<nettime> my design me

[wade tillett <super89@bigfoot.com>]

http://www.surgery.com/topics/body.html

A computer generated golden metallic female body with unbelievable
proportions is shown over the faded background of a keyboard.  Clickable
cyan boxes are shown over specific areas of the body with the following
text: 

*Pick the area you would like to improve

*       Head (face, neck, and hair)
*       Arms (sagging skin, excess fat flab, etc.)
*       Breast (sagging, too big, too small, uneven, etc.)
*       Abdomen (excess fat, excess skin hanging down, etc.)
*       Buttocks (too fat, saggy, etc.)
*       Thighs (excess fat, cellulite, etc.)
*        Calves (too small, too fat, etc.)

The examples in parentheses suggest what could be wrong with your body -
that is, what varies from the perfected computer generated model.  We can
no longer be compared to the ideal naturally occurring body, but rather to
a computer generated model - a utopic persona based on a conglomeration of
the best.  We can no longer be compared to the naturally occurring body
because we are no longer reliant on natural means for obtaining
(maintaining) this body.  Now this increased power and ability to change
our body makes the body we live in a design of our own - choosing not to
modify our body is just as much a design as modifying our body. 
Abstention is as much design as creation, if we have the ability to
design.  And we have always had the ability to design.  We constantly
design our selves - by eating (or not eating, also what we eat), by
walking (or not walking), by reproducing (or not reproducing), by our
actions (or non-actions).  "Where nothing is in its place, lies disorder. 
Where in the desired place there is nothing, lies order." (Brecht qtd. in
Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 155) 

* Thigh Liposculpture
*  What would you like to do?
*           See Before and After Pictures
*           Find out about usual Costs
*           Read about this operation
*           Find a doctor near you that would be glad to explain your
options

What has changed is the transferability of our actions.  We can now sit at
a computer instead of walking; the money we make while sitting at the
computer can be transferred into a liposuction (or 'liposculpture' as this
web site calls it).  The action attempts to correct its own non-actions
through a design transference. 

* Pick the area you would like to improve 

*	 Hair (for baldness, thinning hair, etc.)
*	 Upper Eyes (tired looking eyes, sad, small etc.) 
*	 Lower Eyes (tired looking eyes, bags, extra skin, etc.) 
*	 Ears (excess fat, excess skin hanging down, etc.) 
*	 Nose (too big, too small, too wide, too narrow, etc.) 
*	 Mouth (enhance the lips, improve wrinkles, etc.) 
*	 Neck (fix sagging skin, take away excess fat, etc.) 
*  	 Face
*	 Facelift
*	 Skin Resurfacing (Laser) 
*	 Skin Resurfacing (Chemical Peel) 

We have also increased the limits of our designs, the possibilities of our
design.  There are a lot more choices here than on the barbie my design
site.  This is beyond mass production.  There are a lot more choices now
than were previously possible through actions as design, deterministic
choice.  We didn't used to be able to design noses.  Now with surgery,
prosthetics, eugenics, genetic engineering, we can modify the design of
life itself.  We have modified deterministic choice, natural selection,
evolution.  We are now our own gods - products of our own design. 

>"Are we adapting our bodies to the dress, or the other way around?" 
(Thanks to Tjebbe van Tijen for the quote) 

We still operate within the limits of our design, within the program,
although we are constantly expanding these limits.  What limits our
designs the most is our social program of utopia.  This is the definition
of utopia: the exclusion of possibilities.  (No possibilities of adding a
third arm.  The body is limited to our utopic idea of it.  Detachable
prosthetics such as the internet or airplanes are used to extend our
bodies' possibilities without modifying our utopic definition of self.) 

"But let there be no misunderstanding; it is not that a real man, the
object of knowledge, philosophical reflection or technical intervention,
has been substituted for the soul, the illusion of the theologians.  The
man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself
the effect of a subjection much more profound than himself.  A 'soul'
inhabits him and brings him to existence, which is itself a factor in the
mastery that power exercises over the body.  The soul is the effect and
instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body."
(Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 30) 





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