 speaker is Moe who works for the Cyborg Foundation and she will be presenting this foundation now which was founded I think in 2017 in Barcelona and we will now learn much more about this so please give a warm round of applause. Hello, do you hear me well? Yes, okay thank you. So as they said my name is Moe Akamaknet and I work in Cyborg Foundation labs and it's what I'm going to present today. It's been a long time since I don't give a talk so please and I didn't sleep very much so please be benevolent with me okay. I'll talk about CFL and its story. First of all I'll be a little bit fast in the story and then I will explain what we are up to right now. So the beginnings of the Cyborg Foundation was created by these two artists, Nail Harbison and Moon Ribas that you might know. They are both considered by media the two first female and male cyborg artists and well as you can see the CF what it does it's an organization that encourages humans to become cyborgs and promote cyborgism as an art movement. So first of all I'll talk about Nail Harbison. Nail Harbison is a person that has his color blind. He only sees in gray scale so then in 2004 he decided to get an implant in his skull of an antenna. It's called a nyborg and what it does is that it detects colors as frequencies so he has the sound connected to his skull and the vibrations of the colors he can read them. So whenever he hears an F, a Fa, it's color red for example. Later on nowadays he decided he wanted to get crown, a sense of time, a solar crown which is a sensor that it's a sense that we are developing right now in Cyborg Foundation labs. This time sense is very interesting because well here on the left I think on the right on your left you can see the circuit that we did so this time sense it's a crown that reproduces the movement of the earth towards the sun so well not towards the sun towards itself and the thing is that it gives different points of hot with some resistors depending on where the sun is so if he feels here the heat this means that it's 12 in London I hope you understand me a little bit but yes and so this was a problem to elaborate because with different with Arduino you don't have you have too much pins and you have too much power too much current so you have like a lot of current and it's impossible to power it up so then we decided to work with a tiny 85 and the idea that we had is to use this microcontroller called ws2811 which is a shift register and that is used for RGB LEDs okay and we are generating 12 inputs of hot with those resistors using only the tiny 85 and yeah and what is very interesting about this is that Neil Harrison his idea is that you know that Einstein he says if we have eyes as we have eyes we can we have time illusions no not time illusion sorry optic illusions okay so if his if his brain is able to connect to feel time instead of the 24 hours day we have feeling time through the through his skull he will be able to have time illusions I don't know if you understood that because maybe I'm not explaining myself very good but the thing is that when he you know that our brain is very plastic so it can get used to the new sensors that we are introducing it to our body so the thing is that when he feels all this heat going around his head he has this perception of time and if he slows down this this this rotatory time passing he he thinks that he's going to be able to slow his perception of time so to age slower okay so now you have to sink this then I'm going to talk about Moon Rivas she's a choreographer and dancer and she like 2007 she got these seismic sensors on her feet that were connected to Bluetooth to a mobile phone to some servers that reproduced the different seismic movements that are around the world and she does these performances with a big um tambour okay we have big drum and uh he she reproduces all the earthquakes that have happened for example in Mexico from 1880 till nowadays but two months ago she decided to take off these seismic sensors and what it's very interesting as I said before our brain is very plastic so for more than 10 years she had these sensors so when she took them off her brain was repeating these movements you so that's what it's called ghost cyborg because she doesn't have any more these sensors but um she feels the vibrations um another uh circuit that we elaborated is the Transdental Communication System it's a Bluetooth tooth both near harbison and Moon Rivas they included a Bluetooth enabled button button and a mini vibrator so they could talk via Morse code by pressing their teeth right now they took it off so they're not wearing it anymore but they used it for some years um then later on after 2017 some more people got inside the project and we changed the name and we call it Transpecies Society well it's just it's the same but just another name so I'm just gonna pass fast here in your uh right you can see Manel Munoz which is another cyborg artist um Manel Munoz he has a barometric sense that it sends pressure temperature and humidity um first of all this circuit circuit used to um make um vibrations in his skull so the thing is you have this circuit no which senses humidity pressure and temperature and depending on the levels of these three parameters um he will feel uh some vibrations stronger or slow our our softer vibrations but nowadays we changed um this circuit and the input that he's receiving is um is uh a bone conduction sound wave so he has this flash memory inside the circuit which reproduces bubble sounds and depending on if it's more pressure or if it's more humid he will feel more more bubbles a different type of um um bubble and that's it so nowadays um this year 2019 uh we created the cyborg foundation labs which is like a new emerging for us and we are centered um we are based in Barcelona and we give voice to non-human identities um we are a group of technicians philosophers designers and artists as I already said that we explored the relationship between species and also um how we can evolve as humans uh as you see we can we base our experimentation or nature it's you know nature because humans we have five senses no but depending on how you check it we have five six seven it depends but the idea is that um we looked through nature through all the beings because um they have some senses that we don't and this helps us a lot to innovate um this till now I've only talked about artists I don't consider myself an artist I consider myself a technician and I I am from the crowd of technicians no um well technicians are the core of the association and we are the ones to create all these ideas that artists have or that we um by our self have then we have philosophers who are the ones that um generate cyborg theory and some designers that are the ones that um take care of the materials here I am I just wrote some because I don't want to only talk about artists so I just put technicians here fenix binario he's um the main technician and he's a great um developer and he uh is the one to generate all these new circuits that we have to generate because all these new circuits are not created yet they um we invent them using the materials and the circuits that we have in a commercial view um we apply it uh to our um domain and rebuild them and improve them well we also have Judith Perez who is a designer but she's also a technician and myself and I don't have a website so I didn't put my website the philosopher Tatiana Fanador Lopez and a designer Orialba there are many many more people collaborating with us but I didn't have time to put them all they they are they didn't connect me so never mind okay now I'm going to talk about uh cosmic race organ this organ is um an organ that helps you to detect the cosmic rays that travel around the atmosphere um cosmic rays are uh these particles they crash onto the atmosphere and um they and also to moans and the thing is that we used a project from the MIT that they designed which um I don't know if there's someone here from the MIT but there were a lot of errors in the circuit but um we are using this uh circuit from the MIT where they detect um this uh the cosmic rays the thing is that you have uh cell with some ox oxy oxy I don't know how you say it inside a dark chamber with a silty later okay which is a type of polymer and this helps you to it it bounces these particles bounce and they reduce the speed of the muons so that we can detect them so we detect these muons and we give an input to to the person that has this sense and in this case we did the same as the pressure as the as the pressure sense where this person is going to hear frequencies and sounds and right now um we are as I said before presenting myself here um we are developing a new way because one of the most problems that we have with our sensors with our sensors sorry is that um it's battery problems because um these new organs are supposed to to be with you all your life at least one year no so um what do you do with power it's a big problem so right now we are just developing I wanted to bring a prototype here but um some materials that we bought didn't arrive so I was not able to bring it but we are right now um developing this c-beck effect um it's the first prototype developed ever and I don't know if you know what c-beck effect is but it's a thermoelectric effect and this thermoelectric effect what it does is that it um it converts temperature difference to voltage and it also and also vice versa so um as you can see here we have um the prototype designed and uh well the back view is just the aluminum it's just the back view so whatever then we can see the um dissipator the head sink heat sink and the chip basically what you have is two planks of two different materials like copper and constantan I don't know how to say it in English but whatever and the thing is that when they enter in contact with uh with uh with your skin um between there is uh if there is a difference of temperature it is going to generate voltage so to generate voltage the temperature must be at least from nine to eleven Celsius and uh if the temperature is if the difference of temperature is lower it will set to evenate that's why if the temperature is higher we will have a battery so that we can help we can store it and and use it when necessary um it's still a prototype so we are still working on it and figuring out the charge and the discharge systems and which i see we can use here you can see in the top view you can see these are the the plates that will be in contact with the skin and yeah i'm well so to finish i would like to say that um our future expectations is to generate a bidirectional connection because as i explained you um right now we have the the uh medium i mean the wall so the wall um generate some inputs no and these sensors that we have they read these inputs and they throw some output that us as human will read as an input but this is a unidirectional connection as you can see there is no back and forth between the sensor and and our self so our expectations are from the for the future are to um to generate this bidirectional connection where you are able to communicate with your organ and the organ is able to communicate with yourself uh um and i'm i'm actually done i i don't know if i've been super um fast but the thing is that uh we are uh calling for engineers to come work with us in Barcelona we can work also um on distance and but we are very interested uh to collaborate with people with uh with anyway um anyone but with technicians it would be better um so as you can see you are more than welcome to our lab and our team to experiment and build together and thank you thank you it's been oh we have plenty of time okay so please prepare extremely long questions we have a lot of time um as you know we have this time we only have one microphone angel so if you have a question or something to discuss just go to this gentleman over there and go speak into the microphone does anyone have a question yet we are also open to receive people that want to get some new sensors and yeah we can talk later then all right we have a question does anyone okay thank you um hello i'm over here where okay um thank you for the talk i was really interested in your sebeck effect prototype so one of the problems i've been having is generating power or having a battery inside the body so for implantable devices how have you done any research into powering those yes actually we have some implanted devices inside and for now the battery stays outside we haven't implanted yet um in this case all right any more questions from anyone okay maybe one question from me for to do the sebeck effect stuff how large do you need a temperature gradient to be from nine to eleven degrees okay so not for camp use so it's not usable at camp where it's super hot it depends on your body temperature it depends on the difference of the of the body temperature and the temperature of the of the outside okay but the idea is to generate a system that as a house no when you have the solar with your solar panels you generate a system where when there's no sun you still have your batteries working on because you stored it so that that would be the idea yes how large is the device that you showed um actually i don't know because um we i my friend was the one who designed this um the the image um the prototype so i'm not sure actually i don't think i'm not sure i cannot tell you anything i'm gonna ask and let you know all right we have a question from the audience yeah could you speak more to how the current cyborgs who use powered devices are um dealing with batteries and dealing with charging to make it as seamless a part of their lives as possible without um these devices that you're currently developing so right now we are working with a tiny