Examples of current and recent graduate research /
Jan Bennett: Scientists, Monsters and Other Allies: Hybrid Becomings

 

The subject of my theoretical and practical enquiry is the visual representation of the future human in art and popular science media - the imagery associated with the physical body and the ways in which it might be altered or transformed by advances in science and biotechnology.

 

The desire for extended or enhanced bodies raises hopes for the future of the human body and human condition. But it also arouses anxieties about loss of identity, essence and autonomy. The unknowable body of the future is envisioned as a hybrid of the technological, biomedical, cultural and aesthetic, stereotypically either beautiful, perfect and young, or grotesque, monstrous and threatening. The practice focuses on the ways in which the human face is imaged and manipulated as a way of representing the physical changes that biotechnologies might facilitate, with particular reference to the active, affective and performative properties of such facial imagery.

Research Degrees