ADVANCED PRAISE FOR SPACEBOY & THE SUPERCOGNATE: A THEORY OF RADIOACTIVE BEING
Ken Wilbur
"I love this book! It is a brilliant look at the possible disasters that artificial intelligence might usher in, as well as workable things that can be done about them. I highly recommend this masterpiece of theoretical speculation." - Ken Wilber, author of The Spectrum of Consciousness: Sex, Ecology, Spirituality and Finding Radical Wholeness: The Integral Path to Unity, Growth, and Delight.
Peter Halley
“Informed by a broad spectrum of philosophers and cultural theorists, Bower and Vetter take us on a supercharged tour of a post-human trans-human multi-dimensional future driven by the destabilizing forces of biotechnology, AI, and informatics – a future that’s being constructed by a range of actors from secular-humanists, agnostic-cyborgists, atheist-automationists, schizo-bio-punks, and animist-hacktivists to traditionalist super-humanists and pragmatic bio-conservatives. Be prepared for a wild ride.” - Peter Halley, artist and author of Peter Halley: Selected Essays 1981-1987 and Recent Essays 1990-1996.
David M. Berry
"Bower and Vetter's Spaceboy & The Supercognate confronts the question of the (in)stability of the human subject with ambition, connecting ideas from art history, philosophy of technology, and posthuman theory to show that figurative painting must reckon with computation's reshaping of what it means to be human. Positioning painterly thinking as a site of encounter is an important and thought-provoking contribution for the coming world of vector computation." - David M. Berry, author of Post-Digital Aesthetics and Critical Theory and the Digital.
Steve Fuller
"Spaceboy and the Supercognate is an ingenious book, which as the authors suggest is best devoured in one sitting. The ‘Spaceboy’ figure – a posthumanist deconstruction of Gainsborough’s Blue Boy – invites the reader to reimagine humanity’s ‘coming of age’ not as a process by which we mature as a species, but rather one where we increasingly ‘de-individuate’ along many dimensions simultaneously as we test ‘the limits of our own finitude’, in the authors’ felicitous phrase. The results are quite striking all round. I especially recommend that readers linger over the book’s radical remake of the color spectrum in modern politics, which fully exploits the metaphorical resources of the physics of light to produce a comprehensive tableau of contemporary ‘posthuman potential movements'." - Steve Fuller, author of Humanity 2.0: What It Means to Be Human Past, Present and Future and co-author of The Proactionary Imperative: A Foundation for Transhumanism.
Legacy Russell
“Justin Bower and Grant Vetter’s Spaceboy and the Supercognate: A Theory of Radioactive Being takes the posthuman thesis to its most extreme conclusion by exploring how the body is an evolutionary architecture that can be colonized, controlled, and conscripted by cyber-capital. Running counter to the co-option of the human subject, Bower and Vetter view the body as a cosmic construct that is constantly being redefined by nature, technology, and cultural codes that exceed the logic of ones and zeros, inputs and outputs, and ends-means rationality. Bower and Vetter propose that the political potential of glitch motifs lies in making the drive toward posthumanism visible, even in its most performative and imaginative dimensions. This text is a must read for anyone interested in the development of 'the new aesthetic', glitch theory, and the post-digital moment in contemporary art.” - Legacy Russel, author of Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto and Executive Director & Chief Curator of The Kitchen.
Benjamin Edwards
“The text functions structurally as an artwork, by which I mean that it is doing something similar to what the paintings are doing. There is an anxiety in the imagery which is matched by the prose and the constant deflection or textual splintering into different disciplines and rather unstable thought structures. I really like the metaphor developed in the book about the stability and assurance that the genre of portraiture offers us being played off against the tension of instability, fragmentation, and anxiety related to the human subject dissolving or flying apart through its own technological and superhuman forces bursting the cohesive seams of the self apart. I was continually blown away by the scope of the material and your many references.” - Benjamin Edwards, artist and author of Art and Myth in the Modern World System and The Artist in the Age of Contraction.
Matteo Campulla
"Spaceboy and the Supercognate moves through glitch, posthuman theory, and portraiture not as fixed frameworks, but as unstable territories. What emerges is not a system, but a field of tensions where the human subject appears in a state of continuous transformation. The result is a dense and ambitious exploration of posthuman transformation in the age of cybernetic acceleration." - Matteo Campulla, artist and author of Glitch Art: Epistemology of Failure and Politics of Error and the substack D4T4H3LL The Subject Is Already Gone - by Matteo Campulla
Ed Lord
“While Justin Bower’s shocking portraits of humanity being reconfigured into homo-techno mirror Grant Vetter’s work on disciplinary modernity being transformed into a society of control, it is only with the publication of Spaceboy and the Supercognate: A Theory of Radioactive Being that the true horror of abstraction that we feel in modern spaces is revealed. Their Theory of Radioactive Being posits the idea that childhood now consists of the conscription of biorhythms for technocratic ends, that adulthood is circumscribed by the capture of biofields related to the regulation of homo-techno, and that old age will soon be beset by replacement options that include bio-tech, bio-therapies, and biological augmentation as a means of perfecting transhumanism before a fully posthuman existence is marketed to us in the future. This book describes nothing less than the modern madness of our times without pulling any punches.” - Ed Lord, Author of Modern Madness: A Wild Schizoanalysis of Mental Distress in the Spaces of Modernity.
