Augmentation as (a lens for) living was a zine produced and distributed by the Augmentation Lab during the 2023 Augmentation Residency. The following are digital excerpts from the zine, but the content is meant to be interacted with in its original physical form.
Excerpt
Augmentation is the play (war, romance) between the machine and the god inside us all.
We are born with a set of circumstances (raw materials) — our genes, our physical body, our place in society — and through the process of living, we seek to both understand and create anew with the raw materials we were given. We augment our physical bodies, our personalities, the stories that create meaning in our lives.
In doing so, we are both Gods and Machines — both programmed by our nature and free to design our own destinies.
Augmentation is about multiplicity. To be at once man and machine is to embody multiplicities of both body and story — within us lay juxtaposed our biology and artificiality at play; about us dance in harmonic dissonance our narratives of humanity and transcendence — at play.
Through stitching being (meaning) out of disparate sources — of flesh and metal and bone — we become more other than (free from) the sum of our parts. Through being, we break; through being, we unite (create). It is in this destructive act of entering cyborghood that we become free - from both flesh and word.
Our multiplicity, partiality, liberates.
If you want to print your own zine, you can find the pdf version here:
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