Transcriber: Norberto Amaral Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
I identify myself as a cyborg
because I have a new sense that is created of cybernetics.
Since 2013, my body is permanently connected to online seismographs
that allows me to perceive the seismic activity of the planet
in real time.
So now I'm here in Porto,
but if there's an earthquake in Japan or in Greece,
I would feel a vibration inside my body.
I have a couple of implants in my feet
that allow me to feel the seismic activity of the planet.
Then, depending on the intensity of the earthquake,
the vibration I feel is stronger or less strong.
In the beginning,
I had to get used to feeling
all these vibrations constantly through my body,
to feel all this [concentrated] motion,
but at the end, it became like a new sense,
what I call the "seismic sense,"
the feeling of the seismic activity of the planet.
The planet is constantly moving;
it is evolving.
The tectonic plates are alive.
They release and create tension, and they create earthquakes.
And earthquakes are part of our nature,
but they are still a very mysterious phenomenon.
So, I'm actually a dancer,
and I study choreography and movement research.
And when I was in college,
I was encouraged to use technology in my thesis,
but I always found that using technology as a tool,
it was very cold and distant and unnatural.
So I thought that rather than using technology as a tool,
if I use technology as part of the dancer, as part of the artist,
it would be a more natural way.
So during my movement research, what I wanted to perceive,
it was all the imperceptible movement that happens
that our natural senses don't allow us to perceive.
I did some projects, and one project that I did
was to detect the speed of the people walking in front of me.
Then I did another project to feel presence behind me,
like I could feel -
yeah, like this changed my perception of my surroundings.
But after doing these projects, I wanted to perceive something more universal,
movements of independent people and objects.
And then I realized that the Earth is constantly moving,
not only rotates by itself and around the Sun,
but it also shakes constantly through earthquakes.
I've found it fascinating like to be connected
to this huge, enormous, and natural movement
that most of the time isn't perceptible.
So this is when I created the seismic sense,
and I put these implants on my feet.
I can feel the reaction.
(Laughter)
It wasn't that painful.
It looks dramatic, but it's not.
So now, it's as though these implants
allow me to be connected to the natural movement of the Earth.
After perceiving all this seismic activity inside my body,
I feel like the earthquakes are like the heartbeat of our planet,
what I call the "Earthbeat."
A good way to describe what I feel
is like - I feel like now I have two heartbeats,
my own and the Earthbeat,
having its own rhythm inside my body.
I see this as cyborg art.
I feel like now artists no longer need to use technology as a tool
in order to create art.
We can use technology as part of our body and our mind
and change our perception of reality.
So the artwork of a cyborg artist would be the creation of a new sense.
So I see the seismic sense as my artwork,
but it's an artwork that happens inside my body.
So in cyborg art,
the artist, the artwork
and the museum where the artwork happens
is exactly the same person.
I feel like I'm the audience of my own art.
So in order to share my experience and my perception of what I feel,
I create external artwork.
And one way to share this is through a dance piece
that is called "Waiting for earthquakes."
When I do this dance piece,
I just wait, still, until an earthquake takes place,
and when this happens,
I move according to the intensity of the earthquake.
So it's a piece based on real time,
so whenever there's some -
depending on the intensity of the earthquake,
my movement changes in intensity.
So it's a bit like a duet between the Earth and myself.
So if there are no earthquakes during the performance,
there will be no dance.
Some festivals get very worried about this,
but the Earth moves very often,
so it's okay.
In this performance,
it's like the Earth is like the choreographer of the piece
and I'm just interpreting the data that she gives me.
Another way to share what I feel, it's through percussion.
So in this case,
Earth is the composer of the piece
and the rhythm of the piece
is based on the rhythm of the tectonic plates.
So people can hear [what] the intensity of the movement of the planet is.
Also, I create some scores based on the seismic activity
that had happened in a specific place on the planet.
So, for example, the first one I did,
it was in Mexico,
and I collected all the seismic data
that had happened in Mexico in the last 50 years,
and I put them all together in an eight-minute piece
so people could hear through the percussion of the drum
how the seismic activity of Mexico was -
so the Mexicans could hear the movement of the Earth.
So, in that case, the Earth is the composer of this piece.
In 2010, with my childhood friend Neil Harbisson and I,
we co-founded the Cyborg Foundation.
Basically, we have three aims.
One is to help humans to become cyborgs.
The other one is to defend the cyborg rights,
to defend the right of being able to design yourself,
and the third one is to promote cyborg art as an artistic movement.
We did different projects with these,
and then after a while,
we realized that I also feel transpecies, apart from being a cyborg.
I feel transpecies because I have a new sense
that is no longer defined as a human sense.
In 2017, last year, we co-founded the Transpecies Society.
It's like the social project of the Cyborg Foundation.
It's a community where people can come,
and we have a lab where we create new senses and new organs,
and we also give voice to people that don't identify 100% as human,
which there's a lot of them.
So I don't feel 100% human because I have a new sense -
it is no longer a human sense -
but there are many people
that don't feel 100% human for other reasons.
