Figure 4 - uploaded by Gudrun Frommherz
Content may be subject to copyright.
Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam. Sistine Chapel, Rome, 1508-12 (above) and schematic of brain shape overlapping the Creator (below). (From Paluzzi et al. 2007 # Royal Society of Medicine; used with permission; color figure available online)
Source publication
Using the example of an emerging transhumanist visuality, this article discusses visual communication as memes; cultural units that follow the logic of evolutionary transmission. Memes are thought to self-replicate, based on the principles of competition, inheritance, variation and mutation [Dawkins 1976 Dawkins , Richard 1976 The Selfish Gene. Oxf...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... ''Creation of Adam'' (1508-12) is a painting of the Italian High Renaissance [ Figure 4]. The Renaissance is thought to have moved European cultural thinking towards rationality, placed the humanistic, proto-scientific method at the center of knowledge, and sought to formalize a universal aesthetic. ...
Context 2
... standing its cosmogonic theme, the painting also questions the ultimate source of sublimity. Some art-historic interpretations of the painting see God reaching out from his position sitting in a shape that resembles the sagittal section of the human brain, complete with brain stem, basilar artery, pituitary gland and optic chiasma [see Figure 4, bottom]. The physician Frank Lynn Mershberger [1990] analyzed this painting by identifying specific regions of the brain in corre- spondence with the figures around God (e.g., the ''sad angel'' placed at an area of the brain that is understood to be involved in sad thoughts; God is superimposed over the limbic system that is the emotional center of the brain, a place that has been thought of as the seat of the soul). ...
Similar publications
This paper is a study of the application of Memetic computation integrating and coordinating intelligence algorithms to solve the problems of error compensation for a high-precision numeral control machining system. The primary focus is on development of integrated intelligent computation approach to set up an error compensation system of a numeral...
Difficult black-box problems arise in many scientific and industrial areas. In this paper, efficient use of a hardware accelerator to implement dedicated solvers for such problems is discussed and studied based on an example of Golomb Ruler problem. The actual solution of the problem is shown based on evolutionary and memetic algorithms accelerated...
Cohn (1996) and Taruskin (1985) consider the increasing prominence during the nineteenth century of harmonic progressions derived from the hexatonic and octatonic pitch collections respectively. This development is clearly evident in music of the third quarter of the century onwards and is a consequence of forces towards non-diatonic organization l...
Ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithms have proved to be able to adapt for solving dynamic optimization problems (DOPs). The integration of local search algorithms has also proved to significantly improve the output of ACO algorithms. However, almost all previous works consider stationary environments. In this paper, the MAX-MIN Ant System, one o...
Citations
... Internet memes substantially affect public opinion and discourse, especially in political contexts, due to their adaptability and widespread reach. Therefore, Internet memes can be strategically employed as instruments for persuasion and emotion manipulation, thereby enhancing their influence on people' perceptions and collective attitudes toward political matters (Frommherz, 2013;Rice, 2023;Wu & Fitzgerald, 2023). Internet memes can both reflect and change how complicated reality is shown, especially when young people are feeling politically charged. ...
... The obstinate repetition of ever-same visions in popular transhumanist imagery enforces the believability of its fictions by sheer persistence of vision (Mitchell 2005, 27), a "dumb insistence on repeating the same message" over and over. The stubborn assertion of self-same imaginings of the human future produces familiar iconographies of expectation (Gould 1989) and turns visual fantasy into visual memes (Frommherz 2013). These memes are comprised of simplified entities of cultural content that move between images, communicative contexts, and the minds of their audiences (Blackmore 2003;Brodie 1996;Dawkins 1976). ...
... The relative disinterest toward a more refined appreciation of cultural history in transhumanist discourse allows for the formation of visual memes (i.e., synoptic units of epistemological shorthand), which appear in the cyborg image as decontextualised icons of a seemingly continuous and historically validated mandate for a participant evolution (Clynes and Kline 1960) or technogenesis (Hayles 2012). The fantasy of participant evolution is particularly visible in the Stages of Human Evolution/March of Progress meme (Frommherz 2013), where humanity is destined to evolve toward technological transcendence in even, linear, and inevitable progression ( Figure 5.3). ...
Following a detailed analysis of popular cyborg images that circulate on the internet, this article discusses the leading visual communication strategies of what was identified as the emerging genre of a “transhumanist visuality.” The article argues that the visual registers of cyborg images decontextualise and repurpose popular icons from cultural history, in particular from the streams of classic humanism, in order to construct visual memes that both reflect and propagate the transhumanist worldview. The purpose of the discussion is to show how the fanciful images of a techno-fantasy guide the public perception of human future as positively technological.
The paper has been the winner of the Image International Award for Excellence (2017). See http://ontheimage.com/journal/awards
This chapter introduces the notion of myth and its relevance for the understanding of transhumanism and the radical human enhancement movement. Hauskeller explains how transhumanist arguments in support of radical human enhancement rely on the plausibility of certain narratives about what it means to be human and what a good human life consists in. Arguing that what we commonly see as the progression from mythos to logos, story to argument, emotion to reason, intuition to rational thinking, and subjectivity to objectivity, is not, and can never be, complete, logos (rational argument) is shown to be firmly rooted in mythos (a practice of story-telling), which gives logos its direction and purpose.
