Catalogue: Human Nature

At the very outset of the 21st century, it’s becoming increasingly clear that we have entered a new age here on Earth: the Anthropocene. An age definitively characterized by humankind’s massive impact on our physical surroundings. An age whose most emblematic manifestations have been population explosion, climate change, the poisoning of the environment and our venturing into outer space. Heretofore. But now, it’s not only the environment that we’re changing. It’s the fundamentals of life itself—the fundamentals of our own life—that are being subjected to humankind’s will to custom-design our world. The oldest epic in human history—written down about 2,000 B.C.—tells of the attempt to overcome our nature and its transience. 2,000 years after Christ, human beings are still dreaming the same dream. But what the saga tells us Gilgamesh was prevented from achieving now seems to be within our grasp: a new, quasi-divine nature. This HUMAN NATURE occupies the focal point at the Ars Electronica Festival 2009. Thirty years after its founding, profound human curiosity is still the essential core of this global conclave’s approach, and we continue to intrepidly peer far into the future ...

PDF		Complete
		Ars Electronica 2009: Human Nature