The latest exhibition from the Science Gallery in Dublin explores the future of the human species, with its highlights including a euthanasia rollercoaster, 60 skulls with mechanised eyes which watch your every move, and a project investigating what would happen if humans needed to pollinate plants instead of bees.
Human+ aims to examine the cultural and social impact of new technologies in human development and incorporates the work of artists, biologists, roboticists, architects and philosophers.
The result is a combination of art installations, science and technology experiments, participatory experiences, lab settings and historical artefacts.
The Euthanasia Coaster is a hypothetical euthanasia machine by a Lithuanian named Julijonas Urbonas which aims to take the life of a human being with "elegance and euphoria". The proposed roller coaster would be 7.5km long and 500m high and would push the human body to the limit, eventually causing a g-force-induced loss of consciousness and then death by cerebral hypoxia, or a lack of oxygen to the brain. For the exhibition, Urbonas has created a scale model of 1:500.
Area V5, by Canadian Louis Philippe Demers, comprises 60 skulls with mechanical eyes which track facial features and follow the viewer around the room.
The piece aims to trigger "Uncanny Valley" or the point at which humans start to feel physically uneasy with robotic agents. The hypothesis -- coined by roboticist Masahiro Mori -- maintains that when robots look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.
The Human Pollination Project imagines a post-bee world where people are required to pollinate plants instead of the busy insects. US artist Laura Allcorn has designed a set of silver tools designed to transport pollen and apply it (using a six-armed applicator) to other blossoms.
Biological artist Eduardo Kac has combined his own DNA with that of a petunia to create a "plantimal" flower that he calls Edunia.
The Edunia -- which he biologically engineered in a project called
Natural History of the Enigma -- expresses Kac's DNA exclusively in its red veins.
Other exhibits include a prosthetic head which can hold a conversation with the viewer, the tardigotchi (which Wired covered last year) and I.E.D, or Improvised Empathic Device, which alerts the wearer to the death of a US soldier in war with a needle prick to the arm.
The exhibition -- which is backed by Trinity College Dublin and Wellcome Trust -- opens at the Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin, on 15 April, 2011, and runs until June, 2011. Check out more of the exhibits in the gallery below.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
