any earthquakes that were happening worldwide during the time of the actual performance.
Harbisson and Ribas also talked about art in the age of cyborgs and conducted a unique “telepathic” Q&A with the audience.
More about Cyborg Arts and the artists: