Cyborg Encounters: Three Art-Science Interactions

This contribution includes three selected works from an exhibition on Cyborg Encounters. These works deal with hybrid connections of human and non-human species that (might) emerge as a result of enhancement technologies and bio-technological developments. They offer not only an artistic exploration of contemporary but also futuristic aspects of the subject. Followed by an introduction by Melike Şahinol, Critically Endangered Artwork (by Ayşe Melis Okay) highlights Turkey’s ongoing problems of food poverty and the amount of decreasing agricultural lands. It displays seeds of a promising endemic plant to mitigate these problems using the seeds of the Thermopsis Turcica, a herbaceous perennial endemic plant. Ecomasculinist Pregnancy (by Burak Taşdizen and Charles John McKinnon Bell) follows the design fiction methodology and illustrates a future scenario through a patient’s diary and the medical letters he receives during his pregnancy with an extinct sea-lion. Polluted Homes (by Beyza Dilem Topdal) is a fictional art installation consisting of polychaete species evolved in time under the ecological circumstances prevalent in the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara today. These works show, that manufacturing life has consequences, not only for the human body and its physical appearance, but also, for example, for gender orders, the social structure of society, and even the environment, and thus for (re)shaping (non)living matter and their environments. This Art-Science Collection intends to provide an impetus for debate about the extent to which cyborg encounters should be taken seriously.

of a universe, in between past, present, and future constituted of hybrids born from the coupling of humans and nonhumans, beyond species and genders. It lived in the duality of integrated circuits and feelings of monachopsis, defying the order of things, and has provided a view through an art-science kaleidoscope onto a set of cyborg variations [1]. The artworks for this exhibition were jointly developed based on the seminar "Qualitative Approaches in STS: Cyborgs and Technobodies" (Özyeğin University, "Design, Technology and Society", held by Melike Şahinol). During this seminar, students dealt with the topic of body modification, human enhancement, cyborgs, its sustainability as well as future body images in art and design, becoming familiar with central topics concerning relationships between body, identity, technology, and societal issues.
Three of the works were further developed for this publication. They show an entanglement of fiction and reality against the background of cyborg theories, human enhancement, feminist technoscience, and politics of dis/ability. The contributions refer to the human organic as well as to modifications of plants and changes in marine life as a result of the natureculture reciprocal relationship. At the same time, these contributions show that "[h]uman pathways not only are bound up with other species, such as microbes, plants, and animals," but "also with technology" [2], representing a provocation to deal with the consequences of the awareness of this interrelation and rhizome-like connection between nature and culture.

