Designing the “transhuman” mind to enhance brain function, explore consciousness and improve mental health
Growing advancements in neuroscience and psychology are inspiring artists and designers to investigate the brain and how transhumanism, the physical and mental enhancement of the human organism, can help us enhance brain function, explore consciousness and improve mental health.
The human brain is a complex organ of soft nervous tissue containing a colossal 100 billion neurons. This active cerebral matter functions as the centre of sensation and intellectual activity. While the human brain comprises 2% of our body mass, it expends a sizable 20% of our energy. Despite its extraordinary capacity, the brain remains a fatty organ of mystery.
Alongside scientific research, industries invest billions into brain science, product research and developing neurotechnologies towards cognitive enhancement and medical treatment. An emergence of trends like neurohacking, for example with Elon Musk’s endeavour Neuralink, shows unbound potential to transform a multitude of industries including education, healthcare, wellness and entertainment.
With the ever-growing demand for cognitive enhancement, improved health and expressing our unique identities, artists and designers have been exploring the brain and its transhuman potential through art and speculative design.
Neurohacking
In a recent neurotechnological breakthrough, wireless commands from a brain to a computer have been demonstrated for the first time for people with paralysis.
Designer Ada Rotomskytė forecasted a future scenario where wireless brain-machine interfaces are readily available and created a speculative biotech company called Neuru, with a goal to help people reach their full potential and treat brain disorders with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Brain Machine Interface (BMI) technology.
Neuru offers a human enhancement platform with a device for you to hack your brain and manage your mobility, sensory, cognitive, mood and psyche traits with a smart device. A wireless neurostimulator would communicate to your brain nuclei by sending electrical impulses through four electrodes that are implanted in your brain by a surgical robot.
Your brain would be connected to the device with bluetooth where you can change your traits and check diagnostics for brain activity and health. The project evokes curiosity and encourages people to both understand the technology and join the debate around the ethical regulations surrounding BMI.
Neuru, Ada Romotskytė, 2020 © The designer
Cyborgism
A cyborg is an individual who, with mechanical elements built into the body, can extend their abilities beyond human limitations.
Some consider people with prosthetic limbs as cyborgs, however those who have to use these prosthetic limbs often find them difficult to use and feel ‘fetishised’ as an ideal cyborg scenario when the reality of living with prosthetics is far more challenging.
On the contrary, some people choose to become human-machine hybrids and extend their physiological capacities with technology for more creative or problem solving reasons. A prominent cyborg artist, alongside Moon Ribas and Manuel De Aguas, is Neil Harbisson who was born completely colourblind. In 2004, against the decisions of bioethical committees, he found an anonymous doctor to implant an antenna into his skull.
In an interview with National Geographic, Neil explains, "the antenna picks up light frequencies and each light frequency goes into a chip that then vibrates," he said. "Then this vibration in my skull becomes sounds in my inner ear... so then I can hear the different notes of colour," by bone conduction.
Neil Harbisson © Laars Norgaard
Artist cyborgs are an emerging group enhancing their bodies and minds with technology, paving the way for future interventions in a world where cyborgism becomes more commonplace.
Memory
The idea of mortality is one of the largest existential angsts for people around the world, yet what if you could continue ‘existing’ through stored memories and robotics?
Martine Rothblatt commissioned Hanson Robotics to recreate her partner using artificial intelligence and robotics because she couldn’t bear the idea of the eventual death of her beloved partner.
Bina Aspen spent over one hundred hours compiling memories, feelings and beliefs to be stored in a ‘mind file’. Released in 2010, the bust-like head and shoulders can have a simple conversation in her voice, reflecting on her own worldview and memories.
Leaving your legacy, voice and identity as a robot to interact with the people you love could sound enticing, but the extension of a relationship past the natural ending of death steps into the realms of ‘the uncanny’, the psychological experience of something strangely familiar, yet eerie or unsettling.
The Story Of God With Morgan Freeman, Interview with BINA48, National Geographic
Mental Health
When globally, more than 264 million people suffer from depression (WHO, 30 Jan 2020), there’s hope for promising solutions to help treat the people suffering.
In the ‘Psychedelic Renaissance’, there has been an emergence of promising research for the potential of professionally facilitated psychedelic experiences for managing mental illnesses like treatment-resistant depression, PTSD, addiction and anxiety.
Besides helping manage mental illness, psychedelics have also shown promise for healthy adults by improving wellbeing and increasing the feeling of connection to nature and other people. Psychedelic retreats are becoming a popular wellness destination and centres like Synthesis Retreat near Amsterdam where psychedelic truffles are legal, welcome open-minded individuals who want to explore their consciousness, heal from the past and improve their wellbeing.
Triangle was a speculative clinic dedicated to psychedelic treatments for mental health challenges. In 2018, cultural consultants Axis Mundi staged a speculative semiotics performance at the ONCA gallery in Brighton, UK as part of their future fictions season, transporting the audience to the year 2030 to take part in the inaugural open day for Triangle: Centre for Deep Renewal.
The project imagined a future where psychedelic clinics were commonplace. Yet as legalisation and decriminalisation of psychedelics like magic mushrooms happens around the world, and a wave of funding for leading-edge startups, this is already taking place in 2021.
Triangle: Centre for Deep Renewal, 2018, © Axis Mundi and Louise Jolly. View the diegetic prototype, the Triangle Brochure.
(R)evolution of the Mind
Ultimately, with advancing technology and increased access to tools known to expand consciousness, improve memory and treat mental health, there’s a momentum in the space of neurological and cognitive enhancement.
Solutions for the growing mental illness epidemic worldwide are needed. The ability to hack our brains is desired.
Art, design and technology are speculating how our future could be, from surgical prosthetics and AI replication robots to brain machine interfaces and psychedelic clinics.
Accelerating past the pace of legislation and bioethics committees, how far will society progress to create transhuman minds? How will the human race evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations by means of technology and science? Will there be an evolution of intelligence and wellbeing for the wealthiest people around the world, further increasing the poverty divide? Only time will tell.