I think it's important here that in our society we feel relevant.
The logo, I think it really describes our idea.
We don't think that humans are a closed circle.
I feel that we are more as in a spiral,
that we can evolve,
that humans are evolving during our lifetime,
and we can decide if we can take part of this evolution.
I wanted to say something else about the logo.
There are some theories that say, well, there's some theories -
I mean, I believe this theory, but it's a theory -
that we haven't been always human.
We started as a bacteria.
We were in the sea,
then we were in the trees,
and now we are humans,
but then, maybe we'll become something else.
So this is a natural evolution of who we are.
Maybe this is exciting for some people,
and now we can decide
we no longer need to wait for natural evolution.
We can evolve in our lifetime
and decide how we want to be
and what we want to perceive
This is my friend Neil.
He also feels transpecies
because he has a new body part that is no longer a human body part.
He has an antenna in his head
that allows him to perceive color from ultraviolet and infrared
through sound -
through vibrations in his skull,
and then he hears it.
With him, we did many, many projects.
One of them, it was -
actually, Neil and I, we have a bit of bad teeth.
I have a tooth missing,
and he has two teeth missing.
And then, we didn't want to have a normal tooth replacement,
and then we were invited, in Brazil, to do a workshop,
and then we proposed to create some teeth for us.
And then what we did was we did like a prototype
that whenever I click, he would feel a vibration,
and whenever he clicks, I would feel a vibration.
So we both know Morse code,
so by the rhythm of our clicking,
we were able to send each other words.
We call this the "transdental communication system"
because we were able to communicate with each other
from tooth to tooth.
This is the performance that we did.
We were sitting apart,
and then the audience would write a word.
I would click,
and he would write the word.
It's actually useful for people who cannot move any part of the body
or maybe it's also a system that could work in space
because you don't need air to communicate to each other.
Actually, the tooth was also connected to Bluetooth through an implant,
so it was actually a Bluetooth tooth.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Neil had another space in his mouth,
so we decided to fill it up and put some light
so whenever he clicks
he could light himself in case of total darkness.
Another project that we're doing in the Transpecies Society,
it's a sense to feel the quality of the air.
So if the air is very contaminated, you would feel a stronger vibration,
and if you have clear air, not.
This is another product that a student did
that it's to feel the heat of the Sun, the solar flares.
This is the retrospection when I could feel what I had behind.
This is a friend that really likes the weather,
and he can feel the atmospheric pressure through vibrations in his ears.
And the atmospheric pressure changes if it is going to rain or not.
So he's actually the weatherman.
(Laughter)
Now that I feel that I'm a cyborg,
I actually don't feel closer to robots and machines.
I feel closer to nature because I can feel my planet,
and I feel closer to other species
that I can relate to how they perceive reality.
I feel that we can learn a lot from other species
and how they perceive reality.
Sometimes,
what we think is very unnatural is actually very natural.
Like some animals can fly,
some animals can perceive infrared or ultraviolet.
Even immortality exists in nature -
because there's a jellyfish that never dies
and it keeps regenerating themselves.
So sometimes we can get inspired a lot by nature.
Also, through our senses, we experience the outside world -
and through our senses, we experience the outside world,
and there are many things that happen around us
that our senses don't allow us to perceive.
We feel that we don't do virtual reality, or AR, augmented reality.
We feel that we do RR, like revealed reality or real reality,
because through the creation of these new senses,
we can reveal a reality that exists
but we cannot perceive it with our natural senses.
For hundreds and hundreds of years,
humans have always been changing the environment
in order to live more comfortably,
but we think that maybe it's time to change ourselves
in order to live more according to the needs of our planet.
Maybe if you all had night vision, like some other species have,
during the night, we wouldn't have to turn on the light,
and then half of the planet would be dark
and the waste of energy would be much less.
Maybe we would control our own heating.
And not using air conditioners or heaters,
we wouldn't be wasting so much energy that actually is damaging our planet.
So maybe it's more natural to change ourselves,
like other species adapting to the environment,
rather than keep changing the planet.
We think that if we use the Internet as a sense,
we can feel things that happen very far from where we are.
Our senses no longer need to be attached to our body.
If we use the Internet as a sense,
we can feel things that happen on the other side of the planet
or even in space.
We feel that we can all become "sensetronauts"
and scroll space while we are on Earth.
I am a bit of sensetronaut
because I'm not connected in real-time,
but my current project is to connect to the seismic activity of the moon
because the moon also shakes and has moonquakes.
My current project is to connect to the seismic activity of the moon,
and this will allow me to be physically on Earth
but having my feet on the moon.
I feel that we can all become sensetronauts
and have a new sense for space exploration.
We no longer need to go physically to space and be an astronaut.
It's not like be on Earth and then explore space.
It's - I think it's more comfortable.
And just to end,
I think that we are the ones who need to decide
that the union between humans and technology has a positive impact.
We are the ones who need to decide
if the union between humans and technology doesn't distance us from nature
but instead bring us closer to all animals, to nature and to space.
Thank you.
(Applause)