The Hybronaut

I have developed a concept that attempts to emphasize, cross, and further blur the borders of technology and the human. My artistic research work experiments with a networked human, whose body and environment are characteristically techno-organic. This concept developed as the techno-organic figure, what I call “the Hybronaut.” The Hybronaut proposes an “action” state of a human, whose existence and identity are deeply intertwined with its networked hybrid environment. It is understood as an entity which is constructed of physical, social, technological, and other relations formed in a hybrid environment, and which suggests a perception of a human as a system that breaks away from thinking of a human as a clearly framed whole with defined borders.

The Hybronaut’s living environment – hybrid environment – is a mesh of links and connections that constitute a network of relations, actions, humans, and diverse materials in a heterogeneous assembly and in which the Hybronaut is seen simultaneously as the middle from which relations expand and simultaneously, simply, as one of the nodes in a large network of connections. In other words, the Hybronaut is a figure whose existence is profoundly based on a hybrid environment and various kinds of relations formed in this environment. In this situation technology is no longer considered solely as a communication channel for taking care of tasks or delivering messages, but has become one dimension of an environment, as well as an essential element of a networked human. The Hybronaut is not an enhanced isolated body, but an entity that is in close connection with its environment.

The actual experiments are constituted in the form of wearable equipment that is offered for public testing. These wearable artworks offer a possibility of entering into the Hybronaut’s perspective and experience his/her Umwelt. The experiments investigate what happens when network-ability is embedded in a human. How will I feel and how will I see the world around me? And what does it mean for my existence as a human?