so a tiny has a really really low current consumption so um i i don't have any sense in style in me so i'm not able to speak for them i would need to ask them what how they work how do they do it but actually we only take off our the battery and put it back again um and that's what i'm saying that we are like looking for a very low uh consumption um icis microcontrollers so right now with the a tiny we are working fine okay um just one second if we if someone in the room wants to be a signal angel for this talk please just maybe talk to the stage manager in the back and then we can also receive questions from the internet which would be very cool thank you now please hi thanks again for this great talk um i was curious about two aspects that are a bit boring one is how do you fund your work how do you fund oh yes that's the part that i didn't that i didn't add so right now we are trying to um to see a way to financiate ourselves right now none of us are receiving any money it's all because we love it um as i said we have a little bit of problems between artists and technicians actually i wanted to bring some devices here but all the artists were like no no no i'm sorry no i'm keeping it it's too risky no no no and i'm like what we developed it for you and you don't let me bring it here no but the thing is that um so right now we are starting to on september um because the the laboratory emerged this year i mean i explained some years ago they were working but they were more artistic and more their selves they go to talks by themselves because they are known um but right now there is emerging we are emerging as uh collective as a technician designers and philosophers and we are looking ways of financiation some some ways of financiation would be the no return financiation no so we are developing these documents to send to different enterprises that would be interested in our project and then they would give us some financiation with no return but we are also planning to do some workshops and some open some parties in our bunker we call it um so that we can financiate all this because we have a kind a problem between the cyborg um the artists um that the people that wants to get uh some new sensors because um we don't uh make them pay at all at all so we are like working like crazy and giving the work to other people and we are not getting anything in our laboratory i don't know if you are getting me sorry my english but the thing is that um that's what i the last thing i talked with my colleagues was okay no more sense for anyone we will build sensors for us just some prototypes to have them here if they want them in a commercial way they're gonna have to pay for it for it no okay so in this case we are totally um open distribution uh schematics everything it's totally open uh but if you're gonna use it in a commercial way then yes you're gonna have to pay for um the right i don't know if i okay fair enough uh so that leads to my second question which is somehow related uh i i started working on a an electronic implant a few years ago with body modification artists called Samba from cyborg you might know anyway um and my approach was to go through academia so we started uh trying to get some ethical approval from the academic word which is almost impossible uh do you have any constraints on certification and this kind of so i think this is my my um weak point because i'm not sure about it but what i do know is that as i said i don't like to to consider myself um an artist but what happens with art is that everything fits there so that's why all my colleagues that are um with some senses and they consider themselves artists i are cyborgs they call themselves artists because everything fits in art so people will not question yourself if you say it's art um um what i do know is that Neil Harvison had some trouble with police um they were he wanted to cross um the passport um airport and they well he had two problems one was in the airport with his antenna they were saying that he could not um cross it because in his picture was without antenna and he had the antenna and finally and he started a bureaucratic um situation where they finally recognized him as the first cyborg so he could pass and cross the the the aduana well and then he also had some problems with police um where they broke his uh he had some troubles in Barcelona i don't know if he was drinking on the street or whatever and they started they hit him and they broke his antenna and but about bureaucratic stuff i think um we should have here my colleagues to talk about it i mean because i'm i'm not into that i'm into electronics thank you okay i think we found a signal angel so if you're on the stream you might be able to okay no the answer is no all right there's the full uh thank you for your talk it was super clear um i'm wondering usually we when we want to sleep well at night we uh shut the the lights uh we have a no sound uh uh pretty not too warm not to call the room etc so do you know if these people or cyborgs are ever like your quiet mode for their sensors or just turned enough or something because you you cannot really control like cosmic rays for example that's a good question i think each person would do whatever they feel like um but what i know that they don't do is take it off because um they are too concentrated i mean they are too focused on on that but for example neil harrison he has uh his antenna is connected um to he connected he gave permission to three friends of them around the world to send him um colors so that whenever he sleeps he dreams with um those colors with these frequencies you have to think of these devices as your own organ so whenever you are sleeping and suddenly you open your eyes um you are still sleeping some people would i don't know maybe some people would sleep with with all the whites or but your your your ears you're not able to close them either whether you put some plugs no so this organ works the same i mean um is part of your body so whether you are sleeping whether you are awake the organ is functioning so and i guess as i said um the brain is very plastic the brain is like a sculpture you can model it and do whatever you want um so um after some months maybe six months maybe one year your brain gets super used to it to this to this new sense that you have and you don't even feel it anymore you don't even feel it not yours you it's totally yours actually if they take it off you're totally like fucked up no and yeah when as i said when you sleep your ears are still on you're not able to turn them off so that would be the same with the organ all right any other questions if anything else you want to show well i would want to say well there is a video but it's a stupid video so no so but thank you very much for listening and you are more than welcome to come to our laboratory or talk via wherever you want and yeah thank you