Introduction to 'Brave New World'

As Solent Makeup and Hair welcomes me back this year I have been assigned a exciting new brief titled Brave New World.

Brave New World is a unit that explores the art of human transformation and image manipulation and requires intense research and design of special effects makeup and prosthetics.

I expect this unit to expand my knowledge of human transformation - it's possibilities and potential, and also build upon my special effect makeup, organisation, design and time management skills.

Makeup by Italia Williams, concept being 'Alien Beauty' / Available from http://www.scharadl.com/blog/alienbeauty/ / Last Accessed: 03/10/2014

I believe that human transformation is the alteration of one's body appearance through low tech prosthetic, surgery or genetic manipulation. Humans are constantly chasing the ideas of perfection and those ideas are ever-changing and unattainable. Beauty is non subjective, there may be a majority who strive to look a certain way, but there are and will always be subcultures who rebel against the general perspective.

Lady Gaga 'Yuyi' Persona featured in short film Haus of U

Lady Gaga You and I Music Video 2011

Those cheekbones in Gaga's Born This Way music video have been the talk, however, she is fairly consistent in keeping up with those body transformations. In You and I, we see her being transformed, from suspended in a water tank to a mermaid in a bathtub to a futuristic robotic being. In the music video, we see that she goes through several transitions in order to possibly create the best version of herself.  

Although Gaga is much recognised for her fashion which exaggerates and distorts her body, she is still seen as beautiful and accepted by the majority of society today, many artists have adopted the style of body modification to gouge interest from viewers. Different is quickly becoming the ideal of beauty. 

On the other hand body-mod enthusiasts like the artist Orlan or the Mexican ‘Vampire Woman’ Maria Cristerna may be practicing a form of beauty, but their beauty is predicated on shock. They are in opposition to the standard view of what is acceptable and attractive.*  Maria Cristernia also states her tattoos and horns are signs of strength. 

On the contrary, what if perfection did not define beauty, will humans start modifying the body to simply survive, become stronger and gain advantage against a future race or condition? Body modification has already started to draw the relationship between humans and technology closer, such as the transhumanism movement - the idea of altering the human condition through the use of technologies as to inaugurate a superior post-human being.

Instead of the idea of installing devices into the human body, could we alter our genes and DNA to create a super human? What will happen if human modification got out of hand, genetic mutations? What would we have created?

Let the research commence.


Bibliography

http://www.nextnature.net/2009/08/french-hyperbodies/
http://www.nextnature.net/themes/augmented-bodies/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/06/mexico-vampire-woman_n_845032.html
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/10/18/the-brave-new-worldofbiohacking.html