Critically Endangered Artwork (by Ayşe Melis Okay)
Critically Endangered Artwork, 2019 Seeds of Vuralia turcica, Glass Containers, 13 × 22 × 8 cm It was my first encounter with Piyan, in 2016, when I visited Nezahat Gökyiğit Botany Garden, the only botany garden of Istanbul that is located near the highway in Atasehir. It was springtime and Piyan was charming with its golden yellow flowers. I was more astonished when I learned that it is in the ex situ protection plan in this botany garden of Istanbul. Piyan is the local name of Vuralia turcica. It is called Piyan or Eber Sarısı (Eber's Yellow) in Afyon and Konya. Vuralia turcica is on the red list of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) and labeled as critically endangered since 2000. The species of Vuralia turcica in the provinces of Afyon and Konya are threatened with extinction due to agricultural activities such as deforestation and water irrigation. Vuralia turcica is an endemic plant that likes to live in muddy terrains between Eber and Aksehir lakes along the Sultan mountains. The specific microclimate between Eber and Aksehir lakes and the Sultan mountains is forming a great environment for the perennial herb. Recently, however, life on planet Earth has become difficult for Vuralia turcica. The provinces of Afyon and Konya, where it is endemic, are also Turkey's prime areas for agriculture.
Peasants in the region, feeling the ever-intensifying burn of capitalist agriculture, are looking to expand their fields, and as such, they have been pushing into the areas where Vuralia turcica has been living, unbeknownst, for centuries. Concurrently, it is now stuck between the expanding fields of cherries. Deforestation, overuse of groundwater, increasing use of pesticides, and artificial fertilizers that affect the soil and water health of the region are thus pushing Vuralia turcica into extinction (Fig. 1).
On the other hand, scientists are attracted to the species due to a specific gene that leads to a multi-carpellary View from the exhibition "Cyborg Encounters" at the STS TURKEY conference at ITU, 2019 ovary. As a result of the feature of the multi-carpellary ovary, the plant gives three or four fruits per flower, while another species from the same family of Fabaceae gives only one fruit. This specialty makes the plant unique among 18,000 plants in the same family.
In this artwork, I investigate how Vuralia turcica is interpreted differently across multiple geographies. What do these interpretations tell us about the ways in which social relations are constructed around Vuralia turcica, particularly in the process of gene research for commercialization? And, looking at Vuralia turcica's course of (differing) translations from the field to the lab, what can we say about the ways in which ecosystems are treated in the Anthropocene (Figs. 2  and 3)?
Critically Endangered Artwork shows seeds of Vuralia turcica in two glass containers. One is implicating the people living under the poverty line in Turkey while the other one is presenting the amount of decreasing agricultural lands with references from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK) and displays seeds of a promising endemic plant to mitigate these problems. This art-science interaction work follows semiotics and illustrates ratios of two problems of Turkey. At the same time, it questions the value ascribed to the artwork as well as to its material content, critically endangered seeds. Critically endangered species is a category of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). The artwork takes its name from the red list of threatened species of IUCN (Fig. 4).
I find interpretations of the same plant in multiple geographies and how those perceptions are completing the reality of Vuralia turcica. The life of Vuralia turcica in both geographies is both a means of survival and a way of resisting industrial agricultural development and can only be fully understood through an analysis of relations of species between terrains and laboratory. Expanding agricultural lands and water irrigation bring Vuralia turcica into extinction. However, I argue that the extraction of the multi-carpellary gene will be utilized by the same dominant mode of agriculture. An analysis of relations between terrains and laboratory through Vuralia turcica will reveal how conventional agriculture is shaped by modern biotechnology. While conventional agriculture leads to the extinction of Vuralia turcica, its survival comes with biotechnology to be used again in conventional agriculture. This cycle from the terrains to the lab and from the lab to the terrains shows how modern biotechnology differs from conventional agriculture.
The artwork studies social and political impacts of possible plant enhancement manufacturing, metaphorically showing and implying effects of organic-inorganic and human-nonhuman entanglements. Reconstructions of seeds of Vuralia turcica through practices of biotechnology and gene editing technologies are articulated through it. The human is the link here, bonding a plant with a technology, while plant enhancement is questioning the nature-culture duality.
The artwork was informed by texts written by Knorr-Cetina [3], Haraway [4], and Kirksey and Helmreich [5]. The installation brings science and conceptual art together with a skeptical interpretation.

Introduction
We find ourselves in a world slowly recovering from a climate catastrophe, and with humanity in need of redefinition and redemption. Sea levels and temperatures have risen unsustainably, and ocean biodiversity is depleted. Humankind can no longer simply adapt-it needs to fundamentally change its connection to, and place within, nature. Various voluntary co-operative  Europe has become such an unfortunate place to be in, battling regular heat waves, droughts and climate migrants. Instead of producing more and more humans, probably one of the most detrimental species, why not adopt an already suffering one from a less privileged geography? Obviously that marine mammal rests in peace now, so why bring it back to this planet?

Ecomasculinist Pregnancy
Yiluak first undergoes hormonal transformation with estrogens and progestogens, allowing his gonadotrophic rhythms to echo those of previous mothers. When his body is ready, he is implanted with a womb grown from his own stem cells-yet these are cells which Yiluak has voluntarily provided, and in which the single transcription factor sry, which made him develop his male gonads and soma, has been inactivated. He becomes pregnant with the implantation of the cyborg egg in his cyborg womb and enables the growth of the fetus with traditionally female hormones; he lactates, injecting himself with prolactin and oxytocin, and forms the maternal bond. Many of the serious dog people I have met doing my research emphasize the importance to dogs of jobs that leave them less vulnerable to human consumerist whims. Weisser knows many livestock people whose guardian dogs are respected for the work they do. Some are beloved and some are not, but their value does not depend on an economy of affection.

Reading Haraway, my concerns regarding animal labor vaporized. This sea lion is a sea lion;
she won't be domesticated. She will work in the oceans, making the planet a better place to be. My love for her does not assign her a value, or any value at all. My birth is an ecological act of kindness, a favor in the repopulation of species, and recovery of the oceans. I will not contain this animal, but rather use our queer maternal bones to reconnect with it on occasion. Like seeing an old friend and making eye contact across the room, we will recognize our offspring in its own autonomous environment, undomesticated.

Following Birth
Yiluak gives birth to their child Mononoke and cares for the newborn, including producing milk for its sustenance, then freely releases it into the ocean. After its release into the wild, Mononoke contributes to the ecosystem and the healing of the vulnerable Earth through her very existence: like a cyborg ocean police, she reports back to scientists on ocean patterns and on any potential mistreatment of ocean life in a sustainable way, while breaking down dangerous metabolites in a way necessary for ecosystem survival. Play between humans and pets, as well as simply spending time peace by hanging out together, brings joy to all the participants. Surely that is one important meaning of companion species. Nonetheless, the status of pet puts a dog at special risk in societies like the one I live in-the risk of abandonment when human affection wanes, when people's convenience takes precedence or when the dog fails to deliver the fantasy of unconditional love.