Aarsh Kumar
"I spent a long time thinking about glitch from the inside out, as a question about consciousness, simulation, and what it means when reality fractures. Bower and Vetter do something I couldn't, they show you that it was always fracturing. From Holbein to the Spaceboy series, they trace glitch not as a digital accident but as the deepest question art has ever asked about the human subject. The theory of radioactive being, the überjunde, the four developmental waves of new media art — this is the cognitive map that critical digital studies has been missing. I genuinely wish this book existed when I was writing mine. The way they connect the crisis of portraiture to the rise of the posthuman subject, and ground all of it in four developmental waves of new media art gives critical digital studies the kind of cognitive map it has been missing for decades. This book doesn't just add to the conversation — it restructures it." - Aarsh Kumar, Author of Glitch: Beyond the Render and The Phantom Project which explores a model of Hybrid Consciousness Theory and Infinite Chain Intelligence Theory.
Arthur Kroker
“In Spaceboy and the Supercognate: A Theory of Radioactive Being, Justin Bower and Grant Vetter outline how the will toward technological development has possessed mankind as a form of nihilism gone awry. By using the figure of the Spaceboy to explain how humanity is being remade through the adoption of corporeal enhancements, gene therapy, CRSPR kits, and other forms of medical intervention, they have highlighted how the interior of the body has been invaded and the last stable signs of sex and gender erased. Their theories of the überjunde, homo-techno, and hyper-speculative aesthetics point to the end of our evolutionary nomos and the beginning of something far stranger and more disturbing. Over the course of seven chapters, they paint a picture of how the body has fallen under the occupation of technological imperatives and the dictates of cyber-capital, where the last chance of escape means tearing the corporeal frame of man asunder, for better or worse. This book is for anyone interested in the triumph and the tragedy of the posthuman condition.” - Arthur Kroker, Author of Exits to the Posthuman Future, The Possessed Individual: Technology and the Postmodern, The Will to Technology & The Culture of Nihilism: Heidegger, Nietzsche and Marx, and The Quantum Revolution: Art, Technology, Culture.
Rembrandt Quiballo
"Spaceboy and the Supercognate: A Theory of Radioactive Being stands out by offering a comprehensive examination of the complex debates and challenges within glitch theory over the last several decades. Bower and Vetter construct a complete overview of the key theorists, terminology, and frameworks surrounding ‘the new aesthetic’, a feat that sets this text apart from any other available literature. The work seamlessly blends an expressive, painterly sensibility with a broad transdisciplinary approach that feels expansive. It remains essential reading for those interested in the postdigital moment in contemporary art and the future of humanity." - Rembrandt Quiballo, Glitch Artist and Art Critic for Hyperallergic and Southwest Contemporary.
BACK COVER
Spaceboy & The Supercognate: A Theory of Radioactive Being is a prophetic statement about the prospects of contemporary painting in the posthuman age. Over the course of seven chapters about the race for super-intelligence Justin Bower and Grant Vetter examine what state and stage development means in relation to the theory of the überjunde in childhood, the rise of homo-techno in adulthood, and how hyper-speculative forms of man-and-machine synthesis could redefine old age by naturalizing body augmentation, life extension therapies, and other medical procedures that hope to achieve the promise of human immortality.
This three-stage theory of techno-psycho-dividuation is central to understanding the rise of the new aesthetic in contemporary art because it confronts how the modern avant-garde was connected to theories of the new wo/man and the postmodern neo-avant-garde was influenced by new age human potential movements. By addressing the impact that these theories have had in the age of globalization, Bower and Vetter reveal how the body is the final object of capture for cyber-capital and the development of r/evolutionary politics is our last chance to change the fate of humanity.
These contests over the future of mankind are embodied in the Spaceboy paintings which engage with glitch motifs and the new aesthetic to show how the deconstruction of the subject could lead to the destruction of human subjectivity in total. By demonstrating how the post-digital moment and posthumanism are intimately connected to debates about accelerationism, artificial intelligence, and the coming singularity, Spaceboy & The Supercognate allows us to see how a transformation of the human condition is immanent. This text is a clarion call for a new vanguard of artists to cultivate a global critique of the growing powers of posthuman agency at the opening of the novacene.