Robot, 2023. R7500

Robot, 2023. Pencil on 250gsm Fabriano, 500x700mm. Framed. 
In posthuman virtual reality dehumanisation develops and hybrids of humans and machines are created. The American feminist Donna Haraway (1944) describes the cyborg as a hybrid of social reality and fiction. She says: “Take evolution. The notion that you would or would not ‘believe’ in evolution already gives away the game. If you say, ‘Of course I believe in evolution’, you have lost, because you have entered the semiotics of representationalism – and post-truth, frankly. You have entered an arena where these are all just matters of internal conviction and have nothing to do with the world. You have left the domain of worlding.”[1] The French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) said that animals are mechanical beings that function like automata or machines, that is, they do not show signs of non-material souls. According to him animals do not think rationally; they do not talk or philosophise.[2]  This viewpoint that elicited much criticism can be considered as visionary of today’s cyborg and robotic culture.
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[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/20/donna-haraway-interview-cyborg-manifesto-post-truth
[2] See Descartes’s Discourse on method, 1637, and Meditations, 1641.