Post-Hyperceptivism

(this is follow on 4 from the original Hyperceptivism blog)

The wheels in my head have been turning, in infrared, of course.

Time-lapse video of the Orlando (Next) Eye

A few posts ago I proposed a name for the new art movement:  Hyperceptivism.  It is a style or art movement originating with technology that records unseen aspects of subjects through energy, radiance, events or other phenomena, as new art media, and translates this into visual, audible, tactile or other recordings as an interpretation of appreciable art form.

Hyperceptivism includes art forms capturing natural phenomena unseen by the naked eye:   X-ray art, Thermal-imaging art, Nuclear particle bombardment art, Full Spectrum photography and more.  It could be the new art form for the 21st century.  



Since I first blogged on it, I posted a few more blogs discussing thoughts about where visualizing the unseen can take us.  I wrote post 1 and post 2 about the unseen radiance at twilight.  I asked a question in the blog on trees about what will happen if humans remain limited in their cognitive abilities.  Here I want to pose the opposite scenario:

What if we are not limited cognitively--Where could hyperceptivism lead next?

As the public grows more familiar with seeing the invisible in visual art, hearing the unheard translated in music, and perhaps touching what isn't felt through sculpture and tactile art forms, the individual view of the world will expand.  Enjoying the not-sensed in art could encourage desires to have personal experience with this unseen, unheard, untouched world, and not just at the art gallery.

That leads me to Post-Hyperceptivism or Neo-Perceptivism, the next art movement that will arrive once humans are augmented technologically--augmented in reality--such that their sensory systems can perceive formerly unsensed phenomena.  Then augmented artist will use these new forms in a new art movement that would become post-hyperceptive into neo-perceptive.

This is logical.  Humans are already getting augmented. Yes, there are internal surgical implants--and I will get to those in a moment--but everyday our brains are externally augmented with now-common technology.  You could hardly survive in modern society without having a smart phone to look up information at will, navigate anywhere at the moment, or entertain yourself in myriad ways.  Your smart phone, all but connected to your hand, augments your abilities.

Your HD TV is giving way to 4x higher resolution in 4K screens--showing details that even surpass retina screens and biological retinas.  Music sampled at 16-bits on CDs is giving way to 5.1 and even 7.1 surround sound with poly-aural capacity that just two ears barely appreciate.  You can remain connected to friends around the world, almost continuously--and when you drop connection in the middle of a busy coffee shop--you'll feel even more isolated (perhaps even anxious) than when you went on a remote camping trip before there was an internet.  Yes, kids, there was an age before all of this.



The virtual world is flooding with visual and audio details that increasingly surpass the natural world.  The rising generation appreciates this more than the older generations.  They prefer to be online, the never-ending stream of media and the feeling of connection through virtual communities. They prefer the digital reality to that of the dull natural world and boring people proximate to them.  Practically the only thing that can get a teen to lift her head from her phone screen is if you could embed that display into her sight directly.  She would jump that implant technology in an instant.

Implants are already happening.  While not exactly implanted, eyeglasses are the earliest form I can recall. A new pair even removes color-blindness from the formerly colorblind by just slightly altering the spectral band of the incoming light. This is akin to how I use filters in my variety of hyperceptivism art.  Even more illustrative are Cochlear implants--those little surgically implanted neural boxes that give many deaf persons the ability to hear.  Not just hear like a normal human, but superior to normal.  New C.I. enables hearing whispers from across the room, to filter a lot of noise for particular sounds, and new models will even translate sound frequencies that are out of normal range for human hearing.

Exoskeletons (invented by some of my coworkers) and bionic limbs allow and will increasingly enable recipients abilities that exceed the abilities of normal limbs. Imagine the artist using an exoskeleton to lift what is beyond even the strongest human capability, and to express what it feels like to have personal super-human strength.  DARPA, one of the U.S. military's most advanced and well funded research agencies, announced recently funding for projects to increase targeted neuroplasticity training to "accelerate acquisition of cognitive skills in healthy individuals using non-invasive peripheral nerve stimulation."  Imagine how the artist could use super-enhanced cognitive skills to express how it feels to be a super-computer with human emotions. DARPA has also funded programs to develop implantable neuroprosthetics that not only could help damaged brains but could develop interfaces that link directly to devices like smart phones.

Given this blog is about Next Eyes, I envision that not too long in the future, our eyes will gain technological advantages by increasing resolution and optical zoom with external or even implantable ocular-prosthetics. I'm talking literally about our Next Eyes.  I even invented and developed technologies (with several patented) that translates multiple x-ray energies into equivalent visible color, that if made efficient enough, could allow us to see x-rays with our own eyes.  Additionally, in another patent, I outline devices that could translate thermal emissive energies into color visible images.  Thermal images, like those in thermal infrared cameras, up-converted in energy into color images, seen by our eyes would allow us to see as well at night as we do in the day.  The materials used for the patents I filed could fit on contact-lens sized films and open Next Eyes for a coming generation.



Though our eyes are limited to mixing color from 3 main colors, I have patents pending (and now awarded) on fast video imaging using 16 or more colors (and mixed into a billion times more color).  This ability could allow us to see the unseen, find cancer at its earliest stages, detect deadly gases that are currently invisible and much more.

The future holds the promise that humans will exceed their biological abilities with a new evolution in technology augmentation. But many ask, should human's do this?

Augmentation will catch on with the rising generation--when our biological senses are like 1980s VGA and cassette tapes, the augmented reality is not just improved sight, hearing and more.  Augmentation is an upgrade that will give us abilities we have never had nor will probably ever evolve naturally. Who but the old and tired would reject this augmentation?

When this happens, a new post-hyperceptivism art movement will begin.  I've already rambled and taken too much space/time here, so I will leave what kind of art will develop in post-hyperceptivism for a later blog.

I just hope that by now, I have convinced you that we are amidst the Hyperceptivism art movement already.