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An Artist Began Preparing Her Body for Interstellar Travel

In 'The Institute of Isolation,' Lucy Mcrae ponders how we might prepare and change the body's physiology to better suit it to life beyond the earth.

How will the body need to evolve to live in space? That's one of the questions addressed in artist and filmmaker Lucy Mcrae's new film The Institute of Isolation,which looks at how we might prepare the body to function beyond the Earth's atmosphere. The film is currently showing at London's Science Museum as one of three commissioned artworks that feature in the exhibition Beyond the Lab: The DIY Science Revolution, which looks at some of the DIY scientists and innovators currently working in Europe.

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Many of these innovators are working on applying technology to improve health and medicine, be it through analyzing different types of mosquitos, or keeping tabs on pollution levels. Mcrae's speculative film looks at the effects isolation and extreme sensory conditions have on the human body and ponders how we might augment the body, on an evolutionary scale, by using these techniques.

Changes to our physiology are necessary to aid future generations of astronauts in interstellar travel or settling on Mars. "Is there a way to be able to prepare the mind for this vacuum or unknown territory of space?" Mcrae asks The Creators Project. "And begin to augment or train human resilience and so change the patterns of the brain?"

Psychoacoustics. Behind the scenes. Image courtesy of the artist

The film was developed while Mcrae was artist-in-residence at Ars Electronica. Part of her residency meant she was able to consult with scientific minds working at the vanguard of their disciplines who are dealing with these complex issues. Her interpretation and manifestation of these ideas went on to inform the narrative of the film. Further research involved Mcrae putting herself in a form of isolation for three months, on a 'technology diet,' as she calls it. In the mornings she would read Evolving Ourselves by Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans, a book about how human choice along with nature is driving evolution.

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Mcrae calls the resulting nine-minute short film an 'observational documentary,' a merging of her own usually fictive style and her collaborator, documentary maker, Lotje Sodderland's approach. It was shot on location at various places including a hospital, an anechoic chamber, scientific facilities, a psychoacoustics lab, Kew Gardens in London, and La Fabrica in Barcelona to name a few.

Microgravity trainer. Image courtesy of the artist

In the film, Mcrae puts her body through various extreme experiences at the fictitious Institute of Isolation, a kind of self-contrived astronaut training. There are sensory chambers—anechoic, psychoacoustic, hyperbaric—and a microgravity trainer. The latter was actually inspired by old NASA techniques measuring biometrics.

"I’m interested in merging different markets," Mcrae explains. "So what happens when you merge the space market with the beauty and fashion market—if you had pilates and yoga and meditation, what comes next? What kind of conditioning program we will need to participate in, in order to evolve our bodies to the conditions of weightlessness? So the [microgravity] trainer is an artefact of the film that is blurring domestic activities like sleep cycles or sexual routines, raising your heart rate, and suggesting what we might be using in the future, what type of machines or devices or our angle in terms of gravity in the world will be used down the line."

Throughout the film Mcrae wears a clunky-looking garment, a flesh-colored body suit and cap, similar to the style worn by astronauts under their spacesuits, but with added exoskeleton-like padding. It was developed with a costume designer at the English National Ballet and the idea behind it ties in with Mcrae's concept of wearable technology. Or, actually, what comes after wearable tech: the idea of a second skin, particularly with reference to designing isolation.

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Anechoic chamber. Image courtesy of the artist

"In the past I’ve talked about body architecture and this connection between architecture and the body," notes Mcrae. "And it’s subtly bringing together some of those concepts, along with this concept of a sensory chamber and the idea of, could we wear isolation as a way of beginning that conversation of detaching ourselves from the world? Because one of the questions I’m interested in is, could we design isolation like an architect designs a building or a chemist designs a vaccine?"

It's quite a strange concept to wrap your brain around, Mcrae uses the example of the anechoic chamber, a room within a room with no echo or vibration, the sound of silence. "If you think about wearing isolation, if you think about an anechoic chamber, isolating the body, or yourself within a room, could you on a much smaller and immediate scale wear second skins that did a similar thing?"

Storyboard for the film. Image courtesy of the artist

Like with a lot of the questions and issues raised in the film, Mcrae doesn't pretend to have the answers—not yet, anyway. That's not what she's offering at the moment. Instead she believes that by examining these future lifestyles we will not only prepare ourselves for interstellar space, but also learn more about health and the body on earth. They work in tandem, she notes.

She also wants to raise debate within the public sphere, and not just leave all these issues to the scientists. She believes that tapping into the varied audience that visits the Science Museum is a great inroad to beginning these discussions on such complex issues.

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Hypabaric chamber. Image courtesy of the artist

"I want to ask more questions, encourage conversation around the consequences scientific breakthroughs will have on human health and the body," explains Mcrae. "With genetic engineering, germline editing, and sequencing of DNA human evolution is really changing to the point where we can design height, eye color, reduce or remove disease. So I think this is a really important time to have these conversations on the wide scale of the public not just limited to the scientific experts."

Microgravity trainer. Image courtesy of the artist

Visit Lucy Mcrae's website here. Beyond the Lab: The DIY Science Revolution is on at the Science Museum, London, from now until September 15, 2016. Learn more about it here.

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