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FEATURE
NEW BODIES— NO LIMITS TO DESIGN? by Ed Keller ED KELLER, PARSONS’ ASSOCIATE DEAN OF DISTRIBUTED LEARNING AND TECHNOLOGY, DESCRIBES THE ROLE OF ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS IN DEVELOPING EXTENDED PERCEPTIONS OF THE HUMAN BODY AND CALLS ON PRACTITIONERS TO IMAGINE AND DESIGN SUSTAINABLE SYSTEMS TO SAFEGUARD THE COLLECTIVE BODY OF HUMANITY
“These are the oldest memories on Earth, the time-codes carried in every chromosome and gene. Every step we’ve taken in our evolution is a milestone inscribed with organic memories. Each one of us is as old as the entire biological kingdom, and our bloodstreams are tributaries of the great sea of its total memory. … [Our] central nervous system is a coded time scale, each nexus of neurons and each spinal level marking a symbolic station, a unit of neuronic time.”
—J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World