Introduction
Polluted Homes is a fictional art installation consisting of polychaete species evolved in time under the ecological circumstances that Bosphorus and Marmara Sea face today. Known as the ecological corridor, Bosphorus is a home to many different non-humans ranging from the bottom in deep sea sediments to the shore.
In the proposed alternative reality, the sea creatures mingle with pollutants as allies. This installation as an art practice between reality and fiction is subverting the dualistic approaches such as human and non-human, machine and organism, or social and biological. The art piece has emerged from the inspiration coming from laboratory visits that kick-started the Ph.D. research of the artist. Inviting the viewer to participate in a worldmaking practice [6,7], the work is informed by design fiction [8], multispecies ethnography [9], and cyborg and crip literature [10][11][12]. While the biological and social reality of 0.5-cm critters are woven with anthropocentric destruction, such tiny organisms enlarged on a sand dune collected from the shores of the Bosphorus become an intervention at the gallery space. The evolved species are in kinship with pollution to come into life again [10]. Polluted Homes was led by the question: if the life of marine fauna depends on the well-being and ability of the sea, what is the disabled agency of critters telling us?

Polluted Homes
Polluted Homes is a series of macro-fauna fossils collected in 3019 from the sand dunes where Bosphorus is located today. The piece is an extension of the artist's Ph.D. research "Critters of Crippled Seas" that she started at an ecology laboratory where scientists identify marine benthic organisms taken from sediment samples, aiming to monitor the health of Bosphorus. During this indexing process, the body is separated from the identity as the critters become a live data source. With qualitative data from laboratory visits, interviews and field walks at Poyrazkoy and Garipce, cyborg macro-fauna species had emerged (Fig. 5), based on the participant interviews where sometimes science and imagination were intertwined.
While juxtaposing the present and the future, the artwork is drawing attention to the life possibilities in post-human environments. It proposes speculative cyborg bodies, where the cyborg is a hybrid notion of animal and pollution [4]. These critters and seashells have evolved through the circumstances of heavy metal and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) accumulation in the bottom of the sea (benthic area) where they used to live. They live with an elongated and tangled few-meters-long palp to catch food in blurry waters, solidifying in their metallic protective shells as more heavy metal accumulates in the crippled sea. Crippled sea is the response of Bosphorus to how it can take on new life forms instead of trying to survive in the Anthropocene. The pink color of fossil forms is alluding to the rose bengal ethanol that is being used today in the ecology laboratory that dyes macro-faunas during the experiment (Fig. 6).
The installation brings fiction and science together with an ambiguous, playful expression. The sculptures are produced through a labor-intensive, ritualistic process, similar to how the ecology laboratory works. In contrast to the dark futurology of the Anthropocene, the collection is referring to the livable Cthulucene [13]. While focusing on the resurgence, the agency of critters is tackling feminist crip technoscience and post-humanism [14][15][16][17].
In search of other possible lives, this artwork is influenced by principles of critical design and conceptual art. The conceptual language of the installation stems from the speculative design perspective proposed by Dunne and Raby [8] who define the future not as a destination but a means to make one's imagination flourish.
Accordingly, critical design can be playful, provocative, and even dark: "It is more about the positive use of negativity, not negativity for its own sake but to draw attention to a scary possibility in the form of a cautionary tale" ( [8] p. 35). While life out of polluted sediment ruins fosters [18], evolved species on the sand dune provoke the reality. Looming as the opposite of what natural science is, the sea keeps on waving crippled.
While the first version of the artwork was exhibited at the group show Cyborg Encounters initiated by Dr. Melike Şahinol during the STS Turkey Conference at Istanbul Technical University (Fig. 5), the second version of the project has been exhibited with new species at the + D Gallery during the Sonar 2020 festival at Zorlu Performance Art Center, Istanbul (Figs. 6, 7, and 8).
The latest iteration of this piece has been exhibited with new species designs at Pilot Gallery, Istanbul, during the group exhibition "What Water Knows" curated by Azra Tüzünoğlu (Fig. 9). The fossils were displayed on the sand dune leaking from the wall offering the viewer an encounter with the other possible states of being of the sea, inviting them at the corner of the gallery to think about the relationship we have established with Bosphorus. These enlarged sea worms are bodies that are likely to exist and invite  the viewer to go closer, engage and explore them with a careful gentle look (Fig. 10).
Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
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