RESEARCH
MACHINERY: ABSTRACT SEX, PROMISES BEYOND FUNCTION
The Mutual Transition Between Man and Machine
I am searching for what a machine is, not necessarily what it means to be human. We have built a world that is, in large part, composed of machines because of our strange double identity: we are undeniably part of the natural process, yet, at the same time, we inhabit an entirely different world made up of our machines. It is to this second world that we truly belong, as we have woven it into our thoughts, nightmares, and fantasies. In this sense, we can only ever inhabit a life we have already created alongside machines.
For a space of dialogue that is surreal, political, radical, and tender—bridging the real and imaginary across genres—this research draws on philosophy to explore machines as tools of cultural processes. It investigates ontological and epistemological transformations driven by machines in culture, aesthetics, and memory. As a subtitle, Technosexual: Machine and Philosophy becomes an experiment in embodied research, creating alternative modes of understanding between humans and machines through aural, visual, and spatial experiences, all while meditating on emotional connectivity. This exploration of how machines reconnect us to innate aspects of being human, and how machinery shapes instinctual and intuitive perceptions, leads us to a collective experience of survival and existence.
Amidst the chaos, machines teach us the limits of control, yet embracing machines allows us to reach the boundaries of rationality. Above all, we are biological organisms, which means we possess a certain “sense” for machines—a bodily knowledge of how they function. Thinking about the dichotomy of the “mechanic” and the “bionic” connects us to how we perceive machines and how this perception becomes part of our emotional infrastructure, where we can say, “I live with machines, against machines, and in machines.”
Challenging the boundaries of machinery and the moving image—exploring process, aesthetic expression, variations on (non-)narrative forms, and representation—encompasses alternate platforms. Works produced under this approach, such as installations and exhibitions, span experimental genres and performances as artistic responses to the world. My practices in exploring the bidirectional dialogue between humans and machines navigate a space between chaos and order. This exploration leads me to reflect on where I stand as an architect, especially after years of intense engagement with car design, and allows me to embrace the relationship between humans and machines, including how they construct and deconstruct one another.
This project responds to the (hidden) emotional dimension behind humankind and machinery—what might be called abstract sex—an idea often exploited by the design industry as an obsessive desire. Here, the car becomes a subject of abstract sex, embodying notions such as transition, manipulation, absence, and presence. It connects the sensual, the corporeal, the intuitive, and the symbolic non-knowledge, emerging as a machinery document.
Cars, as mechanical bodies, create a surrealist gesture through elements of motion, improvisation, and utopia within the context of mobility as urban infrastructure. Automobility—a space between reality and fiction—examines the form and aesthetics of movement within these structures, where intuition, presence, and consciousness play essential roles, leading us to the idea of the city as a “function of movement” (Urry, J., 2000).
“We use ‘automobility’ here to capture a double sense. On the one hand, ‘auto’ refers reflexively to the humanist self, as in terms like autobiography or autoerotic. On the other hand, ‘auto’ often occurs in conjunction with objects or machines that possess the capacity for movement, such as automatic, automaton, and especially automobile. This dual resonance of ‘auto’ reflects the way the car driver is a ‘hybrid’ assemblage—simultaneously human, machine, road, building, sign, and culture of mobility” (Haraway, 1991; Thrift, 1996).
Outcome
This research aims to foster creative and intellectual experiences through interdisciplinary approaches and collective consciousness. Employing an experimental methodology, the research addresses speculative issues, examining utopic, dystopic, and heterotopic conjunctions. It seeks to manifest semiotic archetypes, borrowing qualities from human-machine interactions.
The process is inherently creative, using design as a method of inquiry and generating debates that bridge theory and practice. It focuses on blurring boundaries between reality and fiction, exploring hybrid concepts such as faction, where the real and imagined converge.
Machines, apart from their functionality, remain ambiguous, uncertain, and fascinating. Conceptual research in this context—especially that which is not intended for direct application—produces knowledge rather than questions. This project offers reflections not only to imagine something different but also to question rather than describe, breaking free from traditional divides like science/art or qualitative/quantitative methods, and allowing for true creative freedom.
O.M. Ungers’ City Metaphors (1976) relate bodies, cities, and mechanisms through their systems of structure, circulation, and energy.
ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND MECHANOMORPHISM
The Two Faces of Humanity
Akova Fırat
Poedat Collective Philosophy Conference, Smyrna, Turkey, c. 2015
The ambiguity of the “human machine” lies at the heart of this inquiry. Mechanomorphism, the attribution of machine characteristics to humans, is a culturally derived metaphor that currently dominates the cognitive sciences. The relationship between anthropomorphism and mechanomorphism presents a unique lens through which to examine the human body and poses the question: Can machines feel?
We see colors, hear sounds, and feel textures; yet mechanomorphism, with its abstract nature and experimental diagnostic, seeks to illuminate the unseen interactions between humans and machines in a particular sense.
This endeavor to define the ontological limits of the human body occupies the intersection of philosophical, biological, and theological inquiries. Beyond epistemological discussions, the differentiation between body and machine has become not only a persistent habit but also a metaphysical tradition—and, at times, an oppressive ideology. Immanence has been continuously reshaped throughout history through discourse, politics, and aesthetics centered on two fundamental concepts: the body and the machine.
The machine has been classified as separate from the body and often used metaphorically to underscore corporeality. When the body is viewed teleologically—as merely a vehicle for something—it is argued to be a type of machine. Yet, in this framing, the body’s limits cannot expand toward those of the machine; rather, the body is retracted to fit within the machine’s boundaries. According to Georges Canguilhem, likening body parts such as the stomach, veins, and muscles to tools like heating chambers, hydraulic tubes, cables, and cords reduces the body to a mechanical entity, satisfying ideologies that elevate technical processes. It is no coincidence that Aristotle described the bodies of slaves as “moving machines” or that René Descartes laid the foundation for mechanical philosophy and consciousness at the dawn of capitalism.
The alignment of bodily elements and processes with those of the machine creates an extraordinary sense of adventure and evokes emotional exaltation. The body becomes both cause and effect, subject and object, origin and endpoint—its limits persistently elusive. The body transcends the notion of being a mere input-output system; it is a structure capable of consciously or unconsciously intertwining with the machine. Ultimately, the relationship between the body and the machine reveals that while the body is not equivalent to the machine, the machine’s limits are, simultaneously, the limits of the body.